Environmental Assessment of Onshore Wind Energy Plans in Germany and Scotland: A Procedural Compliance with Respect to Integration of Climate Change Impacts

Abstract

Strategic environmental assessment (SEA) provides an opportunity to integrate climate change issues into renewable energy plans to mitigate the effects of climate change. In this study, we conducted a comparative analysis of the extent to which climate change issues are incorporated into SEAs of onshore wind energy plans in Germany and Scotland. To achieve our objective, we employed a modified version of the Lee and Colley review package to analyse SEA reports. The combined results of our analysis show that 49% and approximately 45% of the overall tasks performed in all the review areas in terms of climate change integration in the documents reviewed were considered satisfactory for Germany and Scotland, respectively. In order to effectively consider the climate change impacts in SEAs and to efficiently plan for onshore wind energy development, due consideration should be given to the adoption of diverse methodological approaches and models of climate change.