Making space for environmental justice in renewable energy planning

Abstract

Against the backdrop of the energy transition, the development of renewable energies implies risks and imbalances that could be mitigated by taking proper spatial planning approaches. The Territorial Sectoral Plan for Renewable Energies of the Basque Country (Spain) aims to organize the deployment of large-scale projects for multiple energy sources, on rural, non-developable land and on a regional scale. Plans of this kind are scarce in Europe and almost nonexistent in Spain. In the article, we analyze the drafting process of the Territorial Sectoral Plan using a combination of methods, in order to identify the perceived injustices of the plan and to discuss them within the multi-dimensional environmental justice framework. In this case, the key perceived injustices are linked to: (1) the misrecognition of rural communities and mountain areas as a key axis of inequality—related to disrupted attachment to place; (2) the corporate and mercantilist nature of the current energy system; (3) the conflict between mitigation objectives and adaptation functions/capabilities; and (4) the absence of multi-scalar decision-making processes and the limited scope of participation. Furthermore, this article provides a series of normative proposals regarding spatial planning for renewable energies in similar contexts. The study concludes that the intersection between spatial energy planning and environmental justice could constitute a fertile research field in the quest for fair energy transitions.