Environmental Management Framework for Wind Farm Siting: Methodology and Case Study

Journal of Environmental Management 91 (2010) 2134e2147 Contents lists available at ScienceDirect Journal of Environmental Management journal homepage: www.elsevier.com/locate/jenvman Environmental management framework for wind farm siting: Methodology and case study Leda-Ioanna Tegou*, Heracles Polatidis, Dias A. Haralambopoulos Energy Management Laboratory, Department of Environment, University of the Aegean, Lesvos 81100, Greece article info abstract Article history: This paper develops an integrated framework to evaluate land suitability for wind farm siting that Received 21 September 2009 combines multi-criteria analysis (MCA) with geographical information systems (GIS); an application of Received in revised form the proposed framework for the island of Lesvos, Greece, is further illustrated. A set of environmental, 14 April 2010 economic, social, and technical constraints, based on recent Greek legislation, identifies the potential Accepted 14 May 2010 sites for wind power installation. Furthermore, the area under consideration is evaluated by a variety of Available online 11 June 2010 criteria, such as wind power potential, land cover type, electricity demand, visual impact, land value, and distance from the electricity grid. The pair-wise comparison method in the context of the analytic Keywords: Wind farm siting hierarchy process (AHP) is applied to estimate the criteria weights in order to establish their relative Geographical information systems importance in site evaluation. The overall suitability of the study region for wind farm siting is appraised Multi-criteria analysis through the weighted summation rule. Results showed that only a very small percentage of the total area Analytic hierarchy process of Lesvos could be suitable for wind farm installation, although favourable wind potential exists in many Greece more areas of the island. Ó 2010 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved. 1. Introduction 2006). The term siting difficulty is defined as any combination of obstacles in wind turbines siting process, including environmental, Wind farm siting often constitutes a process of locating topographic, and geographic constraints; public opposition; local, a sometimes undesirable facility; nevertheless it is an important state, and federal regulatory barriers to permitting, investment, first step in wind power development. The environmental impacts and/or construction. of wind farms include generally effects on visual impact (Bishop In recent years geographical information systems (GIS) have and Miller, 2007), bird collision (Fielding et al., 2006; Yue and become increasingly popular as a tool for the selection of optimal Wang, 2006), noise generation (Cavallaro and Ciraolo, 2005), sites for different types of activities and installations. GIS are not electromagnetic interference (Baban and Parry, 2001), and safety only computer systems designed to produce maps, but also issues (Aydin et al., 2010). Greece has recently established a special powerful tools of geographical analysis. A GIS is a system of hard- regulatory framework regarding the siting of renewable energy ware, software, and procedures to facilitate the acquisition, facilities in general based on proper land use planning and management, manipulation, analysis, modelling, representation, sustainable development (HMEPPPW, 2008). However, apart from and output of spatially referenced data to solve complex planning the constraints provided by national legislation, any site selection and management problems (Carrion et al., 2008). The appropri- and assessment procedure must address the technical, economic, ateness of a GIS for locating RES facilities is portrayed in Baban and social and environmental aspects of the project to determine Parry (2001). whether it is suitable for wind energy development (Polatidis and Applications of GISeRES planning include wind farm siting, Haralambopoulos, 2007). As a result, energy and electricity photovoltaic electrification, biomass evaluation, visual impact industry professionals and policy groups have developed a variety assessment of wind parks, etc. (Amador and Dominguez, 2006; approaches to mitigate siting difficulty of new wind power plants Gadsden et al., 2003; Ma et al., 2005; Masera et al., 2006; (Lejeune and Feltz, 2008; Ramirez-Rosado et al., 2008; Rodman and Miranda, 2006; Ramachandra and Shruthi, 2007). Meentemeyer, 2006; Vajjhala and Fischbeck, 2007; Yue and Wang, One of the most common GIS based strategies that have been designed to facilitate decision making in site selection, land suitability analysis, and resource evaluation is Multi-criteria Analysis * Corresponding author. Tel.: þ30 22510 36216; fax: þ30 22510 36209. (MCA) (Malczewski, 1999). The Analytic Hierarchy Process (AHP) E-mail address: [email protected] (L.-I. Tegou). method, originally developed by Saaty (1980),isaflexible and 0301-4797/$ e see front matter Ó 2010 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved. doi:10.1016/j.jenvman.2010.05.010 L.-I. Tegou et al. / Journal of Environmental Management 91 (2010) 2134e2147 2135 easily implemented MCA technique and its use has been largely further used to evaluate the study area in order to bring out the explored in the literature with many examples in locating facilities most economic viable, environmental friendly, technically feasible (Dey and Ramcharan, 2008; Kontos et al., 2005; Tuzkaya et al., and social acceptable sites. The weights of these criteria are esti- 2008; Wang et al., 2009) and in land suitability analysis (Yang mated through the pair-wise comparison method in the context of et al., 2008). A comprehensive literature review of studies that AHP. An overall suitability map for the island of Lesvos is created have applied this method in different fields can be found in Vaidya through the weighted summation of the criteria. and Kumar (2006). The popularity of the AHP method in giving The paper continues as follows: Section 2 describes the area of solutions to a multi-criteria problem is attributed to the fact that it study; section 3 presents the tools and data used for the application takes into consideration both tangible and intangible criteria (Aras of the methodological framework developed below. The results of et al., 2004). There are two specific characteristics that distinguish the application are analyzed and a sensitivity analysis is performed this method from other multi-criteria methods: the construction of in section 4. Finally, concluding remarks are included in section 5. the hierarchy structure and the pair-wise comparisons between different criteria, in order to weight them with respect to the 2. Area of study overall objective (Nekhay et al., 2009). Another benefit of using the AHP method is that it employs a consistency test that can screen Lesvos island is located in the northeast of Greece, in the Aegean out inconsistent judgments (Kablan, 2004). Sea. Its total area is 1636 km2, with 90 436 inhabitants (census of The recently enacted Greek legislation for renewable energy 2001). Agriculture and tourismare themain economicactivities on the facilities siting (HMEPPPW, 2008) was the main motivation for the island. Approximately 41.3% of the island’s surface is olive plantations, present work. The objective is to give a reasonable answer to 34% maquis and garrigue, 17% forest, 4.3% other crops, while the a number of questions such as: remaining land has various uses such as constructions, wetlands, etc. Electricity production in Lesvos island is based on an autono- - How complicated is the process of siting a wind park in an mous grid, which is powered by a conventional oil station owned large autonomous island with sufficient wind potential, variety by the Public Power Corporation (PPC). The power plant is fuelled of land cover, scattered archaeological sites, and areas char- by fuel and diesel oil and is located in the outskirts of Mytilene acterized as “NATURA 2000”. (Fig. 1). Wind potential on the island is significant (Fig. 2) and three - What kind of criteria have to be taken into consideration for wind parks have been installed during the past decades for elec- the evaluation of the study area and which is their relative tricity generation, these projects however have so far managed to importance. exploit only a small fraction of the island’s full wind capacity - How sensitive is the developed framework when criteria are (Koroneos et al., 2004; Ntziachristos et al., 2005). Other RES, i.e. modified and/or weights are changed. geothermal and solar, have also been developed for hot water - How restrictive is the relevant enacted national legislation. production, albeit on a rather limited scale. The island of Lesvos was selected for numerous reasons. First, as As mentioned earlier, the present study develops an integrated most of the Aegean islands, it exhibits an excellent wind potential framework for the selection of optimal sites for wind farm instal- (Kaldellis, 2005). Second, it displays an annual increase of electricity lation, in an electricity autonomous island in Greece, considering consumption at a rate of 6% (primary data of PPC), almost 50% more the restrictions enforced by current national legislation. A combi- than the mainland rate (4.2%) (Hatziargyriou et al., 2006). Moreover, nation of environmental, technical, economic and social criteria is due to geographic, technical, economic, and social reasons, its Fig. 1. Lesvos island: power plants, road network, main settlements. 2136 L.-I. Tegou et al. / Journal of Environmental Management 91 (2010) 2134e2147 Fig. 2. Wind

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