Objective
The "Demonstration project for the development of renewable energy potential maps for the West Balkan countries" is funded in the framework of ESA's EOMD "Value Adding Element (VAE) Actions to Integrate New EO Services" and aims at demonstrating a series of services related to information about renewable energies. Today a wealth of information is available on renewable energies. Practically this information is scattered across a multitude of on-line and off-line sources and in data archives (e.g. ENVISAT, ERS). The proposed services will bring together existing data from these different sources and combine them with information from EO sources.
The project will collect basic data on renewable energy potentials (wind, solar, biomass, geothermal) from existing providers / services in spatially explicit format (i.e. maps, GIS databases). At European level these maps represent a more a "theoretical" energy potential as local conditions, such as topography, exposition, or land cover are not considered.
The project will add value to these "theoretical" maps through the integration with other spatial data (e.g. elevation, land cover, protected areas) and derive more refined maps, indicating a first level selection of area suited for the production of energy from renewable sources.
In order to overcome the monothematic focus of project-based approaches the project aims at developing a comprehensive "atlas" which allows to access information for different renewable energies at once. This "atlas" will be implemented as an interactive web mapping service.
The service will address primarily the European Environment Agency and its need for regularly updated information on the environment in order to support statements like "an increased share of renewable energy sources and replacement of coal and oil with gas are gradually contributing to cut emissions of greenhouse gas and air pollutants in Europe" (Jacqueline McGlade, EEA Director, Oct. 2008).
An important issue for monitoring in this context is the European goal of increasing the share of renewable energy sources in the final overall consumption of the Union from 8.5% in 2005 to 20% in 2020.
Users
In general, stakeholders addressed by the demonstration project are organisations interested in the selection of potential installation sites, and the European Environment Agency which is interested in the benefits of individual and combined installation sites as well as in possible land use conflicts. The information will be used by the EEA to better assess the environmental impact of renewable energies on the environment.
More specifically, the target user communities are:
- European level stakeholders interested on the one hand in the benefits of individual or combined sites and on the other hand in potential land use conflicts and their impacts on the environment (see description of the EEA below).
- National and regional stakeholders interested in the decision making process for suitable sites for renewable energy installations. Local stakeholders are not addressed in the demonstration project as their requirements for site specific information normally go beyond the scope of a demonstration project (local stakeholders would require a mapping and working scale this demonstration project does not deal with).
European Environment Agency (EEA)
The task of the European Environment Agency is to provide sound, independent information on the environment. The EEA is a major information source for those involved in developing, adopting, implementing and evaluating environmental policy, and the general public.
Main clients are the European Union institutions - the European Commission, the European Parliament, the Council - and the currently 32 member countries and 6 associated countries. In addition to this central group of European policy actors, EEA also serves other EU institutions such as the Economic and Social Committee and the Committee of the Regions.
The mandate of the EEA includes the support of the Community and member countries make informed decisions about improving the environment, integrating environmental considerations into economic policies and moving towards sustainability.
The EEA provides a wide range of assessments, analysing the state of and trends in the environment, together with the pressures caused by economic and social driving forces. The EEA also works on scenario development, policy evaluation and data quality assurance. In addition, the EEA coordinates the European environment information and observation network (Eionet).
In order to make such assessment the EEA needs reliable, accessible and timely data on the environment as a key factor for monitoring European policies.
Consortium
For the performance of the project, the following companies and institutes have teamed in conformance with their corporate strategies and interests:
- GeoVille Environmental Services Sàrl (GeoVille), Luxembourg, (PRIME) - www.geoville.com
- Deutsches Zentrum für Luft- und Raumfahrt (DLR), Germany - www.dlr.de
- con terra GmbH, Germany - www.conterra.de
Partner background experiences encompass spatial data processing and analysis, renewable energies and IT solutions in the field of geodata processing (web mapping, Web-GIS).
Acknowledgement
We acknowledge the funding of the project "Demonstration project for the development of renewable energy potential maps for the West Balkan countries" by ESA within the EOMD VAE program (www.eomd.esa.int), project reference number 22338/09/I-EC.
