Land use planning and renewable energy

Abstract

This thesis examines how land use planning can be used to promote and regulate the use of renewable energy sources, namely wind and solar energy. Malta is fully dependent on fossil fuels since it does not exploit those forms of energy directly available from nature. This lack of resource use is now being tackled by the initiative taken by the Malta Resources Authority to start exploring the possibility of using renewable energy sources on a significant scale. However, for such an initiative to succeed, both national energy policies and land use planning must be co-ordinated together. This thesis examines the solar and wind technology available, and the how European countries are using their land use planning to apply such technology. The thesis also analyses the opinion of a number of Maltese experts in the field of energy. In the final part, the thesis presents a number of proposals on how renewable energy should be promoted and regulated by means of land use planning and national energy policies.