SolarZukunft: Shaping Tomorrow’s Energy Landscapes by Bridging Social Acceptance with Innovation

Future renewable energy systems will noticeably change the appearance of our land and cityscapes. We predict a shift from predominantly invisible fossil fuel production infrastructures to one that is confronted and part of the everyday. These land-use changes present challenges which are met with adverse public discourse, related to visual, social and environmental impacts entwined with the social-cultural values citizens attach to places. In our project, we are exploring the future of renewable energy systems that transform our cities and countryside. Our interdisciplinary approach will explore the scientific innovations to develop camouflaged and coloured solar panel technology that blends seamlessly into local environments whilst maintaining similar energy efficiency. These discoveries will be integrated into our digital twin and augmented reality tools to support the visualization of energy scenarios and preferences. Our project objectives are to investigate: (1) how to develop coloured patterned PV panels that are camouflaged within their surroundings and yet maintain their energy yield ; (2); how to involve communities and stakeholders in the design of solar energy townscapes within the preconditional boundaries required to generate a certain amount of energy in different neighbourhoods. To achieve these objectives, we explore: (1) how to fabricate colour images with different resolutions using liquid crystals on PV panels with negligible performance loss; (2) how best to evaluate the scaled-up results directly with stakeholders and citizens. We will build geospatial models for different options of PV installations at the neighbourhood scale, which will be evaluated via city models / augmented reality technology with citizens and stakeholders (researchers, energy sector representatives, housing and development decision makers, and local planners) within our SolarZukunft Living Lab. To achieve our objectives we apply an embedded place-based theory with a social acceptance evaluation framework to assess which PV scenarios are preferred and spatially distributed in a neighbourhood. From our results, we will be able to inform spatial planning processes on the visual and social impact of the renewable energy transition and support community visioning for the future. Our research will give scientists, decision-makers and citizens better understanding of what the social, environmental and economic impacts on our urban and rural landscapes will be foreseen in a distributed PV energy transition. The geographical aspects of the project, will contribute a new tool and knowledge on the relationship between place attachment, the visual impact of solar energy transitions and the emerging solar energy landscapes.