Impacts of global change on the landscape: the energy transition in Spain: renewable energies and landscape.The view from Spanish Geography

Abstract

Electricity generation from renewable sources is one of the manifestations of the energy transition in Spain that has greatest impact in spatial and landscape terms. Despite this, the change towards a sustainable electricity production model, which allows more people to access energy and limits dependence on fossil fuels, is being marred by a lack of planning, social debate and citizen participation. This chapter analyses the technical dimensions of the change in the production model and its spatial imprint, and the different ways in which Spanish geographers have approached this question. It concludes with some reflections on the enormous challenge facing our discipline today, namely to demonstrate its capacity to provide useful responses to one of the problems of most interest to society.