Poster pitch at the 1st Symposium of the Energy Research Networks

In the recent past, many laboriously prepared regional plans were stopped in court, which temporarily paralysed the entire wind power development. How can we get the stakeholders to work together better? In the "EmPowerPlan" project, we are testing new participatory planning tools with a planning community to reduce lawsuits.  

In the so-called regional planning, mayors, municipal and district councillors identify suitable locations for the construction of wind farms and, increasingly, ground-mounted PV. This naturally raises questions about energy consumption and generation, possible options and acceptance. The results of regional energy and climate protection concepts are relevant. Unfortunately, these are static and not transparent. Climate protection managers try to compare current questions with these static results: difficult.  

The aim of "EmPowerPlan" is to use transparent dynamic energy modelling in a practical region for regional planning. In this way, a common plan is created. This bottom-up plan is compared with national plans: The contribution of the planning region is also discussed in comparison with other regions. 

A software solution alone is not enough, which is why the cooperation between planning and system analysis is professionally moderated and accompanied by social science. User-friendliness, coordinated work processes and the involvement of other social actors, e.g. from regional nature conservation, are further key points in the project: What actually empowers planning? Numerous other planning communities also want to know this.