Energy planning using strategicenvironmental assessment : – exploring new tools in a Swedish municipality

Development of local energy systems, i.e. supply, distributionand use of energy in a municipality, is crucial for overallenvironmental performance of national energy systems. Itfollows that availability and effectiveness of instruments tocontrol this development are of great interest. For local authorities,energy planning may be such an instrument.Swedish legislation mandates each local authority to issue aplan for all supply and use of energy. In accordance with theEU directive 2001/42/EC, legislation now also requires thatsuch plans include environmental assessment. This is oftenreferred to as strategic environmental assessment (SEA). Anongoing research project is reported where tools for SEA areimplemented and evaluated in municipal energy planning.The hypothesis is that such tools will improve the planningprocess, compared with current practice, and subsequentlythe energy plan in terms of its ability to direct the developmentof local energy systems towards less environmentalimpact. This development includes both increased energyefficiency and use of renewable energy sources. A planningprocess based on earlier studies of energy planning, on theEU-directive, and on earlier SEA processes is proposed andimplemented in a Swedish municipality. Several tools areprovided, such as, scenario analysis, environmental life cycleanalysis, and public participation in the form of citizen panels.The main research question that will eventually be analysedby evaluating the process and its outcome is: “Does the use of SEA tools lead to improved energy planning froman environmental point of view?