Governing the Green Energy Transition through Transformative and Collaborative Planning – the Case of Burgenland’s Regional Concepts for Energy Development

The transition to climate neutrality, which attempts to accelerate renewable energy generation, requires trade-offs due to the diverse demands on land use. As a consequence, early consideration of potential conflicts and transparency on the selection of type and location of energy generation, storage and distribution is key. Due to our poly-crises, we urgently need to reflect not only the necessity to orientate towards climate-neutrality but also the need to promote species and biodiversity conservation at the same time. Particularly, relevant aspects for biodiversity such as the connectivity can only be sufficiently treated at supra-local planning levels, while other indicators deserve a detailed consideration at local level (tiering). The relevance to consider trade-offs and alternatives based on sufficient data and information by stakeholders becomes particularly evident at the regional level. The Austrian federal state Burgenland is often listed as a role model for energy transition at regional level and excellence in balancing trade-offs at earlier planning stages. Before starting with the first wind turbines in 1997, the regional self-supply share for electricity was at 1,5 %. Only 16 years later, in 2013 there was more electricity generated than used on an annual basis, evolving to up to 239 % in 2024. For 2030, the goal is to generate more clean energy (including energy for heat and mobility) than is used on an annual basis. This transition process is guided by a constantly evolving planning approach starting in 2002 which is strongly based on integrating diverse perspectives from multiple actors involved in planning. This paper aims to describe the formal and informal involvement of stakeholders together with the planning approach as well implications for the consideration of biodiversity and landscape aspects. As a preliminary study, it examines the extent to which the planning approach affects the quality of the basis for decision-making and conflict minimisation with focus on biodiversity and landscape. In this context we investigated whether this iterative and collaborative planning approach with direct interlinking of SEA with zoning planning leads to a more comprehensive consideration of decision-relevant data bases and also to greater acceptance of local decision makers and citizens. Based on case study research and document analysis, the paper highlights achievements of this planning approach and outlines points for improvement. Our investigations serve as a pre-study for the Biodiversa+ project BIOGAIN, which deals with transformation towards biodiversity net-gain in strategic spatial planning for renewable energy development through a strongly transdisciplinary research approach and investigating the role of novel AI supported data collection and analysis in diverse planning contexts.