RSE publishes a study proposing an innovative methodology for the parametric estimation of the economic value attributed to the Italian landscape, applicable to the assessment of landscape-related external costs associated with renewable energy plants.

The article is the result of work carried out within the framework of system research by Andrea Molocchi, Giulio Mela, Giulia Ronchetti e Pierpaolo Girardi from the Sustainable Development and Energy Sources Department of RSE, in collaboration with the Department of Land, Environment, Agriculture and Forestry of the University of Padua – Professors Tiziano Tempesta and Daniel Vecchiato.

The main innovation of the methodology lies in estimating the economic value of landscape-related ecosystem services in Italy as a function of key landscape attributes, enabling its application within a GIS environment to assess the landscape costs of renewable energy installations that generate large-scale visual intrusion (wind farms and utility-scale photovoltaic plants), located in different landscape contexts. When integrated with national landscape mapping and classifications, it allows for localized assessments using homogeneous criteria at the national level. The key message is that integrating economic valuation with spatial analysis of large-scale renewable energy installations can support energy and land-use planning that is consistent with population preferences and welfare economics.

Highlights:

• innovative method to quantify landscape-related costs of renewable energy installations through parametric valuation, supporting planning and siting decisions
• discrete choice experiment, based on a sample survey of about 2,300 respondents, reveals Italians’ preferences for key landscape attributes
• estimation of 50 willingness-to-pay values for landscape ecosystem services, mapped across the entire national territory
• total value of landscape ecosystem services in Italy estimated at approximately €1.25 billion per year
• case studies: the external cost of the photovoltaic case is lower than that of the wind farm, both in absolute terms (€106,000 per year versus €232,000 per year) and relative to annual energy production (€1.11/MWh versus €1.34/MWh)