The availability of resources and areas for the construction of wind and photovoltaic plants – which are strategic for achieving the decarbonization targets of the new Energy and Climate Plan – plays an important role in resource management and related development scenarios.

Alongside traditional methodologies for the extraction and analysis of territorial data useful for RES management, the images acquired by Earth observation satellites are effectively used for the identification of specific elements in the territory and detailed thematic mapping. This work reports two satellite remote sensing applications for data extraction from medium spatial resolution images acquired by Sentinel-2 satellites, which are functional to the identification of areas and resources for the construction of new plants and the definition of wind and photovoltaic capacity allocation scenarios. As part of the research activities on the distribution of wind power capacity, it was necessary to define a rapid and extensive methodology to update the geodatabase of wind turbines installed on the national territory. To this end, image processing using supervised classifications and relationships between spectral bands made it possible to effectively locate wind turbines in regions characterized by a high number of wind power plants. Afterward, the localization of the turbines was completed by associating the main technical attributes with each plant. As regards the identification of the areas available for the installation of photovoltaic systems, image processing through supervised classification made it possible to discriminate between residential and industrial built surfaces. Positive results were obtained for the Abruzzo region, which was used to calibrate and validate the methodology, whereas the application to other regions, such as Lombardy whose buildings vector map does not have a classification, only provides a preliminary estimate which requires further refinements.

The results obtained from both applications showed that, although the methodology can be further refined, satellite images constitute a valid tool for obtaining input data to GIS models and applications for the territorial planning of RES.