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This paper discusses the future challenges of strategic spatial planning in Europe in the coming decades. The paper argues that one of the core challenges for strategic spatial planning is to regain its political legitimacy. Strategic spatial planning has increasingly lost its political support after the global financial crisis in 2007–2008 and a decade of austerity policies. Strategic spatial planning must make itself relevant again by addressing the most prominent challenges for contemporary urban areas, such as the current energy crisis. The energy crisis has demonstrated the need for an even faster transition to renewable energy sources, which requires large areas for energy infrastructures on land. The paper argues that strategic spatial planning could play an important future role in supporting the sustainable energy transition by identifying appropriate spaces of production and building support for such production facilities among local communities. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Recently, challenge-oriented innovation policy has become increasingly popular in political and scientific discussions. However, the extent to which such a challenge-based thinking has entered regional policy making is relatively unclear. This paper examines the scope of the regional level in promoting challenge-based innovation, focusing on the recent renewable energy innovation policy in Schleswig-Holstein, Germany. The results show that while regional innovation policy in Schleswig-Holstein aims to address several structural and transformational systemic failures, many other problems and challenges remain, as they are beyond the capacity of a single region to address. Based on this analysis, we draw four conclusions. First, similar to many other structurally weak regions, policymakers in Schleswig-Holstein are struggling with some of the same key challenges that the policy was originally designed to address. Second, multi-scalar governance and inter-scalar coordination are essential for managing regional sustainability transitions. Third, challenge-driven innovation policy is an extension of, rather than a replacement for, conventional regional innovation policy. Finally, environmental and economic goals should be well balanced in challenge-driven regional innovation policy design. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Research on the Geography of Sustainability Transitions (GOST) has enhanced our understanding in how place-based factors condition sustainability transitions. Its emphasis on the geography of niche development, however, neglects regime-level responses to regional sustainably transitions imperatives. Given the urgency of sustainability transitions, recent sustainability transitions research has emphasized an active destabilization and/or phase-out of incumbent carbon-intensive industries. However, this poses normative and practical challenges for regions heavily dependent in these sectors. Here the challenge is how to ensure an inclusive transition. This paper contributes to GOST by focusing on distributional and procedural dimensions of policy mixes, relying on just transition and institutionalist literature. Our longitudinal case study of two Norwegian oil-dependent regions, Stord and Verdal identifies phases separated by critical junctures, with different policy mixes. Underpinned by the Norwegian tripartite cooperation model, the multi-scalar policy mixes in the regions has focused on the sector's decarbonization, rather than its phase-out, while developing renewable energy sectors through technology-push. Supporting short term business as usual, this provides the industry time to prepare for emerging renewable technologies and reducing negative impacts of transitions. We suggest that just sustainable development of such regions requires coherent multi-scalar policy mixes, and legitimacy and participation among key actors. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In land-use planning processes there often exists a tension between, on the one hand, making efforts to increase the democratic legitimacy of the process and, on the other, ensuring efficiency in the procedures. This is not least relevant in the case of large-scale wind power where development decisions balance between the need to safe-guard local self-determination and the urgency of mitigating climate change. This paper investigates how the issue of legitimacy versus efficiency is managed within the national planning systems of Finland, Norway and Sweden when faced with the expansion of wind power and how the national strategies for wind power planning are perceived by different stakeholders. As the EU Renewable Energy Directives set the conditions for national policy in the field, the empirical work starts with an examination of these documents before moving on to a comparison of the national planning and permitting processes. The results show that the development of wind power has been moving planning procedures away from more inclusive planning methods in favour of more top-down and streamlined ones. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

Biogas is a process for producing renewable energy, which has recently gained interest in contributing to a territorial strategy for the deployment of the circular economy. The projects, which are collective in nature, bring together multiple actors or local stakeholders from a wide variety of backgrounds. The article proposes to analyze the territorial governance of this type of project by studying the relations of synergy and cooperation between stakeholders in the case study of the Syndicat Mixte du Point Fort (SMPF) of Cavigny (France). The results of the analysis of interaction and coordination networks show that local stakeholders develop dense relational networks that vary throughout the project. This high density is indicative of the importance of group cohesion in interactions, which is necessary to create a framework of trust and consultation that favours the success of territorial renewable energy projects. The measure of centrality of the interacting actors shows that the project leader (SMPF) plays the role of assembler and facilitator of the interaction networks facilitating the sharing of flows, knowledge, and collective learning. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

From a theoretical perspective, it is possible to enhance the innovation of firms and institutions by combining the analytic (scientific) knowledge base of research and development (R&D) institutions with the synthetic (practical) knowledge base of industries. Such combinations of knowledge are also believed to support regional development. One such initiative to bridge knowledge from the R&D sector and industry is the Norwegian Centre for Offshore Wind Energy (NORCOWE). However, as our case study shows, it is hard to bridge knowledge from these two partner groups. We found that this is mainly because of differences in the partners' timelines (long versus short), their attitudes toward knowledge (research based versus experience based), application of the knowledge (knowledge per se versus commercialization), and organizational dimensions (linear/closed process versus interactive/open process). These differences show that the knowledge bases of these two groups may not just be different; they can also be seen as discrepant. We also argue that the NORCOWE initiative is influenced by a “policy push” logic. This implies that the initiative was not properly embedded in the industrial or R&D institutions before being launched, but was instead driven by a political will to promote the development of a new renewable energy source. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]