Effects of renewable energy resources on the landscape

Abstract

One of the most important prerequisites of the sustenance of modern societies is the safe energy supply. An energy supply system, which is currently based mainly on fossil energy resources cannot be maintained even in the medium-term, at least not longer than for a few decades. Therefore, the application of renewable energy resources will play a signifi - cant role in forming our energy future. Most of them except geothermal and tide energies, use directly or indirectly solar energy. In this paper, the direct use of solar energy, wind energy, biomass and hydropower will be discussed. It will be shown that the widespread application and the broad expansion of any of the renewable energy resources and the largescale production of renewable energies are always connected with serious environmental impacts, whichever of the resources is used. They all require a relatively large area for use in the case of producing a signifi cant amount of energy. Renewable energy production methods will be an important factor of landscape change, and will have a strong infl uence on landscape management. In this study, particularly, hydropower will be investigated. In the typical case of the Gabčikovo Hydropower Station on the Danube the infl uences on the landscape structure and functions will be demonstrated. It will be shown that intensive human use and alteration (river engineering, the constructions of dams and hydroelectric power plants) of riverine landscapes have led to enormous degradation.