Does rated visual landscape quality match visual features? An analysis for renewable energy landscapes

Abstract Finding the “right” sites for developing renewable energy systems (RES) is one of the major challenges in planning strategies for energy transitions. The visibility aspects of such infrastructure are important factors that explain local opposition. Classical visibility and viewshed analyses of RES disregard people’s perceptions and estimations of new infrastructure. To address this void, we demonstrate an approach that combines rated visual landscape qualities with measured visual features. In doing so, we established visual stimuli with systematically controlled visual impact scenarios featuring the use of renewables in different landscape types. The study investigated how ratings of landscape qualities are affected by landscape changes stemming from RES. We also identified measurable visual features that might help to operationalize landscape qualities. Finally, we intended to improve the understand of how rated landscape qualities lead to preferences for different RES visual impact scenarios. Our results showed that rated coherence is strongly influenced by renewable energy infrastructure, whereas complexity ratings are affected mainly by variations in landscape types. These findings let us to conclude that the visual understanding and visual connectedness between energy systems and surrounding landscapes are core drivers of people’s visual preferences for landscapes altered with RES. Considering landscape qualities within impact assessments of RES can augment our grasp of how the visual character of a landscape changes through renewable energy infrastructure.