Renewable energy production plays an important role in northern Germany. In addition to substantial energy production from wind turbines, electricity generation from biomass has become a vital source of income in rural areas of Germany’s northern federal states. The use of renewables is still expanding, with a variety of associated challenges for land use. Is renewable energy production a blessing or a curse? How does the infrastructure for energy production and transport to the areas with high demand have to be upgraded to allow for a further increase of the share of renewables in Germany? Can spatial planning of the renewable energy sector be improved using simulation models? These are some issues that were addressed during this second conference focused on energy landscapes in northern Germany,1 which took place at the University of Hamburg on 17 July 2017. This conference was a follow-up to an earlier conference on energy revolution and space that took place in 2016. While the initial event mainly looked at the energy transition in Germany, with a particular emphasis on land-use issues and challenges with regard to the spatial requirements of energy production in Germany, the second conference focused especially on the aspects of spatial modeling of renewable resources. Modeling has become a fundamental tool in the planning process of the energy transition to identify and remediate possible local land-use conflicts associated with renewables as they require substantially more space than fossil resources.
Almost 160 participants from various scientific disciplines, such as meteorology and other natural sciences, geography, sociology, engineering, and economics, as well as participants from governmental and nongovernmental organizations, met to address these questions. Nine presentations and a concluding panel allowed for in-depth discussions of the socioeconomic aspects of renewable energies, of methods and models of renewable energy production, and of the boundary conditions that are necessary for a successful further development of renewable energy production.