RESEARCH ARTICLE: The Notion of Landscape Acceptability as a Potential Key Factor in a New Integrated Approach to Energy-Landscape Policy.

Since the beginning of the process aimed at achieving a shared European energy policy, various problems related to land use conflicts in agricultural contexts affected by large-scale green energy power plants have emerged within European countries as a major topic of national and local public debate. The examination and comparison of the relationships between current energy policies and the transformational processes of contemporary rural landscapes in two European regional contexts—the Beauce Plateau in France and the Alta Murgia region in Italy—suggests that a more transversal conception of both green energy and landscape policy may be needed. A hypothesis of working toward a new integrated approach to green energy and landscape policies emerges from the study, in addition to the potential to serve as the foundation for a set of landscape acceptability criteria for managing energy projects.Environmental Practice 15:5–18 (2013) [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]