Review Essay. Energy landscape research – Lessons from Southern Europe?

The Moravian Geographical Reports does not often publish Book Reviews (let alone essays), but this new book on “Renewable Energies and European Landscapes”¹ is a well-deserved exception to the rule! It is an edited collection of essays gathered together by Frolova (University of Granada, Spain), Prados (University of Sevilla, Spain) and Nadaï (Centre International de Recherche sur l’Environnement et le Développement: CIRED -CNRS, France), based on a series of Workshops organised under the auspices of several agencies (from both Spain and France) in the period from 2007 to the present. In particular, the Spanish Network on Renewable Energies and Landscape (RESERP) began in 2010, with an emphasis on wind and solar power. Published by a well-respected agency, the question can be clearly stated at the outset: Do the editors fulfil their ambitious agenda of providing case studies of value for the emerging research on landscapes of renewable energies of Europe, writ large, i.e. beyond the ‘Southern European’ environment? Or: what is the ‘added value’ of the Southern European cases?