Planning for Local and Regional Energy Strategies with the Ecological Footprint

Ecological footprinting is widely accepted as a tool for environmental education and public awareness raising. However, it is often argued that ecological footprints do not allow shaping of policies and programmes. Therefore, several methodological improvements have been made, for instance, in the energy sector, or similar approaches have been introduced which claim that ecological footprinting has been developed as a tool for decision-making. The aim of this paper is to identify the role of ecological footprinting in bottom-up decision-making for energy supplies on the local and regional level analysing a regional case study. From this analysis, it results that apart from awareness raising and public involvement in the starting phase of such a process, ecological footprints can be used as a tool for appraising environmental impacts of existing energy systems and for a pre-assessment of environmental impacts of visions and strategies in the energy sector in an early stage of the planning process.