INENCO   05446
INSTITUTO DE INVESTIGACIONES EN ENERGIA NO CONVENCIONAL
Unidad Ejecutora - UE
capítulos de libros
Título:
Energy and Territory. Toward Sustainable Integrated Scenarios
Autor/es:
S. BELMONTE; J.G. VIRAMONTE; NUÑEZ V.; J. FRANCO
Libro:
Handbook of Sustainable Energy.
Editorial:
Nova Science Publishers
Referencias:
Año: 2011; p. 443 - 465
Resumen:
Numerous
paradigms intermingle in the traditional approach to environmental problems.
The notions of sustainability,
development quality of life, climate change and energy crisis are
discussed in spheres of science and used in political spaces to pose
desirable and ideal territorial scenes. Many times, however, these approaches
remain conceptual and opportunistic. Decision-making often responds to
sectorial interests, merely economic criteria or chancy conditions, without
assessing the environments aptitudes or the impact that the developed
activities will have on the environment and on society as a whole.
In
this context, land use planning (LUP) processes come up as an indispensable
conduction tool for change mobilization (understood as an improvement process
of the current conditions) and the construction of more sustainable scenarios.
Energy
matters fit into this model as key elements and they are essential for the
territory. Energy, with multiple connotations, has accompanied the various
schools of thought and scientific and historic praxis. Thereby, energy appears
as the common factor linking the organic plants and animals- with the
inorganic world inert environment- (Sachs, 1996) in the positivist dimension
of ecology. However, energy becomes the development engine beyond its vital
recognition in ecosystem functionality (Rosnay, 1977). Indisputably, economic
growth, intensive production processes and technological development entail
high environmental and energy consumption costs. Guimaraes (1998) explains: the technological expressions of the great
cycle that started nine thousand years ago reveal that despite the growing
technological sophistication of the successive human civilizations, we use
growing vast amounts of energy and with matching tremendous inefficiency levels
(i.e. with more entropy). In times of shortage (Esteva, 1996 in Sachs,
1996), the exhaustible condition of
the currently used main energy sources is the third element. Fourth and last, newer sustainability
guidelines transcend the stationary entropic view of energy and restore its
sense of existence: energy is
essential for social and economical development and for a better quality of
life
all sources of energy must be utilized in a way that respects the
atmosphere, human health and the environment (Agenda 21, chapter 9 in
Sabsay et al., 2008).
These
four approaches allow to link the concept of energy with environment and
territory, in its most primitive consequences: constant flow which supports and
forms part of the systems, impact and environmental impoverishment source,
scarce non renewable resource in its current tendencies and exploitations,
need and potential for the improvement of peoples quality of life.