Energy transition : how to improve urban landscapes

In ear­ly July, the 2025 report from the High Coun­cil for Cli­mate¹ was sca­thing : “At a time when cli­mate action is being deprio­ri­ti­sed and the impacts of cli­mate change are get­ting worse, the High Coun­cil for Cli­mate calls for a revi­val of cli­mate action in France.” Ener­gy pro­duc­tion accounts for more than a quar­ter of France’s total car­bon foot­print and pha­sing out fos­sil fuels is essen­tial. The Land­scape and Ener­gy Chair at the École Natio­nale Supé­rieure de Pay­sage is deve­lo­ping dif­ferent wor­king methods to pro­mote the inte­gra­tion of rene­wables across the country.

Ber­trand Fol­léa. I don’t like this idea of “accep­ta­bi­li­ty”. Our goal is to get people and deve­lo­pers on board with an ener­gy tran­si­tion that’s actual­ly desi­rable. Ins­tead of just focu­sing on land use plan­ning, we sug­gest taking a more pro­gres­sive approach to the land­scape. We can’t just think of the land­scape as decorative.

Some people pro­pa­gate the myth that the land­scape is unchan­ging and must be pro­tec­ted from rene­wable ener­gies. This is unrea­lis­tic : our land­scape is constant­ly chan­ging, and not always for the bet­ter. Agro-indus­trial deve­lop­ment and urban sprawl have dis­rup­ted our living envi­ron­ments. This is due to cheap, power­ful fos­sil fuels, which have cau­sed pro­blems and envi­ron­men­tal damage. This deve­lop­ment is not sus­tai­nable in terms of bio­di­ver­si­ty, cli­mate, health or social cohe­sion. It the­re­fore makes no sense to want to “pro­tect the pic­ture postcard”.

The land­scape approach is based on five principles :

1. take into account the sen­si­tive nature of a popu­la­tion’s rela­tion­ship with its local environment ;
2. consi­der all living things, making a dis­tinc­tion bet­ween humans from non-humans ;
3. take a cross-dis­ci­pli­na­ry approach, because eve­ryone contri­butes to the landscape ;
4. adopt a col­la­bo­ra­tive approach, because each per­son is an expert on their own landscape ;
5. be crea­tive and ope­ra­tio­nal, moving away from dog­ma­tic or ideo­lo­gi­cal positions.

These condi­tions are neces­sa­ry for rene­wable ener­gies to make sense in rela­tion to living envi­ron­ments. We are rever­sing the logic : ins­tead of put­ting the land­scape at the ser­vice of ener­gy, we are put­ting ener­gy at the ser­vice of the land­scape. It is a prac­ti­cal and ope­ra­tio­nal approach.

The areas around cities have been dama­ged because of our use of fos­sil fuels. They are now filled with busi­ness parks and car parks, drai­ning city centres of their shops. The ener­gy tran­si­tion is not just about ins­tal­ling solar panels on roofs and car parks. The trans­for­ma­tion pro­cess must aim to improve the qua­li­ty of the land­scape and urban envi­ron­ment. Pho­to­vol­taic shade struc­tures on car parks pro­vide an oppor­tu­ni­ty to par­tial­ly demi­ne­ra­lise them, res­tore vege­ta­ted sur­faces that allow water to infil­trate, plant a few more plea­sant and cooler shade trees, and give bio­di­ver­si­ty a chance to rede­ve­lop. This is how the tran­si­tion will become more desirable.

Ano­ther example is pho­to­vol­taic panels on roofs. It is pos­sible to adopt a set of com­mon rules to create a contem­po­ra­ry and control­led roof­scape. In Rosans, in the Hautes-Alpes region, the Cen­trales Vil­la­geoises (local, citi­zen-led com­pa­nies that run pro­jects to pro­mote the ener­gy tran­si­tion, based on a local approach) has drawn up land­scape and archi­tec­tu­ral recom­men­da­tions that guide pho­to­vol­taic deve­lop­ment. This leads to a more attrac­tive roofscape.

These approaches have not yet been wide­ly adop­ted. We lack a culture of land­scape desi­gn and remain stuck in the iner­tia of land use plan­ning logic, which reduces the ener­gy tran­si­tion to sim­ply adding new equip­ment to exis­ting infrastructure.

The Vosges depart­ment is a pio­neer in this field, with land­scape plans having been drawn up as ear­ly as the 1980s and 1990s. Since then, the Bruche Val­ley, Saint-Ama­rin Val­ley and Hautes Vosges regions have been wor­king conti­nuous­ly to trans­form the living envi­ron­ment through land­scape. More recent­ly, the cen­tral Vosges region has incor­po­ra­ted this concept into a land­scape plan for ener­gy and eco­lo­gi­cal tran­si­tion cove­ring more than 150 muni­ci­pa­li­ties. ADEME pro­du­ced its first metho­do­lo­gi­cal guide² on the sub­ject last April.

We are no lon­ger used to seeing ener­gy pro­duc­tion in the land­scape. Cas­si­ni’s 18th-cen­tu­ry maps show mil­ls eve­ryw­here. But at the end of the Second World War, we mas­si­ve­ly increa­sed the use of cheap ener­gy, i.e. fos­sil fuels. This led to the abs­trac­tion of ener­gy pro­duc­tion, extrac­ted out­side our bor­ders or concen­tra­ted in a few nuclear power plants. When ener­gy retur­ned to our living envi­ron­ment in the ear­ly 2000s in the form of wind tur­bines, there was no real divide bet­ween those for and against. But we fai­led to esta­blish a clear fra­me­work for discussion.

In other words, public poli­cy has fai­led and eve­ry­thing has been done to ensure that this turns into a conflict. No inter-muni­ci­pal plan­ning – which is most condu­cive to concrete plan­ning – has been imple­men­ted. Ins­tead, wind farm pro­jects on a plot-by-plot basis have flou­ri­shed, even though the ins­tal­la­tions affect an entire region. The conflict is now a poli­ti­cal one : some are fuel­ling extreme pola­ri­sa­tion. Yet we are major ener­gy consu­mers, and the ener­gy mix is the only rea­lis­tic option.

Esta­bli­shed in 2015 at the École Natio­nale Supé­rieure de Pay­sage de Ver­sailles by Ségo­lène Royal, the then Minis­ter for the Envi­ron­ment, the Chair pro­motes inter­con­nec­tion bet­ween the worlds of ener­gy and land­scape. We star­ted from the idea that brin­ging these two worlds toge­ther would be more effec­tive for both the ener­gy tran­si­tion and land­scape qua­li­ty. The Chair has four areas of focus : trai­ning, research, crea­tion and dis­se­mi­na­tion of know­ledge. It has been expe­ri­men­ting with these issues with RTE, ADEME, local autho­ri­ties and deve­lo­pers for 10 years.

Interview by Anaïs Marechal