Wind energy has a leading role in achieving a low-carbon or completely carbon-free energy sector in the near future. Scientific research on the site-selection aspects of onshore and offshore wind farms is of great importance, contributing to sustainable, technically and economically viable, and socially acceptable wind energy projects. This systematic review provides direct analysis and assessment of existing site-selection procedures and addresses a gap in knowledge in the onshore and offshore wind energy research field, identifying trends in the thematic modules of site-selection issues. Important insights and useful trends are highlighted in: (1) site-selection methodologies; (2) the type, number, and exclusion limits of exclusion criteria; (3) the type, number, importance, priority, and suitability classes of assessment criteria; (4) studies’ geographic locations; (5) spatial planning scales; (6) wind resource analysis; (7) sensitivity analysis; (8) participatory planning approaches, groups, and contributions; (9) laws, regulations, and policies related to wind farm siting; (10) suitability index classifications (i.e., linguistic and numeric); and (11) micro-siting configuration of wind turbines. Identified insights and trends could motivate the conduction of updated site-selection analyses on onshore and offshore wind energy research, addressing the determined gaps and enhancing global siting implementations.

In this work, an innovative sustainable spatial energy planning framework is developed on national scale for identifying and prioritizing appropriate, technically and economically feasible, environmentally sustainable as well as socially acceptable sites for the siting of large-scale onshore Wind Farms (WFs) and Photovoltaic Farms (PVFs) in Israel. The proposed holistic framework consists of distinctive steps allocated in two successive modules (the Planning and the Field Investigation module), and it covers all relevant dimensions of a sustainable siting analysis (economic, social, and environmental). It advances a collaborative and participatory planning approach by combining spatial planning tools (Geographic Information Systems (GIS)) and multi-criteria decision-making methods (e.g., Analytical Hierarchy Process (AHP)) with versatile participatory planning techniques in order to consider the opinion of three different participatory groups (public, experts, and renewable energy planners) within the site-selection processes. Moreover, it facilitates verification of GIS results by conducting appropriate field observations. Sites of high suitability, accepted by all participatory groups and field verified, form the final outcome of the proposed framework. The results illustrate the existence of high suitable sites for large-scale WFs’ and PVFs’ siting and, thus, the potential deployment of such projects towards the fulfillment of the Israeli energy targets in the near future.

In the present article, a new methodological framework for the efficient and sustainable exploitation of offshore wind potential was developed. The proposed integrated strategic plan was implemented for the first time at national spatial planning scale in Greece. The methodological approach is performed through geographical information systems (GIS) and Microsoft Project Server Software and includes five distinct stages: (i) definition of vision/mission, (ii) identification of appropriate areas for offshore wind farms’ (OWFs) siting, (iii) determination of the OWFs’ layout, (iv) calculation of the OWFs’ (projects) total investment cost and, finally, (v) portfolio analysis. The final outcome of the proposed strategic planning is the prioritization of the proposed sixteen offshore wind projects based on their strategic value, as well as the estimation of the overall investment cost of the entire portfolio. High economic, socio-political and environmental benefits could be achieved through the implementation of only 60% of the total investment capital of the proposed strategic plan.

In the present paper, we introduce a decision-support framework to (a) classify and prioritize the municipalities of a country based on their suitability to host PV energy projects and (b) pinpoint and evaluate suitable technically and economically viable, as well as environmentally and socially sustainable, sites for PV installation in the most suitable municipalities of a country. The proposed framework is applied in Portugal. It consists of two distinctive stages: ‘Energy Roadmap for PV Deployment’ and ‘PV Site-Selection Analysis and Assessment’. In the first stage, the most and least suitable municipalities for PV deployment in Portugal are identified by analyzing important environmental and technoeconomic PV siting criteria in GIS and applying the TOPSIS method. In the second stage, an integrated PV site-selection assessment is conducted in the Portuguese municipality with the highest suitability index for PV installations. This is achieved by combining a proper GIS siting model with various multicriteria decision-making methods, such as ENTROPY, AHP and TOPSIS. The results illustrate the suitability of numerous municipalities in the country for PV deployment and verify the excellent suitability of the Municipality of Mértola for PV installations. In conclusion, a PV energy roadmap for Portugal is formulated, contributing to national energy autonomy.