Regional energy planning through SWOT analysis and strategic planning tools.: Impact on renewables development

Strategic planning processes, which are commonly used as a tool for region development and territorial structuring, can be harnessed by politicians and public administrations, at the local level, to redesign the regional energy system and encourage renewable energy development and environmental preservation. In this sense, the province of Jaén, a southern Spanish region whose economy is mainly based on olive agriculture, has carried out its strategic plan aiming at a major socioeconomic development. Under the leadership of the provincial government and the University of Jaén, main provincial institutions joined to propose the elaboration of a participatory strategic plan for the whole province. Here, the elaboration of the energy part of the plan, which was directly focused on the exploitation of renewable resources, mainly solar and biomass energy, and which highlights the effectiveness of techniques from business management applied to a sustainable energy model design is presented. Renewable Energy development during the first years of plan execution is presented, and the impact of additional issues is discussed. It is concluded that, although multicriteria decision-making technologies (MCDA) are extensively used in energy planning, a different approach can be utilized to incorporate techniques from strategic analysis. Furthermore, SWOT (strengths, weaknesses, opportunities and threats) analysis has proved to be an effective tool and has constituted a suitable baseline to diagnose current problems and to sketch future action lines.