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Increasing the share of renewable energy has become one of the key actions Romania has assumed under the Europe 2020 strategy targets on climate change and energy (a.k.a. European 20-20-20 targets). Romania benefits from a wide variety of renewable energy sources (RES) -wind, solar, hydro, geothermal and biomass. Among the RES types, solar resources have started to significantly contribute to the electricity mix. Thus, under the rapid transformation and growth of the renewable energy sector, understanding the impacts of Photovoltaic (PV) parks is essential to avoid the potential negative consequences. Hence, the current study is seeking to assess the environmental and socioeconomic impacts of PV parks in Centre Development Region (CDR). The region is located in the central part of Romania covering 14.3% of the country's surface and holding nearly 12% of its population. It corresponds to the central and southern part of the Transylvanian Depression and the surrounding frame of the Carpathian Mountains. The evaluation relies on several environmental and socio-economic indicators. E.g. share of PV parks/land use category /main soil type; distance to forests, waters, Natura 2000; no. of jobs created during the construction/operation of the PV parks; the value of PV parks investment; the impact on the local budget. For the current assessment, 44 PV parks were identified and mapped covering a total area of 415 ha.

All forms of energy generation can have intensive or extensive land use requirements, causing habitat and biodiversity loss in sensitive and diverse ecosystems globally. With the rapid transformation and growth of the energy sector in countries worldwide, understanding the impacts of past practices and charting the trajectory of future development projects is imperative for preventing negative environmental consequences. This dissertation contributes modeling strategies for integrating environmental impacts in renewable energy planning processes and spatially-explicit empirical methods for identifying and quantifying land use and land cover impacts related to renewable energy development. To explore land use and energy conflicts in a jurisdiction that is in the midst of a largescale low-carbon energy transition, I ask the following: (1) is it possible to meet California's ambitious renewable energy targets without using high conservation-value land? (2) what are the system costs of low-impact renewable energy development? I find that while trade-offs between conservation value and renewable resource quality exist, restricting development to low-impact land is not only possible, but incurs only negligible economic cost increases. Given this possibility, I use California as a case study to identify decision-making opportunities in energy planning processes for integrating conservation and land use values and avoiding conservation-climate conflicts. Extending the spatial methods developed for California to countries in Africa that are planning renewable energy expansion, I ask, what is the potential for low-environmentalimpact, socially-responsible, and cost-effective development of wind and solar energy in emerging economies in Africa? Using a multi-criteria analysis approach, I find that "noregrets" options-specifically areas that are low-cost, low-environmental impact, and highly accessible-exist such that significant fractions of demand can be quickly served with lowimpact resources without large additional cost. Despite the magnitude and pace of hydropower expansion in highly biodiverse aquatic and terrestrial ecosystems in Southeast Asia, Africa, and Latin America, the potential indirect land use and land cover change resulting from hydropower development is poorly understood. To fill this gap, I ask, what are the indirect deforestation and land use impacts of utility-scale i To my teachers, advisers, and mentors "What I stand for is what I stand on"-Wendell Berry "Never lose a holy curiosity"-Albert Einstein ii Contents Contents ii List of Figures iv List of Tables vii List of Figures 2.1 Direct and total energy land use requirements for California.. .. .. .. .. .. 2.2 Renewable energy generation potential across environmental constraint scenarios. 2.3 Percentage overlap of multi-criteria, model-selected development areas between electricity generation technologies and environmental constraint scenarios for the High Renewable Energy (RE) and High CCS build-outs.. .. .. .. .. .. .. 2.4 Maps of renewable energy...

Infrastructure, particularly technical one, is basis of economic activities both in urban and rural areas. The Romanian sector of the Danube Valley covers a large area, in which the life of resident communities is shaped by the River (1,075 km long). At present, 266 local administrative units (LAU2) in the Romanian Danube Valley number 238 communes, 28 municipia and towns and a population of 1.7 million inhabitants. The study relies on the data provided by the National Institute of Statistics, the results of the Population and Housing Census (2011) and TEMPO Online Database (Internet 1). Hierarchizing LAU2 in terms of the technical-urbanistic infrastructure was made by the Hierarchical Ascending Classification (HAC). The aim was to group together territorial-administrative units by their parametric variables. There are many Danube Valley communities still unconnected to local drinking-water and sewerage systems, a restrictive factor in drawing potential investments into local economies. The study points out that the large Danubian port-cities also have the longest water and natural gas supply networks, as well as the greatest proportion of dwelling-houses connected to these systems. A fairly good situation have also some rural settlements lying close to big municipia or to tourist towns (in Danube Gorge and Danube Delta).