Background: An increasing production of renewable energy requires planning strategies that are able to coordinate the higher-level energy goals with local-level land use interests. While the spatial scope of energy objectives is usually set up on a federal state or national scale, decisions to allocate and implement renewable energy sites are often taken on a municipal scale. This leads to a lack of regional coordination, as the task to achieve a balanced regional energy demand and renewable energy production cannot be solved by individual municipalities alone and calls for cooperation on a regional level. This paper focuses on a recently applied method to support decisions that are committed to empowering the production of renewable energy on a regional scale. In addition, it reflects the generic use of this method, which should be manageable and repeatable under the conditions of an input of only a few quantitative data. At the same time, it addresses the question of how planning decisions, both in spatial and energy planning, may be empowered.
Methods:The research team applied a cardboard games approach that required several steps of analysis. First, energy data and spatial attributes of different renewable energy sources were collected from reference projects and the literature. The end product was a catalogue of renewable energy generators, which also included the estimated energy output (kWh/a) and land consumption (m