Distributed renewable energy generation and landscape architecture: A critical review

Governments and utility organizations around the world have mandated and provided incentives for new distributed renewable energy generation (DREG) capacity, and market projections indicate strong growth in distributed renewable energy generation installations in the coming years. New distributed renewable energy generation utilities, by definition, will be primarily located in built environments near consumers; these utilities are often planned and designed by landscape architects, yet no evidence-based, distributed renewable energy generation research is explicitly done by landscape architects or recognizes the role landscape architects play in planning and designing these spaces. The research and analysis provided by this study indicates that distributed renewable energy generation lacks a strong foundation as an independent concept which could benefit from clear broad phraseology linked to organized sub-terms/phrases for specific forms of DREG, that there has been some research done on topics familiar to landscape architects, that more needs to be done to meet important research questions and recommendations already posed, and that landscape architects are positioned to contribute to future distributed renewable energy generation research.