Renewable Energy: A Crash Course for Landscape Architects

Looking to increase your understanding of renewable energy technologies? Tired of plunking down solar panels in your plans without understanding the basics behind them? The renewable energy transition is happening at a breakneck speed, and it offers a host of opportunities for new and impactful projects and novel collaborations for landscape architects and designers.

Landscape architects most often engage with renewables through designing demonstration projects, concealing energy infrastructure with vegetation screening, and conducting visual impact assessments. Landscape architects are sometimes even hired by communities to combat potential energy projects. But what if we could do more? In collaboration with energy professionals, engineers, and beyond, landscape architects have the potential to apply their skills to generate environmental, social, and economic value beyond just energy generation for the communities that are receiving renewable energy investment and projects.

In this webinar, three interdisciplinary panelists working in or near the energy sector discuss three leading renewable energy technologies—solar, distributed wind, and geothermal—and shed light on where and how these technologies are deployed, including spatial questions and opportunities for designers. In the context of new public funding as well as private momentum behind energy projects, panelists will also have a speculative, cross-disciplinary conversation about how landscape architects can play a critical role in the energy transition.

PANELISTS
Gabe Landes, Director of Engineering, Renewable Properties
Elisabet Metcalfe, Physical Scientist, U.S. Department of Energy
Danielle Preziuso, Socio-Technical Systems Engineer, Pacific Northwest National Laboratory

MODERATOR
Nicholas Pevzner, Assistant Professor, University of Pennsylvania Weitzman School of Design