selection of three pilot areas among the six case studies · 1.3) role and responsibilities of the...

Deliverable - 15th December 2016 Project Start: 15th December 2015

GRETA is co-financed by the European Regional Development Fund through the Interreg Alpine Space programme.

Send us an email at [email protected] and see more about GRETA at www.alpine-space.eu/projects/greta.

Selection of three pilot

areas among the six

case studies

1) Introduction

This deliverable describes why we identify three pilot areas, and the methodology used to select them

from among the six GRETA case studies. The target audience of this document is the Joint Secretary of

the Alpine Space program and the GRETA partners. The document also aims to clarify the different role

of GRETA case studies and pilot areas within WP5 activities.

1.1) The six case studies

The GRETA project has six case studies within the Alpine Space region, namely: District of Oberallgäu

in Germany, Parc de Beauges in France, Val D’Aosta Region in Italy, Davos Municipality in Switzerland,

Saalbach-Leogang tourist area in Austria, and Cerkno Municipality in Slovenia (see Figure 1).

The six case studies are used in the GRETA project to identify, verify and test possible regulation issues

and operative criteria, and to map the energy potential of Near Surface Geothermal Energy (NSGE).

The case studies that were identified have a wide range of contexts within the Alpine Space region to

highlight common issues and solutions and foster the use of best practices in using shallow geothermal

energy. WP5 aims to integrate the knowledge generated by the other GRETA WPs into the strategic

energy planning of the Alpine regions at local and regional scale.

mailto:[email protected]

http://www.alpine-space.eu/projects/greta



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[Title of the document]

GRETA is co-financed by the European Regional Development Fund through the Interreg Alpine Space programme. See more about GRETA at www.alpine-space.eu/projects/greta.

Figure 1 Map with the partners and six case study areas of the GRETA project.

1.2) Why three pilot areas?

The objective of WP5 is to define a methodology and a tool for integrating Near Surface Geothermal

Energy into the planning decision-making process of a certain area. To support effectively the pilot

areas in this process, we need to understand the local context, and to open a good communication link

between the stakeholders and WP activities. In particular, the following aspects must be clarified:

which are the main objectives of decision makers and public bodies? Which are their main priorities

and which are not? Build such a strong communication channel with all six areas does not seem feasible

within time and resource constraints of this Alpine Space project.

In WP5 it has been decided, as a first step, to focus the activities on the three areas, and as a second

step, to assess transferability of methodologies and tools developed in the WP. We will refer from now

on to these three case studies with the term “Pilot Areas”. The main reason to follow this approach is

to contain as much as possible the time and budget of WP5 activities, with the aim of preserving

transferability of outputs to the other Alpine regions.

1.3) Role and responsibilities of the three Pilot Areas

The three pilot areas must identify the priorities they foresee for the energetic and strategic

development of their area. Therefore, local stakeholders will be involved directly in the definition and

development of methodology, analyses and tools that are needed to integrate Near Surface

Geothermal Energy potential within the energy planning procedures and decision-making processes

of their territory. In order to maximize the outputs of WP5, we wanted to identify the three pilot areas

that have a highly suitable context to experiment/test and develop methodology and tools for the

integration of the shallow geothermal potential in their energetic and strategic development.




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1.4) Role and responsibilities of the three Case Studies

From the three case studies that were not analysed in detail, we expect feedback on the developed

methodology and tools, to understand the level of transferability of the methodology in their context.

The activities conducted with these case studies aim to highlight which are the main differences and

similarities with respect to the three pilot areas, and how this difference in the context should be

considered in integrating Near Surface Geothermal Energy potential for future development of their

territories. The case studies that will not be directly involved in the definition and development of

methodologies and tools can review the WP5 outputs, to increase the flexibility and transferability of

the results. After this revision process, the results of WP5 should be applicable to all the case studies,

with no or few changes/adaptations.

2) Methodology

This chapter describes the methodology, which has been shared and discussed with all GRETA partners,

to identify the three Pilot Areas that will allow optimal performance of the envisaged WP5 activities.

Together with the GRETA partners we (1) identified relevant criteria for evaluation of the case studies;

(2) used a weighting system to perform a multi-criteria analysis; (3) analysed the results; and (4)

verified whether the results obtained and the choice of criteria were consistent and robust, using

sensitivity analysis.

The following criteria were chosen as particularly relevant in performing the WP5 activities:

+ Data availability;

+ Partner commitment;

+ Stakeholder interest;

+ Resources, and

+ Transferability.

The selected criteria were publicly discussed in the GRETA mailing list of WP5 and during phone

conferences with the partners. Below in the text the different criteria are explained in detail, as well

as an evaluation of the multi-criteria analysis that was performed to identify the three pilot areas.

2.1) Data availability

Data in the project are used to estimate both the energy potential and the energy demand, and to

allow the elaboration of strategies and support tools for planners and decision makers. Therefore, this

point is crucial since the lack of data and information will affect directly the quality and reliability of

analyses and activities performed within WP5.

To assess the quality of the data available for each case study, the European Research Academy of

Bolzano (EURAC) contributed to the definition of the questionnaire prepared under Task 4.2,




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coordinated by the Politecnico of Torino (POLITO). This questionnaire was distributed to all

represented areas of the case study in the period from 25th of May 2016 to 24th of June 2016. The

questionnaires collected general information on the case study areas to better characterize the

context and the main figures, but a relevant part of the questionnaire was dedicated to clarification of

available data, their format, and the spatial and temporal resolution. The information is classified in

six main categories: geo-referenced data, land use and buildings data, climatic data, particular

conditions, energy data and energy planning information.

Each of these categories has been weighted regarding their level of impact on the WP5 activities.

2.2) Partner commitment

Although not easy to assess at this stage, partner commitment is also decisive, since lack of

commitment towards the project could hinder development of WP5 activities. Partners that are

responsible for the case studies must be active, interested, and should participate with the GRETA

activities. To assess this aspect, we used data concerning partner participation with the project and

WP meetings and phone conferences (see further details in section 3.2).

2.3) Stakeholder engagement

Stakeholders of the pilot areas must play an active role in the project, as the lack of inputs/ideas/wishes

makes it challenging to support them in the evaluation of Near Surface Geothermal Energy potential

within their strategic development options. To assess these criteria, we used the number of answers

received through a survey carried out by the Regional Environmental Agency of Val D’Aosta (ARPA

VdA) of all stakeholders in the six case studies. This parameter helped us roughly to estimate

stakeholders’ interest in NSGE potential and its development in their territory. Another evaluation

parameter that we used is the participation of the stakeholders at the Kick-off meeting in Munich in

October 2016, which highlighted a strong commitment among local stakeholders in the case studies.

2.4) Resources available per partner/case study

The budget that each partner allocated for WP5 is an indicator of interest in the WP5 activities, but it

is also a necessary prerequisite to carrying out activities within the project framework. We understand

that limiting evaluation of the budget can mislead this criterion, because during the writing phase the

activities and possible results of the WP5 were not so clear. For this reason, EURAC asked all partners

responsible for the case studies to estimate whether there are other resources available. For instance,

a local public body may be interested in developing the analysis to foster development of Near Surface

Geothermal Energy in its area and therefore may be available to fund some specific activity.

2.5) Transferability




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EURAC also proposed a further criterion, to use only in case of substantial parity of the results. The

idea is to look at the main features of the six case studies and identify which of the case studies are

the most representative of the Alpine Space region. To guarantee a broader transferability of the WP5

analyses and outputs we would like to select three pilot areas with different characteristics in terms

of:

+ Regulation on shallow geothermal energy;

+ Size/area;

+ Population;

+ Economy;

+ Geology;

+ Land-use;

+ Geomorphology (elevation, slope, etc.), and

+ Climatic conditions (temperature, solar radiation, etc.).

A higher diversity and heterogeneity between the three pilot areas will be considered as an added

value in case of substantial parity between case studies.

2.6) Scoring and weight criteria

For each of the presented criteria we computed the score. Not all criteria have the same level of

importance; therefore, we weighted criteria using weight values ranging from 0 to 5. Based on the

activities that are foreseen in WP5, EURAC as WP leader proposed a set of weights that have been

submitted to the consideration of partners.

2.7) Testing weight sensitivity

A further step to test how much the chosen set of weights can influence and affect the final selection

of the triplet with the pilot areas was done computing all possible weight combinations using a step

0.1; we verified how much the different set of weights can impact the final rank of the pilot areas.

3) Results and discussion

3.1) Data availability

The questionnaire elaborated in WP4 to collect the information on the availability of data in the six

case studies was used to assess and rank the case studies. The data available for each case study is

reported in Table 1; based on this raw information we elaborated and normalized the main score for

this criterion (see Table 2).




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Italy France Germany Slovenia Austria Switzerland

Valle d'AostaParc des

BaugesOberallgäu Cerkno Saalbach Davos

Region Regional ParkDistrict

(Province)1 Municipality

2

Municipalities

9

Municipalities

130,000 70,712 150,981 4,678 6,073 24,365

3,200 900 1,528 132 216 290

40.63 78.57 98.81 35.44 28.12 84.02

TOT

Municipalities71 63 28 1 2 9

< 1000 50 46 2 0 0 4

1-5 k 20 15 16 1 2 4

5-10 k 0 2 8 0 0 0

10-50 k 1 0 2 0 0 1

50-100 k 0 0 0 0 0 0

> 100 k 0 0 0 0 0 0

TOT

inhabitants130,000 70,712 150,981 4,678 6,073 24,365

< 1000 55,000 28,167 1,265 0 0 1,510

1-5 k 40,000 29,392 52,996 4,678 6,073 11,719

5-10 k 0 13,153 61,341 0 0 0

10-50 k 35,000 0 35,379 0 0 11,136

50-100 k 0 0 0 0 0 0

> 100 k 0 0 0 0 0 0

Agriculture 3.41 4.4 0.81 8.75 11.98 3.56

Industry 19.48 11.2 34.65 64.28 not available 16.14

Craft not available 16.8 23.91 0.13 19.00 not available

Commerce 11.20 19.8 2.56 19.83

Tourism 11.36 2.5 0.51 49.19

Service 54.55 45.4 16.73 23.77 not available

TOT employees 61,600 17,179 52,428 1,565 1,795 14,389

Agriculture 2,100 749 427 137 215 512

Industry 12,000 1,916 18,166 1,006 not available 2,323

Craft not available 2,893 12,533 2 341 not available

Commerce 6,900 3,393 40 356

Tourism 7,000 432 8 883

Service 33,600 7,796 8,769 372 not available

Agriculture 58.78 not available 74.00≈ 1.2 %

(national level)not available not available

Industry 967.09 not available 1,217.00 not available not available not available

Craft not available not available 703.00 not available not available not available

Commerce 297.59 not available not available not available

Tourism 302.87 not available not available not available

Service 2,531.73 not available 653.00 not available not available

Adm.

boundariesyes yes? yes yes no no

Main roads yes yes yes yes yes yes

Geological

mapsyes yes yes yes yes yes

Hydrogeologic

al mapsno no

yes (large

scale)

yes (no ground

water levels)

monitoring

data for 1 point

(hotel)

yes

Temperature,

gw velocitiesyes, no no no no no no

Land use (CLC) (CLC) yes yes no no

Buildings

destinationno no yes yes no no

Building year

constr.no no no yes no no

Buildings

volumeno no no yes no no

Building

energy

only

aggregatedno no partly no no

other - - ground <2m - - no

Economic

sectors

(number

employees) 12,53311,554

Country

Case study name

Administrative unit

Population

Area

Population density

Population

classes (no.

Municipalities)

Population

classes

(inhabitants)

Economic

sectors (% of

tot) 23.9180.30

Economic

sectors (GDP,

Mio. €)841.00

not available

Geo-

referenced

data

Land use and

buildings




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Table 1. Data availability per case study.

Italy France Germany Slovenia Austria Switzerland

Valle d'AostaParc des

BaugesOberallgäu Cerkno Saalbach Davos

Temperature yes ? yes yesYes (grid

@1000m)no

Rainfall yes ? yes yesYes (grid

@1000m)no

Snowfall yes ? yes yesYes (grid

@100m)no

Solar radiation yes ? yes yesYes (grid

@100m)no

Protected

areasyes, available yes, available yes, available yes, available yes, available yes, available

Landslides yes, availableyes, but rarely

availableyes, available yes, available

no (only

cadastre),

available

yes, available

Avalanches yes, availableyes, but rarely

availableyes, available not available yes, available yes, available

Aquifer

recharge -

WHPAs

yes, but not

availableyes, available yes, available yes, available yes, available yes, available

Flooding yes, availableyes, but rarely

availableyes, available yes, available yes, available yes, available

Erosion noyes, but rarely

availableno yes, available no no

Unstable

groundno

yes, but rarely

availableyes, available yes, available yes, available yes, available

Contaminated

soilyes, available yes, available

yes,

confidential

data

1 point no yes, available

Gas occurence no no no no no no

MWh/y per

energy vector

(gas…)

yes (2003)yes (2012-

2015)

yes (2004-

2014)yes no no

MWh/y per

sector

(agriculture..)

yesyes (2012-

2015)no yes no no

Cadaster of

GSHPs

work in

progressno

yes, but no

data on themyes yes no

Energy

produced by

GSHPs

work in

progressno no yes no no

MWh/year

local RE

production

only

hydropower

yes (2012-

2015)

yes (2004-

2014)yes no no

Energy plan? yes in progress

no, but

climate

protection

plan

yes asked yes

Approval 25/09/2014not yet

approved01/10/2015 2011 asked 2012

Objectives for

RESyes yes yes

yes, but not

targetsasked no

Objectives for

NSGEyes yes no

yes, but not

targetsasked no

Municipality

with SEAP1÷2 0 0 no 0 no

SEAP with

reference to

NSGE

no not available not available not available not available not available

Energy prices

databasenot available

yes, national

DByes yes yes no

Subsidiesyes, regional

and nationalyes yes yes no no

Costs of

installation of

GSHP

work in

progressno no no yes no

Public debates

on NSGEno yes (2014)

yes, about RES

(not GSHP)no only general no

Ongoing

public/

touristic GSHP

yes yes yes, a few no yes yes

Opposition to

energy plantsno no

yes, wind and

hydropowerno no no

Case study name

Particular

conditions (and

geo-

referenced

data

availability)

Energy (data

availability)

Climate data

Country




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Table 2: Assigned score, based on data in Table 1, of the data availability of each case study; in the last column are the

weights used to normalize the whole criteria.

For instance, for the Val D’Aosta case study, we considered a score of 3.5 over 5 regarding the

availability of geo-referenced data (70%). Then for each data point we associated a weight (from 0 to

5) based on the importance that the data has on the activities foreseen in WP5. Both the score for

each cluster of data per case study and the final weight that we used are shown in Table 2.

3.2) Partner commitment

To assign a score at the partners, we used the registered participation at project meetings and phone

conferences evaluating the commitment of all partners responsible for the case studies. The

involvement and commitment of all the partners is excellent; only the contribution of Switzerland’s

partner is lacking.

3.3) Stakeholder engagement

One of the parameters used to measure the interest of stakeholders on the topic is the number of

answers received from the questionnaire developed under the activity in Task 6.1. From the list of

private and public bodies that answered the questionnaire, we selected and counted only those

directly linked to the case study area, excluding all other stakeholders. The main figures of this analysis

are available in Table 3.

Table 3: Number of stakeholders acting in the case study that answered at the Questionnaire developed in Task 6.1.

The numbers are normalized based on the average value. In this case if the normalization is based on

the maximum value, since there is a strong difference between the Italian values and the others, the

result of the normalization would be quite flat and would not help to highlight the differences between

the case studies. Therefore, to better highlight the differences, we used the average value, putting

100% when the value was over the average.

Italy France Germany Slovenia Austria Switzerland Weight

Geo-referenced data 70.00% 60.00% 80.00% 80.00% 40.00% 60.00% 5.0

Land use and buildings 8.33% 0.00% 50.00% 75.00% 0.00% 0.00% 5.0

Climatic data 100.00% 50.00% 100.00% 100.00% 100.00% 0.00% 1.0

Particular conditions 83.33% 37.50% 85.71% 100.00% 100.00% 100.00% 4.0

Energy data 50.00% 60.00% 50.00% 100.00% 20.00% 0.00% 5.0

Energy plan 100.00% 50.00% 50.00% 100.00% 0.00% 100.00% 3.0

Answer from

stakeholders within

the case study

How many of this

stakeholders are

private?

How many

answer at the

questionnaire?

How many

private?

How many

public?

How many

association?

Italy 11 8 45 28 14 3

France 2 0 9 3 4 2

Germany 2 1 14 1 4 9

Slovenia 1 1 8 4 3 1

Austria 6 1 8 1 4 3

Switzerland 2 0 2 0 2 0




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Furthermore, the participation list of the observers/stakeholders that participated at the kick-off

meeting in Munich were also normalized (see Table 4).

Table 4: Number of observers and stakeholders that participated at the Kick-off in October.

3.4) Resources available per partner/case study

We did not receive any further availability of resources outside the assigned GRETA budget, therefore

this criterion was scored and normalized based on the budget assigned to the partner which will

directly follow the activities of the project in the case study.

3.5) Score

Based on the above results, we obtained the scores presented in Table 5. For each of the criteria,

EURAC assigned a weight and asked the partners whether they agreed with the chosen values, by email

and through a phone conference. The Partners did not suggest any changes to the values proposed by

EURAC. The weighted values were then used to normalize the score.

Table 5: Final score of the single criterion per country and the final weighted result in the last colourful line.

The three pilot areas with the highest scores are in the order:

+ Cerkno (Slovenia),

+ Oberallgäu (Germany) and

+ Val D’Aosta (Italy).

3.6) Check the sensitivity of the final rank from the criteria’s weight

number of observers

present at the kick-off

in Munich

number of observer of

the case study

Italy 0 0

France 1 1

Germany 4 4

Slovenia 3 2

Austria 1 1

Switzerland 0 0

Italy France Germany Slovenia Austria Switzerland Weight

Score data 66.27% 45.78% 71.94% 100.00% 38.55% 48.19% 5.0

Score Partner 100.00% 100.00% 100.00% 100.00% 100.00% 0.00% 4.0

Score for questionnaire 1 – normalized using average100.00% 50.00% 50.00% 25.00% 100.00% 50.00% 3.0

Score for kick-off 0.00% 25.00% 100.00% 50.00% 25.00% 0.00% 2.0

Budget & Resources [%] 40.91% 27.27% 28.79% 100.00% 10.61% 0.00% 4.0

Final weighted result 81.01% 63.59% 83.04% 100.00% 66.79% 26.51%




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Table 6 shows the number of weight combinations that generate a defined ranking result. More than

98% of all possible combinations of the criteria’s weight generate the ranking result: Cerkno,

Oberallgäu and Val D’Aosta.

Table 6: Number of possible weight combination values that define a certain ranking order.

Moreover, even the remaining second and third most probable options obtain always the same case

study ranking only with a different order.

Figure 1 shows the main patterns (due to the high number of points we randomly selected only 5% of

the all combinations) of the weights that can generate one or another solution.

Figure 2: Each graph shows the distribution of weights that return a certain triplet (e.g. Slovenia, Germany, Italy); the red

line represents the weight chosen with the GRETA partners. When the Kernel distribution is small, only a limited range of

the weight values can bring a certain result. For example, in the triplet Slovenia, Germany and Italy the weights ranges

from 0 to 5, instead for the triplet: Slovenia, Italy, Germany the weights are low, ranging only from 0 to 1, for all criteria

except resources. The values in the graph are selected randomly and represent 5% of the whole dataset.

sum percentage

Slovenia,Germany,Italy 3,416,097 98.20%

Germany,Slovenia,Italy 29,937 0.86%

Slovenia,Italy,Germany 10,631 0.31%

Slovenia,Germany,France 22,095 0.64%

Switzerland,Austria,Slovenia 1 0.00%

3,478,761




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4) Conclusion

After a process that involved many activities in other WPs, and which has seen direct and active

involvement of all partners in the discussion and definition of the entire decision process, the three

pilot areas that were chosen are:

+ Cerkno (Slovenia),

+ Oberallgäu (Germany) and

+ Val D’Aosta (Italy).

The result seems to be quite non-sensitive to the weights used for the criteria.




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