Spatial Aspects of Environmental Impact of Power Plants

Strategic Environmental Assessment (SEA) is one of the key instruments for implementing sustainable development strategies in planning in general, namely for analysing and assessing the spatial development concepts, in this case in the field of energy and planning of power plants. The SEA in energy sector planning has become a tool for considering the benefits and consequences of the proposed changes in space, also taking into account the capacity of space to sustain the implementation of the planned activities. This chapter examines the multi-criteria evaluation (MCE) method for carrying out an SEA for the power plants in Energy Sector Development Strategy of the Republic of Serbia (case study). The MCE method has found its use in the analysis and assessment of the energy sector spatial impacts on the environment and elements of sustainable development and, in this context, also considering the importance of impacts, spatial dispersion of impacts, their probability and frequency of occurrence, along with the elaboration of the obtained results in a specific, simple and unambiguous way. The chapter focuses on the consideration of aspects of environmental impact of all kinds of power plants, without taking into account the details regarding other aspects of energy sector development that are dealt with in the case study.