روش های ارزیابی زیست محیطی استراتژیک ـــ برنامه های کاربردی در بخش انرژی

Strategic Environmental Assessment (SEA) is a procedural tool and within the framework of SEA, several different types of analytical tools can be used in the assessment. Several analytical tools are presented and their relation to SEA is discussed including methods for future studies, Life Cycle Assessment, Risk Assessment, Economic Valuation and Multi-Attribute Approaches. A framework for the integration of some analytical tools in the SEA process is suggested. It is noted that the available analytical tools primarily cover some types of environmental impacts related to emissions of pollutants. Tools covering impacts on ecosystems and landscapes are more limited. The relation between application and choice of analytical tools is discussed. It is suggested that SEAs used to support a choice between different alternatives require more quantitative methods, whereas SEAs used to identify critical aspects and suggest mitigation strategies can suffice with more qualitative methods. The possible and desired degree of site-specificity in the assessment can also influence the choice of methods. It is also suggested that values and world views can be of importance for judging whether different types of tools and results are meaningful and useful. Since values and world views differ between different stakeholders, consultation and understanding are important to ensure credibility and relevance.

1.1. Background The main purpose of strategic environmental assessment (SEA) is to facilitate early and systematic consideration of potential environmental impacts in strategic decision-making Therivel and Partidario, 1996 and Partidario, 1999. It is intended to be used on policies, plans and programmes. The growing significance of SEA as a form of support to decision-making is manifested by the recent EC directive (2001/42/EC) on the assessment of environmental effects from certain plans and programmes (Feldmann et al., 2001). However, a number of challenges need to be overcome for SEA to be an effective tool. In order to be effective, a number of criteria need to be met. The International Association for Impact Assessment (IAIA) has published the IAIA principles that stipulate best practice for EIA (IAIA, 1999). The principles are: rigorous, practical, relevant, cost-effective, efficient, focused, adaptive, participative, interdisciplinary, credible, integrated, transparent, and systematic. While established for EIA, they are of key relevance also for SEA and in a workshop hosted by the Federal Ministry for the Environment Nature Conservation and Nuclear Safety (2001), these principles were adapted towards SEA. A number of publications have been concerned with how to design an SEA process that can be integrated with the decision-making process (e.g. European Commission, 1994, Therivel and Brown, 1999, Naturvårdsverket, 2000 and ANSEA Project, 2002). Slightly different steps are defined in different sources, although the main features remain the same. The following steps are identified here, also based on (Nilsson et al., 2001): 1. Definition of objectives. 2. Formulation of alternatives. 3. Scenario analysis. 4. Environmental analysis (including the use of objective and acceptable aggregated indicators, based on more traditional natural sciences). 5. Valuation (including the use of controversial aggregation methods, and political and ethical values). 6. Conclusions, review of quality/follow up measures, etc. In addition, consultation and public participation are important aspects of the SEA process and should take place at several occasions in the process. Similarly, careful analysis of the uncertainties involved in the assessment, through methods such as sensitivity analysis should be applied throughout various stages of the SEA. A legal basis for undertaking SEA will be developed in Sweden within the next few years when the EC directive is incorporated into national legislation. The directive is, however, limited in scope. It applies to plans and programmes, and modifications of them, that are subject to preparation and/or adoption by an authority at national, regional and local level, and that are required by legislative, regulatory or administrative provisions (Article 2). Thus, it does not apply to policies, to the private sector or to plans and programmes that are not formally required. It is currently not clear which, if any, applications within the energy sectors will require an SEA according to the directive (Adolfsson, Swedish EPA, personal communication) and there is also a lack of methodological guidelines for this application. SEAs can be useful and effective for a number of applications where SEAs are not formally required. For example, SEA could be a useful tool for energy policies developed at national level Nilsson et al., 2001 and Noble and Storey, 2001. The national energy policy programmes established by the Swedish Parliament are normally based on major impact analyses prepared by the Government Commissions (for example SOU, 1995, p. 139, preceding the 1997 policy programme). However, some decisions are also taken in between these major programmes. At the local level the Swedish municipalities are required by law to carry out energy plans (SFS, 1977, p. 439) as a means to promote efficient use of energy and take action for a secure and sufficient energy supply. The plan shall concern the supply, distribution and use of energy within the municipality and it shall contain an analysis of what impacts these activities will have. The municipal energy plans are not legally binding, however. On a local level, SEA could also be useful for other purposes. The municipalities still have many important roles in the energy arena, for example as owners of energy companies and a large real estate stock, as environmental and planning authorities and as providers of information to the public. Within companies, SEA can support internal decision-making in several ways, including to minimise future environmentally related risk and associated economic costs and to gain competitive advantage. There is currently a lack of methods for this purpose (Bardouille, 2001) and SEA can possibly be useful within this context. Another possible application area is to use results from SEA as arguments in a public debate. A third application area can be to use a non-site-specific SEA in a tiered approach with a site-specific project EIA at a lower level. Also NGOs can use SEAs to develop and support sustainability arguments and positions in their campaigns and other activities. However, above all it should be used to improve decisions towards sustainable solutions. SEA can be viewed as consisting of three components: institutional arrangements, procedure, and methods (Kørnøv, personal communication). While much of the SEA literature is focused on issues surrounding institutional arrangements (ANSEA Project, 2002) and process aspects (see, for instance, Therivel and Partidario, 1996), challenges related to what methods and analytical tools to use in SEA remain and need more attention. Noble and Storey (2001) address this question by developing a framework focused on multi-criteria decision-making. Questions remain however, when it comes to the environmental analysis that can support those methods. As a procedural tool, SEA can include a number of different analytical tools (Wrisberg et al., 2000). (The focus of procedural tools is on procedures to guide the process to reach and implement environmental decisions whereas analytical tools are modelling the system in a quantitative or qualitative way aiming at providing technical information for a better decision (ibid.). In this paper we use the words “tools” and “methods” as synonyms.) However, appropriate methods need to be established. For instance, SEA guidance often refers to Environmental Impact Assessment (EIA)-type analyses but it is often difficult to use the methods associated with project EIA in SEA because they are adjusted for site-specific information and local impacts whereas SEA often is not site-specific and can often be primarily concerned with cumulative and indirect impacts (e.g. Petts, 1999b). The lack of methodological guidance for SEA also acts as a barrier to the implementation of SEA in general and the European directive on SEA (European Parliament, 2001) in particular. 1.2. Aim The aim of this study is to examine how various analytical tools can be used within the SEA process, especially in the following steps: Scenario Analysis, Environmental Analysis and Valuation. Examples include Economic Valuation methods, Life Cycle Assessment (LCA) and Risk Assessment (RA) (see also Petts, 1999a). Relations between SEA applications and choice of methods are also discussed. The applications of particular interest in this study are within the energy sector in Sweden. The results and the discussion are however of relevance also for other applications. It should be noted that the study is not comprehensive in scope in so far as not all possible tools are discussed. It goes through a limited set of quantitative tools. There are, in addition to this, several quantitative tools that have not been discussed. There are also several qualitative tools that could be useful in an SEA context, such as various types of group decision making and preference-indifference models (Noble and Storey, 2001). The tools that are discussed have been selected because they are established methodologies that are well-known, they have been developed, tested and applied in the energy sector, at policy, plan, and programme levels, and there is data available from these tools for testing the methods in a pilot study.

The aim of this article is to analyse how various analytical tools can facilitate and enhance the SEA process, particularly in relation to energy sector SEA. It is found that several existing tools can contribute, either by focusing mainly on the identification and modelling of environmental change (e.g. LCA, RA, future studies) or by focusing mainly on the valuation stage (e.g. MAA methods, economic valuation methods, surveys). Based on the tools examined here, it appears that finding useful tools for analysing ecosystem and landscape impacts is more challenging than tools for analysing emissions of pollutants, at least in the energy sector context. Based on the examination of the selected analytical tools according to a set of analytical features, an integrative framework of methods for SEA is proposed (see Fig. 2 and Fig. 3). Three conclusions can be drawn from this exercise. First, the key factors influencing the choice of analytical tools are the definition of system boundaries, the amount and types of environmental changes included in the assessment, the degree of site-specificity desired, the degree of quantification desired, the degree of aggregation of results desired, and the preference of information type according to the DPSIR-model. Second, and in addition to these factors, the preferred function of the SEA also influences the choice. It is argued that to support a choice between two or more alternatives quantitative results may be needed, while a SEA with the purpose to identify critical aspects of alternative(s) and suggest mitigation strategies might do with qualitative results. Lastly, it was suggested that underlying the choices that shape the use of methods in a SEA is the world view and assumptions of the assessor, i.e. considered relevant information. The next step will be to test the framework of analytical tools in a SEA on a Swedish energy sector PPP.