GIS Approaches to Spatial Planning for Renewable Energy Facility Siting

The development of renewable energy infrastructure has become a strategic priority for ensuring energy security, supporting decarbonisation, and enabling sustainable post-war reconstruction in Ukraine. However, spatial planning of renewable energy facilities requires careful identification of suitable land resources, particularly in regions affected by land degradation and military activities. Traditional land suitability models often focus on environmentally stable areas and insufficiently address the potential of degraded and war-affected territories. This study develops a geographic information system-based multi-criteria decision-making framework for assessing land suitability for solar energy development. The approach integrates spatial analysis with a structured decision model based on the analytic hierarchy process. Five groups of criteria were considered: technical, infrastructural, land-related, environmental, and socio-legal factors. Spatial datasets, including solar radiation, terrain characteristics, land cover, infrastructure networks, protected areas, and war-affected land, were processed in a unified geographic information system environment with a spatial resolution of 100 by 100 meters. Criterion weights were derived through pairwise comparisons and consistency verification, ensuring the reliability of the decision model. The results reveal a heterogeneous spatial distribution of land suitability across the study area. Technical and infrastructural factors exert the strongest influence on suitability patterns, while environmental and socio-legal constraints act as limiting factors. A substantial share of moderately and highly suitable areas overlaps with degraded and war-affected lands, indicating their potential for renewable energy development without significant pressure on productive agricultural land. The proposed framework provides a robust spatial decision-support tool for identifying priority areas for solar energy deployment and can be applied to other regions undergoing land-use transformation or post-conflict recovery.