Are rural places prepared for the energy transition? An evaluation of land use plans in rural Manitoba

ABSTRACT

As energy systems transition from fossil fuels to renewable sources, energy infrastructure will become a predominant land use, especially in rural areas. This poses a challenge for municipalities who need to adapt land use planning frameworks to more renewable energy. Using plan quality evaluation, this paper assesses how 57 rural official plans in Manitoba (Canada) are attempting to integrate energy planning. Consideration of energy within plans is poor, especially for implementation mechanisms and fact base. While rural communities are the forefront of the energy transition, existing land use planning frameworks are maladapted to enable it.

KEYWORDS:

• Energy transition
• plan quality
• land use planning
• net-zero
• Manitoba

Acknowledgments

We recognize this research includes communities that are part of Treaties 1, 2, 3, 4, and 5, and the Metis Homeland. The University of Guelph is located within the Between the Lakes Purchase and the treaty lands and territory of the Mississaugas of the Credit. This research was made possible by funding from the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada, the Ontario Graduate Scholarship, and the University of Guelph. This paper was initially presented at ACSP 2022 in Toronto, ON. We would like to thank discussant David Hsu and session participants for their insights that helped strengthen this paper. Lastly, we would like to thank the anonymous peer reviewers for providing valuable feedback that strengthened this paper.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Supplementary data

Supplemental data for this article can be accessed online at https://doi.org/10.1080/02697459.2024.2323886

Additional information

Funding

The work was supported by the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada University of Guelph.