Acceptance of wind power development and exposure – Not-in-anybody's-backyard

Anders Dugstad,Kristine Grimsrud,Gorm Kipperberg,Henrik Lindhjem,Ståle Navrud

doi:10.1016/j.enpol.2020.111780

Abstract

Despite a large stated-preference (SP) literature on wind power externalities, few SP studies employ a case-control approach to examine whether people's acceptance of new wind power developments and renewable energy initiatives increases or decreases with exposure. Furthermore, the existing studies are inconclusive on this issue. In a case-control discrete choice experiment, we measure the level of acceptance in terms of people's willingness-to-accept (WTA) for having future land-based wind power developments in Norway; comparing exposed and non-exposed people's WTA. We find that exposure lowers acceptance. Furthermore, exposed people are also unwilling to pay as much to increase general domestic renewable energy production (from all sources) as non-exposed people, and thus have lower acceptance for such renewable energy policy initiatives. After testing for type of exposure, we argue that the inconclusiveness in the literature of how exposure affects acceptance of wind power developments could be due to the fact that impacts considered differ somewhat across studies.

Highlights

Hydropower has been Norway’s most important source of energy for decades, currently accounting for 94 percent of the country’s electricity production (NVE, 2019), which is 100 percent renewable
For the attitudinal questions on renewable energy and wind power, we find no significant difference between the two samples in terms of how concerned the respondents are about the effects future wind power developments (WPDs) will have on pristine Norwegian nature
The same reasoning goes for H5, where we found that respondents in the Rogaland-sample who own land that will be exposed to WPDs in the future have higher WTA for additional WPDs than to those from Roga land who will not be exposed in the future

Summary

Introduction

Hydropower has been Norway’s most important source of energy for decades, currently accounting for 94 percent of the country’s electricity production (NVE, 2019), which is 100 percent renewable. In vestment in and development of land-based wind power have been limited in Norway compared to similar European countries (Inderberg et al, 2019) even though Norway has some of Europe’s best land-based wind resources (NVE, 2019). Motivated by the increasing integration between the Norwegian and the European energy markets, large in vestments in wind power elsewhere in Europe, falling installation costs (Inderberg et al, 2019), and increasing demand for renewable energy, the Norwegian government has grown increasingly supportive of land-based wind power.. In 2017, the Ministry of Petroleum and Energy requested the Nor wegian Water Resources and Energy Directorate (NVE) to propose a long-term National Framework for land-based Wind Power (NFWP) in Norway. Land-based wind power became even more heavily debated in Norwegian media than it had been in recent years

Results

Discussion

Conclusion