Abstract
Impressive growth rates of solar photovoltaics (PV) in higher latitudes are raising concerns about seasonal mismatches between demand and supply. Locating utility-scale PV projects in alpine regions with high solar irradiation could help to meet demand during the winter season. However, similar to wind farms, large solar projects change the landscape and may therefore face social acceptance issues. In contrast to the rich literature on wind energy, social acceptance of solar power has received less attention. This paper helps close this gap with the help of a large-scale survey (N = 1036) that examines the acceptance of alpine solar projects in Switzerland through choice experiments. In addition to attributes that are well established in the social acceptance literature, such as local ownership, along with both distributional and procedural justice, we also investigate the influence of innovative design elements on acceptance. Our findings suggest that local ownership, as well as colored solar panels that reduce the perceived landscape change may increase social acceptance, implying that projects should be kept local and low-key. We also find that acceptance of alpine solar projects is higher among the affected population than among inhabitants of non-alpine regions.
Highlights
Among the renewable energy technologies, solar energy has one of the highest growth rates, and could contribute substantially to reducing dependence on fossil fuels [1]
We implemented a choice experiment capable of testing the combined influence of a number of attributes: environmental impact, distributional and procedural justice, local ownership, and design. This resulted in the following two main research questions: 1) What are the attributes that determine the social acceptance of utilityscale solar PV projects in alpine regions? 2) Which attribute levels can increase the local acceptance of a solar PV project?
Two research questions were addressed: (1) What are the attributes that determine the social acceptance of utilityscale solar PV projects in alpine regions, and (2) Which attribute levels can increase the local acceptance of a solar PV project?
Summary
Among the renewable energy technologies, solar energy has one of the highest growth rates, and could contribute substantially to reducing dependence on fossil fuels [1]. One concern with electricity systems relying on a high share of renewables is their ability to match demand and supply at any given time. In densely populated areas of higher latitudes, such as Central Europe, the Northern US or Canada, a particular concern is the seasonality of solar power generation, which peaks in the summer, whereas electricity demand tends to be high in the winter. Despite being widely sup ported at the national level [8,9], the growth of wind power has recently been slowing down in various countries due to local acceptance issues [10,11,12]. For solar power in particular, locating utility-scale projects in alpine areas could allow for an increased share of electricity generation during the winter half-year. While a variety of attributes that modify the social acceptance of wind energy projects have been inves tigated recently [17,18,19,20], social acceptance of utility-scale solar photo voltaics has received less attention [13,21,22]
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