Abstract
Large-scale renewable energy and associated technologies (RET), such as high voltage power lines (HVPL), often meet opposition from the local communities living nearby. Research has suggested that one of the main aspects that might contribute to this is the fact that RET are represented as industrial and urban, and thus, as having a different essence from rural landscapes, where they are usually deployed and which are represented as natural and unspoilt. However, this ‘hypothesis’ of landscape essentialisation shaping people's responses to RET has not been explicitly examined. By drawing upon research from Social Psychology and Human Geography on essentialisation, we will examine if and how landscape (de-)essentialisation plays a role in people's responses to RET. Namely, by examining it as a rhetorical construction that can be strategically used to negotiate and legitimize given relations with place and associated responses to RET.Focus groups were conducted in the UK and Norway with members of local communities to be affected by the construction of HVPLs that will connect to new low carbon energy technologies. Analyses show that participants present British and Norwegian rural landscapes in general and HVPL as having two different essences, which justifies opposition to those infrastructures. However, analyses also show that essentialisation of the countryside is strategically used. Namely, participants also present the countryside in the place where they live as having more of the essence of the British or Norwegian countryside than other areas of the UK and Norway. In turn, this allows them to legitimize claims that whereas HVPL are ‘out of place’ in the countryside in general, they are more so in the place where they live.The implications of these results for the definition of acceptable locations for RET and for research on people–place relations and responses to place change, are discussed.
Highlights
Many governments worldwide are fostering the deployment of low carbon, renewable, energy technologies (e.g., Renewables Directive, 2009) for tackling climate change
In this paper we aimed to draw upon literatures from psychology and human geography to examine a neglected area of research – how place meanings, and, the essentialisation of landscapes, as rhetorical and ideological constructions play a role in shaping people’s responses to new energy infrastructures
Previous research, informed by concepts of place attachment and place identity, had suggested that people represent rural landscapes and energy infrastructures as having two different essences and that this seemed to play a role in public opposition to those technologies, but had not systematically examined this hypothesis (e.g., Devine-Wright & Howes, 2010)
Summary
Many governments worldwide are fostering the deployment of low carbon, renewable, energy technologies (e.g., Renewables Directive, 2009) for tackling climate change. Since electricity systems are centralised in most countries in the global north, energy generation infrastructures are usually large scale and deployed in rural areas where both natural resources and space are more available. While at a general level the public tends to support renewable energy, when specific infrastructures are to be deployed, opposition to them and associated technologies, such as high voltage power lines (hereafter referred to as ‘power lines’), is often found, namely from the local communities living nearby (Toke, 2005; Devine-Wright & Batel 2013). Regarding wind farms and power lines, the perceived visual impact of those infrastructures has been identified as one of the main reasons for opposition (Devine-Wright & Batel, 2013; Soini et al 2011; Wolsink 2000). Cowell (2010) goes further in arguing that visual impact is not a quality inherent within a technology, but an outcome of how its visual characteristics are seen as fitting (or not) in particular places - namely, in rural landscapes where such infrastructures are often seen as ‘out of place’ (Cresswell, 2003)
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