Willingness to pay for reduced visual disamenities from offshore wind farms in Denmark

Abstract

Expansion of offshore wind power plays a significant role in the energy policies of many EU countries. However, offshore wind farms create visual disamenities. These disamenities can be reduced by siting wind farms at larger distances from the coast—and accepting higher costs per kWh produced. In this paper willingness to pay for reducing the visual disamenities from future offshore wind farms is elicited using the economic valuation method Choice Experiments. The valuation scenario comprises the location of 720 offshore wind turbines (equivalent to 3600 MW) in farms at distances equal to: 12, 18 or 50 km from the shore, relative to an 8 km baseline. Using a fixed effect logit model average willingness to pay amounts were estimated as: 46, 96 and 122 Euros/household/year for having the wind farms located at 12, 18 and 50 km from the coast as opposed to 8 km. The results also reveal that WTP deviates significantly depending on the age of respondents and their experiences with offshore wind farms.