Introduction to WinWind

1. This project has received funding from the European Union’s Horizon 2020 research and innovation programme under grant agreement no
764717. The sole responsibility for the content of this presentation lies with its author and in no way reflects the views of the European Union.
Introduction to the WinWind Project
Maria Rosaria Di Nucci
Freie Universität Berlin, Environmental Policy Research Centre
European Policy Roundtable
Brussels, June 17, 2019

2. Overview
 Background, starting conditions and role of wind energy in the EU
 Patterns of conflicts/ decreasing acceptance
 Factors affecting socio-political and community acceptance
 WinWind objectives and theoretical framework
 Brief overview of the main achievements
 Lessons learned and preliminary findings

3. The starting conditions
• Many countries trying to streamline centralised, large-scale RES
• encounter conflicts during the planning process/ construction
• face opposition from local communities
• The EU is undergoing a deep transformation of the energy system
• In some countries, e.g. Germany this is characterised by
• phase out of nuclear power plants
• planned phase out of coal
• extraordinary growth of RES, especially wind power
• growth of decentralized structures
• Implementation of local energy projects played key role in this transformation
• Change in new support system (auctions in place of FIT/FIP) risks to
jeopardise RES growth

4. Share of wind energy (WE) in 2017/2018
(EU 28)
• 189 GW of WE capacity in Europe; 10%
offshore.
• In 2018 WE covered 14% of EU electricity
demand
• The cumulative installed capacity in Europe
amounted in 2018 to 11.7 GW
• This is the lowest amount since 2011 and
reflects regulatory changes
• Lower propensity to invest because of the new
tendering procedure for wind farms in force
since January 2017
• Complex and time-consuming authorisation
procedures
Source: WindEurope 2018; 2019

5. Decreasing acceptance?
• Large energy and infrastructure projects lack broad support and provoke
considerable local opposition
• Energy transition is generally supported by the vast majority of the population, but
its implementation faces criticism
• Negative attitudes towards wind energy are increasing, even in regions with higher
acceptance (and penetration) of RES (e.g. in Germany)
• The effects of these projects can be perceived as positive or negative and are
assessed in different ways according to personal/political responses
• These often depend on the context, project-specific factors and personal attitudes
• Social/local acceptance of WE often contested due to:
 public’s perception of associated environmental and health impact
 visual impact on landscapes
 noise pollution (including infrasound)
 disruption harming local fauna and flora
 negative impacts on tourism
 loss of land and real property value
• Media, developers and politics have often labelled local opposition too quickly as
NIMBY (Not In My Back Yard)

6. Factors affecting wind energy deployment
Source: Ferguson-Martin, C.J.; Hill, S.D. (2011): Accounting for variation in wind deployment between Canadian provinces.
Energy Policy, 39, 1647-1658.

7. Patterns of conflict
• Hundreds of anti-wind initiatives established in recent years
• Similarities: nature conservation concerns, health risks fears,
cultural and landscape heritage, aesthetics….
• There is a need for:
 disentangle the different reasons for opposition in each country
and region
 seek to understand what kind of instruments may affect social
acceptability related to each reason
• Opponents´ motives extremely different
• Perceived distributive injustice. Rural areas: modest
conventional economic benefits (jobs, revenues); mostly rents
for land owners
• Citizens' initiatives against RES getting professional
• Initiatives well networked and share methods to successfully
block projects
• Tone is becoming harsh. Lack of trust (developers, local
councils, procedures)
• Populist parties try to ride the protest.

8. WinWind focus and objectives
Focus & Objectives Progress
Identify and assess the region-specific barriers and social acceptance problems
constraining market deployment
✔
Evaluate legal, institutional and political drivers and barriers for social acceptance and
support with a special focus on procedural and financial community engagement
✔
Develop a taxonomy of social acceptance barriers and drivers in the target regions ✔
Increase knowledge about social and environmental impact of wind energy including
community benefits
✔
ongoing
Identify/assess best practice policies and measures and novel governance
mechanisms including effective procedural and financial community participation and
engagement
✔
Analyse critical success factors of novel governance mechanisms of community
engagement & assess the necessary conditions for their transfer to other contexts
ongoing
Engage with national and regional stakeholders
✔
ongoing
Initiate a transfer of suitable measures and concepts between the partner countries
and wind energy scarce target regions
ongoing

9. Winning social acceptance for wind energy in
wind energy scarce regions

10. WinWind Approach

11. Impact: where does WinWind make a
difference?
• Critical (community) acceptance factors are more or less known.
But the attempt to deliver a comparative analysis over six
countries with different starting conditions and political/ socio-
economic frameworks is ambitious
• WinWind deals with measures/activities which, due to their novelty, have
so far not - or only marginally - been assessed by collaborative
research:
 Innovative policies & measures and governance mechanisms
fostering procedural equity and
 Financial community participation and engagement (fostering
distributive equity)
• We involve local and national stakeholders
• We provide guiding principles and criteria for fair wind energy as an
orientation for policy development
• We initiate the transfer of best practices

12. Policy implications
• Appraisal of the legal, institutional and policy frameworks
at local, national and EU level and how and under what
conditions these act as barriers or as enabling elements;
• Translation of key project lessons into practical policy
recommendations addressing local, regional and where
relevant national decision-makers;
• Feeding policy guidance into relevant policy formulation
processes at EU, national, regional and local level (e.g.
via stakeholder consultations);
• Development of guiding principles and criteria for fair
(socially inclusive) wind energy serving as an orientation
for regional, national or European policy development;
• Propagation of best practices including procedural and
financial community participation to increase (socially
acceptable) market uptake of wind energy.

13. What have we achieved so far?
• Report on technical and socio-economic conditions in the
WESR target regions
• A taxonomy of social acceptance barriers and drivers
• Continuous stakeholder dialogues in form of desk
meetings, thematic workshops, consultations, etc.
• Political/policy recognition of the project and its outcomes
• A methodological framework for good/best practice
selection and analysis to guide the case study analysis
• Identification and assessments of 30 Good Practices
• Selection of 10 transferable best practices
• Transfer Plans/Initiation of one transfer measure
• Publications in technical and scientific journals
• Website populated, deployment of social media
enhanced, blogs, newsletters

14. WinWind preliminary conclusions
• Impacts are often context-specific
• The experience of the six countries shows
 Local impacts, whether real, potential or perceived, shape community
acceptance
 Since both opposition and support of specific projects are so firmly rooted in
local community, knowledge about local impacts and local context key to
understanding acceptance.
 The way in which local impacts are perceived, and how they shape
acceptance, depend on the processes surrounding wind energy
development.
• WinWind standpoint: by failing to adopt a different perspective and approach,
research on social acceptance of wind power may fail to grasp
 A better understanding of people’s responses to RES technologies
 The democratisation of those responses
• Factors enhancing acceptability:
 Distributional justice
 Procedural justice
 Trust

15. Lessons learned: Participation and
involvement (procedural justice)
• Local participation measures effective in preventing or responding to local
opposition?
• Although most wind project developers seek to involve the public, few do
this systematically and the level of activity is low in early project phases.
• Earlier and more systematic involvement of the public and stakeholders
could reduce negative reactions in many wind energy projects.
• Discontent with the decision-making process is one key reason for
opposition
• …but participatory processes do not necessarily imply acceptance
• Higher acceptability when the decision-making process is perceived as
being fair and open and if people can influence the outcome (procedural
justice)
• Significance of lighthouse projects involving citizens, highlighting local
benefits and positively influencing public opinion

16. Lessons learned: trust/ mistrust
• Trust highlights the complexity of social/community acceptance and the fact
that social acceptance is produced at different levels.
• Trust in technology, institutions, public administration, developers, etc.
• Trust strongly correlated to socio-cultural factors and distributional/
procedural justice.
• Trust and acceptance depend heavily on access to information, early
involvement of affected populations and stakeholders, inclusiveness of the
process and adequate financial resources of the community, credibility,
integrity, competence, welfare orientation of key actors.
• Local ownership; institutionalising compensation; transparency.
• Compensation/community benefits are not a guarantee for acceptance
• Significance of communication strategies addressing the “silent” group of
supporters in local communities and the group of undecided persons

17. WinWind impact continues….
• WinWind runs until March 2020…
• We want to provide good and implementable policy recommendations.
• We will encourage the transfer of best practices from model regions to learning regions
(within one country or between different countries). Some are already ongoing.
• We will keep the engagement of stakeholders as high as possible.
• We will continue involving all six country desks and enhance the dialogue with the most
relevant institutional and public actors and industry actors on board
• WinWind will continue exploring opportunities to strengthen its impact particularly on
occasions that include potential revision of planning/ permitting procedures, new/revised
legislation, or other strategic documents as for example the integrated National Energy and
Climate Plans.
• Where useful and feasible, we will involve
particularly institutional and public actors in the
transfer measures.

18. This project has received funding from the European Union’s Horizon 2020 research and innovation programme under grant agreement no
764717. The sole responsibility for the content of this presentation lies with its author and in no way reflects the views of the European Union.
Thank you for your attention!
dinucci@zedat.fu-berlin.de
winwindproject.eu

19. What have we achieved in numbers
• Quite ambitious impact and outreach indicators
for a 30M project.
• 17 workshops organised; participation in 8
conferences and 6 workshops and 8 events
(other than WS or conferences)
• 3 articles in scientific journals
• 11 articles in non scientific non peer reviewed
journals
• 42 newsbits about WinWind on partners
websites
• 9 newsbit about WinWind on other websites,
• 7,404 unique visitors per month on the website
an10,036 sessions recorded
• And on the light side…
 4 press release distributed,
 168 followers on Twitter
 82 followers on Linkedin

20. WinWind Publications

21. Scientific output