Winning social acceptance for wind energy in wind energy scarce regions (WinWind)

Project duration

01.10.2017. – 31.03.2020. (30 months)

Description

WinWind seeks to raise social acceptance and support in wind energy scarce target regions (WESR) by assessing, disseminating, developing and transferring innovative community participation and engagement measures. Participation and engagement are regarded as key drivers for social acceptance and market uptake of wind energy. The partners have selected wind energy scarce target regions as the focus of most project activities and model regions with high wind energy penetration levels to provide potential best practice references especially regarding social acceptance.

The proposal considers from a multidisciplinary perspective the case of WESR in Germany, Spain, Italy, Poland and Norvegia. These selected countries represent a variety of realities ranging from large to very scarce wind energy penetration. In its turn,
Latvia is considered as a poor country in terms of the use of wind power, having only (2016.gadā) wind energy capacity of 1.084 MW per 1000 km2 state area and 35.9 kW per 1000 resident population.

WinWind analyses regional and local communities´ specificities, socioeconomic, spatial & environmental characteristics and the reasons for slow market deployment in the selected target regions. Best practices to overcome the identified obstacles are assessed and – where feasible – transferred. The operational tasks are taken up by national/regional desks consisting of the project partners, market actors and stakeholders in each country.

WinWind develops concrete solutions. The activities focus on novel informal/voluntary procedural participation of communities, direct and indirect financial participation & benefit sharing. Finally, policy lessons with validity across Europe are drawn and recommendations proposed.

Project objective

The overall objective of WinWind is to enhance the socially inclusive and environmentally sound market uptake of wind energy by increasing its social acceptance and support in wind energy scarce regions. The specific objectives are: screening, analysing, discussing, replicating, testing & disseminating feasible solutions for increasing social acceptance and thereby the uptake of wind energy.

Main activities

The project´s objectives will be reached by:

1. Identify and assess the region-specific barriers and social acceptance problems in selected target regions constraining market deployment;
2. Evaluate legal, institutional and political drivers and barriers for social acceptance and support at community, regional, national and European levels, with a special focus on procedural and financial community engagement;
3. Develop a taxonomy of social acceptance barriers and drivers in the target regions;
4. Assess and increase knowledge about social and environmental impact of wind energy including community benefits, taking into account regional specificities, socioeconomic, spatial and environmental aspects from a life-cycle perspective (e.g. resource efficiency, GHG balance, energy balance;
5. Identify and assess best practice policies and measures and novel governance mechanisms in the selected six countries and beyond, enhancing social acceptance, including effective procedural and financial community participation and engagement on national, regional and local level;
6. Analyse the critical success factors of novel governance mechanisms of community engagement and assess the necessary conditions for their transfer and uptake in other contexts; 
7. Engage with national and regional stakeholders to transfer knowledge about social and environmental impact of wind energy and initiate a transfer of suitable measures and concepts within and between the partner countries and wind energy scarce target regions (“learning laboratories”),
8. Develop guiding principles and criteria for fair (i.e. socially inclusive and environmentally sound) wind energy as an orientation for policy development taking in to account innovative bottom-up initiatives in selected Member States, accompanied by a strategy for implementation;
9. Set up and engage in a dialogue between WinWind regional desks and EU stakeholders to assess how policy relevant initiatives at country level (e.g. fair wind labels) can be adapted to the EU level to accelerate social acceptance, community participation and citizens´ engagement in wind energy;
10. Facilitate policy learning both within each partner country and target regions and among the countries and regions to contribute to optimise national and regional policy and planning frameworks to enhance good governance and improve community participation and engagement

Project budget

Planned project budget 2 124 462.50 EUR. LEIF contributes to the Project as Project partner with amount 127 250.00 EUR.

Project lead partner:

1. Freie Universität Berlin (FUB) - Germany

Project partners, representing energy agencies, environmental agencies, applied research - consulting institutes, regional governments:

1. Seecon Ingenieure (SEECON) - Germany
2. Agenzia nazionale per le nuove tecnologie, l'energia e lo sviluppo economico sostenibile (ENEA) – Italy
3. Ecoazioni snc arhitetti bastiani M. E Venerucci V (ECOAZIONI) – Italy
4. Center for International Climate and Environmental Research (CICERO) – Norvegia
5. Norwegian Water Resources and Energy Directorate (NVE) - Norvegia
6. Krajowa Agencja Poszanowania Energii S.A. (KAPE) – Poland
7. ECORYS (ECORYS ES) - Spain
8. Asociación Canaria de Energías Renovables (ACER) - Spain
9. ICLEI European Secretariat gmbg (ICLEI EURO) – Germany

Project partners from Latvia

1.    Latvian Environmental Investment fund (LEIF)
2.    Institute of Physical Energetics (IPE)

Additional information: Aija Zučika, project manager, phone.+371 67845111

Project is financed by:

This project has received funding from the European Union’s Horizon 2020 research and innovation programme

under grant agreement No 764717.

Project home page: (under development)

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