Conceptualizing the patterns of land use conflicts in wind energy development: Towards a typology and implications for practice

Abstract

The continued expansion of the wind energy sector with wind turbines growing in number and size has significantly altered landscapes and brought about more sitting controversies and land use conflicts. The novel contribution of this study to the wind energy acceptance debate is in identifying and classifying relationships among specific conflict parties (actors and their coalitions), conflict issues (arguments or claims the parties use in opposition) and project characteristics in onshore wind energy development. The results are based on a comprehensive analysis of 38 case studies from Spain and the Czech Republic (a leader and a laggard in wind energy development in Europe) applying an explanatory sequential research design, involving document analysis, interviews and multivariate statistics. In spite of essential differences between the countries in their geographies and the scale and spatial diffusion of wind farms, most parties and issues emerging in wind energy conflicts are common in both countries. We have identified six components of conflict issues (nature preservation; distributional injustice; property and conveniences; proportions; health concerns; and landscape values and functions), five clusters of conflict parties (i.e., coalitions of actors), and we propose a generic typology of wind energy conflicts (between neighbors conflicts; intra-municipal conflicts; residents vs. second-home owners, municipalities vs. developers; and conflicts of hierarchical powers). The conclusions include recommendations on what planners and developers in both countries can learn from each other and what measures and practices to put in place to minimize possible conflicts in further wind energy development.