Wind Farm Siting and Protected Areas in Catalonia: Planning Alternatives or Reproducing 'One-Dimensional Thinking'? (original) (raw)
Related papers
2012
Wind energy is an emblem of sustainability with the potential to promote a qualitative alternative to current energy systems and nuclear options for CO 2 reduction. However, wind farm siting often conflicts with aspirations to conserve traditional landscapes and wildlife habitats. In this paper we adopt a Critical Theory perspective, informed by Herbert Marcuse`s work, to study the discourse concerning wind energy siting in Catalonia, Spain. We give particular attention to how tensions between potentially conflicting sustainability objectives are addressed and by whom. Based on a review of this siting discourse and the application of Marcuse's theory, we find that the Catalan wind energy siting discourse is both influenced by and reproducing what Marcuse referred to as the 'one-dimensional thinking' of technology as ideology: erasing the possibility of critical dialectical thought by subsuming the question of "what should be" under the question of "what is". This has implications both for how these conflicts are investigated and for the sustainability of decisions taken. We conclude that closer attention to the role of 'one-dimensional thinking' in wind energy siting discourses could improve not only the understanding of their logic but might also have the potential to help make them more democratic.
Competing Wind Energy Discourses, Contested Landscapes
Landscape Online, 2014
The impairment of landscapes is a concern constantly raised against wind energy developments in Germany as in other countries. Often, landscapes or landscape types are treated in the literature as essentialist or at least as uncontested categories. We analyse two examples of local controversies about wind energy, in which “landscape” is employed by supporters and opponents alike, from a poststructuralist and discourse theoretical angle. The aim is to identify and compare landscape constructs produced in the micro discourses of wind energy objectors and proponents at local level (a) within each case, (b) between the two cases and (c) with landscape constructs that were previously found in macro discourses. One major finding is that several different landscapes can exist at one and the same place. Furthermore there seems to be a relatively stable set of competing landscape concepts which is reproduced in specific controversies. The paper concludes by highlighting practical consequenc...
Cool Rationalities and Hot Air: A Rhetorical Approach to Understanding Debates on Renewable Energy
Global Environmental Politics, 2008
A key obstacle to the wide-scale development of renewable energy is that public acceptability of wind energy cannot be taken for granted when wind energy moves from abstract support to local implementation. Drawing on a case study of opposition to the siting of a proposed off-shore wind farm in Northern Ireland, we offer a rhetorical analysis of a series of representative documents drawn from government, media, pro-and anti-wind energy sources, which identifies and interprets a number of discourses of objection and support. The analysis indicates that the key issue in terms of the transition to a renewable energy economy has little to do with the technology itself. Understanding the different nuances of pro and anti wind discourses highlights the importance of 'upsteaming' public involvement in the decision-making process and also the counter-productive strategy of assuming that objection is based on ignorance (which can be solved by information) of NIMBY thinking (which can be solved by moral arguments about overcoming 'free riders')..
Engineering, 2011
Nowadays, the concept of power can illuminate the nature of contestation. Indeed, it is apparent that discourse coalitions exist both within the wind sector and the riparian corridors management. In the present study, a theoretical framework for policy power analysis is presented, while a balanced European and national energy policies representation reveals the positive and negative impacts, towards which both the above two power sources may be attributed. The "power" holistic approach is mainly determined in a wider social-economic, political, and environmental framework. This multidimensional and holistic approach is considered invaluable for humans/consumers, in order them to determine their capacities, priorities and perspectives for viable use of power within the above complex-structured framework. Finally, the study adopts a balanced reassessment of the existing policies, offering tentative proposals for reducing conflicts.
Sustainability
Landscape and energy are an inseparable and innovative binomial because of the challenges they imply and being the factors we use to measure the quality of our habitat. Presenting the report “Wind Energy and Landscape. Guidelines for a suitable installation in Catalonia”, which involved research into the methodology for installing wind farms, this article presents a critical reflection on the possible spatial, ethical, and aesthetic effects of energy transition. Landscape design interprets the convergence of territorial values with the innovation of an energy system: it is not measured on a geographical scale, but draws from geography the sense of the overwriting of everyday places, giving them sense, orientation, meaning, and narrative. The research involves ecology, society, nature, and culture. Methodologically, the approach is reversed: rather than designing a project for the correct installation of wind power plants, the project for the wind landscape is understood as new conte...
In work in science, technology, and society social conflict around wind farms has a growing profile, not least because it draws our attention to two key interrelated themes: ‘science, technology and governance’ and ‘socio-technological systems’. In this article on Australian wind farm development and siting, these themes are highlighted in contexts of sustainability, legitimacy,and competency for policy effectiveness. There is enduring social conflict around wind farms at the local community level, but little government understanding of this conflict or willingness to respond adequately to resolve it. This article examines the conflict through the lens of print media analysis. A key finding of the five identified is that people seeing wind farms as spoiling a sense of place is a primary cause of enduring social conflict at the local community level around wind farms, alongside significant environmental issues and inadequate community engagement; this finding also indicates a central reason for the highly problematic state of Australian wind energy transitions. In turn, by identifying this problematic situation as one of a significantly ‘decoupled’ and ‘dysfunctional’ condition of the Australian socio-technological wind farm development and siting system, I suggest remedies including those of a deliberative nature that also respond to the Habermas–Mouffe debate. These inform a socio-technical siting approach or pathway to better respect and navigate contested landscapes for enhanced renewable energy transitions at the local level.
2019
In 2010, Norway had a goal to attain 3 TWh of windpower that was not reached. Recent years, the Norwegian windpower generation has increased dramatically, with yet projects to be built. Whereas almost 4 TWh was produced in 2018 and a planned theoretical production of about 13 TWh in total. But, as the windpower generation increase despite that there are no set goals, this begs the question of why Norway need windpower and what its role is in their electricity system? This thesis is a discourse analysis of relevant actors' main perspectives on what role windpower ought to have in the Norwegian electricity system. The main findings are two derived discourses. The perspectives that has been retrieved from the data collection, that advocates windpower are visions on electrification processes, increased exportation of electricity, and local value creation. Perspectives that advocates against windpower are windpower's ruining of untouched nature in terms of human experiences such as outdoor life and tourism industry, and degrading of nature in terms of biodiversity, fauna, flora, etc. This thesis takes an argumentative approach and establish storylines to investigate the argumentative structures. The content is interpreted as well as how actors gain support for their view and how it influences decision-makers. The discourses are called "Opportunism with windpower" and "Destruction with windpower". It turns out as a struggle between climate and the natural environment, hence a paradoxical 'green-on-green' battle. Most discursive authority is found in "Opportunism with windpower", but an increasing challenge for discursive authority is opposed by "Destruction with windpower". An unanimity is found between the discourses, that emissions must be reduced. Should windpower be part of the Norwegian electricity system, its role is mainly to reduce emission. But, whether windpower proposes the quality to fill this role or if windpower's interference in nature is too severe compared to a limited contribution in mitigating climate change, remains a struggle.
2018
Wind power is expanding globally. Simultaneously, a growing number of conflicts against large-scale wind farms are emerging in multiple locations around the world. As these processes occur, new questions arise on how electricity from wind is being generated, how such energy is flowing within societies, and how these production-flows are being shaped by specific power structures. The present paper explores the expanding geography of wind energy conflicts by analyzing 20 case studies from across the Americas, Africa, Asia and Europe. Based on the Environmental Justice Atlas database, it reflects on how land pressures and patterns of uneven development emerge as two features of the current expansion of wind farms. Following a relational analysis, these patterns are examined to interpret the plural instances of opposition emerging throughout the rural spaces of the world. The article argues that previously unexplored forms of collective action are expanding the scope and content of the “wind energy debate”. In addition to the claims of “landscape” and “wildlife protection” addressed by the existing literature, this study sheds light on the rural/peripheral contexts where opposition emerges through the defense of indigenous territories, local livelihoods and communal development projects. The study contends that these “emerging storylines” embrace an environmental justice perspective when challenging the socially unequal and geographically uneven patterns reproduced by the ecological modernization paradigm. From this lens, cases of local opposition are not interpreted as selfish forces blocking a low-carbon transition, but instead, are understood as political instances that enable a wider discussion about the ways such transition should take place.