Opposition to Wind Farms and the Possible Responses of the Legal System

Public participation and appeal rights in decision-making on wind energy infrastructure: a comparative analysis of the Danish and English legal framework

“…Firstly, the legal frameworks in England and Denmark, in general, reflect a procedural rationale for participation, framing it as a condition for the democratic legitimacy of the decision-making process. In the case of wind energy projects, participation is also often justified as a way to reduce opposition and catalyse acceptance of the developments, implementing an instrumental rationale for participation (Rønne 2016;Cass and Walker 2009;Haggett and Vigar 2004). In some situations, this also includes participation in the pre-application phase.…”

“…However, they often point to the 'social and physical saturation of onshore wind energy' (Tomei 2017;Clausen 2017); landscape and visual impact concerns (Lee 2017;Olsen and Anker 2014) and perceived unfairness in the distribution of costs and benefits between local and national level (Cass et al 2010;Devine-Wright, 2005;Walker et al 2010;Bristow et al 2012;Parkhill et al 2013). The contested recourse to community benefits is another common feature in both England and Denmark, with variations as of the choice of mechanism (Armeni 2016;Rudolph, Haggett, and Aitken 2017;Rønne 2016).…”

Chapter IX.37: Regulation of wind energy in the European Union

“…49 There have been no moves of note towards establishing a legal regime that seeks to incentivise local financial participation, and there was no identifiable facilitatory regime for citizens' bids in recent wind and solar energy auctions. Even the largest Spanish renewable energy cooperative, Som Energia, have stated that they 'have not been able to develop any new 40 Rønne (2016) 185. projects as the Spanish government blocked all FITs for new projects and retroactively changed FITs for existing projects'. 50…”