Social Acceptance of Renewable Energy: Trends, Concepts, and Geographies

Abstract

As global production of energy from renewable sources has grown over the last 25 years, so too has research on social acceptance of renewable energy. This article reports findings from a systematic review of peer-reviewed articles related to this subject. There has been a rapid increase in the frequency of these studies and a shift in orientation away from market and socio-political measures of securing policy support for renewables toward a sympathetic reporting of community opposition to wind turbines. Well-developed conceptual and empirical critiques of the "Not-in-My-Backyard" concept have emerged on the basis of Western European case studies, notably from the UK. Drawing from experiences across the globe with varied sizes and types of new energy infrastructure researchers have documented complex social responses that go beyond simplistic designations of opponent or supporter. Geographical concepts including place, landscape, distance decay, territory, and others have been gainfully employed in this interdisciplinary literature, and there is ample opportunity for greater contributions from the discipline to this area of growing popular and academic interest.

Geography, Communities and Energy Futures: Alternative Research Paths

“…Situated at the theoretical interface of society and space, controversies between communities and renewables unveil various interactions between people and their places which are symbolic of wider struggles to define and consume space. The virtues of human geography for investigating the wider context of communities and different renewable energy facilities have already been demonstrated by much cited studies (Fast 2013 The concepts mentioned above add richness and depth to the analysis of community conflicts, and do not only demonstrate that 'geography is central to the understanding and addressing the current energy dilemmas' (Zimmerer 2011, p. 705), but also indicate that geography is inherent in community reactions towards renewable technologies. Although not all of the following contributions originate from geographers and rather reflect the multi-disciplinary background of this research field, it is hoped that the following collection of papers acknowledges the value of incorporating human geographical perspectives into future research in this field.…”

“…The bulk of studies on social acceptance of renewables had focused on the latter two dimensions (Fast 2013), which often appeared as interrelated. Thus, the majority of studies are predominantly devoted to the examination of the acceptance by communities and local citizens, as the cornerstone of siting controversies.…”

Introduction: energy and the geographical traditions

“…Many of these concepts have recently been brought into dialogue with theories of sociotechnical transitions in order to identify the context-dependent and cross-scalar relationships which enable and disable transition processes in particular places (Hansen and Coenen, 2015). Fast (2013) explains how spatial and geographic reasoning improves our understanding of community and individual acceptance of renewable energy resource development, and Delgado (2016) explains how concepts in geography's critical approach to political economy elucidate how oil markets function and expand into new regions. Although human geographers have been most active in energy studies, contributions have emerged from other facets of the discipline.…”

The Lived Experience of Climate Change

“…They have spawned a field of academic study on social acceptance of renewable energy, particularly in relation to clusters of wind turbines (wind farms) where opposition seems to have been most entrenched in the United Kingdom. For a review of the complexities involved in social acceptance, see Fast (2013). While accepting his point that people play other roles in relation to renewable energy projects-for example as investors, producers and users-this does not alter the fact that a significant and vociferous role is oppositional, and that these voices will continue to be heard.…”