1st Edition
Wind Power and Public Engagement Co-operatives and Community Ownership
Adopting an interdisciplinary social science approach, this book examines community reactions to wind farms to form a new understanding of what facilitates social acceptance.
Based on empirical research, Wind Power and Public Engagement investigates opposition to wind energy and considers the advantages as well as the limits of the co-operative model of wind farm community ownership. Giuseppe Pellegrini-Masini compares the role of co-operative schemes with community benefits schemes in increasing acceptability, and also sheds light on the impact of social factors including pro-environmental attitudes, perceived benefits and costs, place attachment, trust, as well as individuals’ resources such as information and income. Five research cases are investigated in England and Scotland, including the first local, community-owned wind farm co-operative in the UK. Critically reviewing existing social research theories, the book offers a new viewpoint, integrating rational choice and environmental attitudinal theories, from which to assess and understand the social acceptability of wind energy. It also highlights new opportunities for raising consensus in communities around locally proposed wind farms.
The book will be of great interest to students and scholars of renewable energy, energy policy, environmental sociology, environmental psychology, environmental planning and sustainability in general, as well as policymakers.
Foreword
By Christian A. Klöckner
Introduction
- Citizens and Renewable Energy: Determinants of Civic Engagement
- Wind Energy Acceptability, What, How and When: All the Variables at Stake
- Testing the Theory: Methods and Data Collection
- The First Community-Owned Co-Operative in the UK: Lessons from Westmill Wind Farm
- A Survey of Four Scottish Proposed Wind Farms
- A Theory of Social Acceptability of Wind Warms: Finding a Place for the Co-operative Scheme
Conclusions
Biography
Giuseppe Pellegrini-Masini is a Postdoctoral Fellow in the Department of Psychology at the Norwegian University of Science and Technology (NTNU), Norway, and a Research Affiliate in the Research Area in Public Ethics at the Sant’Anna School of Advanced Studies, Italy. He holds a PhD from the School of Energy, Geoscience, Infrastructure and Society at Heriot-Watt University, Scotland.
