WINDLAND: Spatial assessment of environment-economy trade-offs to reduce wind power conflicts.

Background and objectives Over time, international and national climate policies will most likely make it profitable to increase the production of wind power in Norway. Although wind energy is a part of the solution to combat climate change, it creates new local environmental challenges. Wind farms and power lines affect landscape aesthetics, produce noise pollution and cause loss of wildlife and biodiversity, both during their construction and operation. Our primary objective was to evaluate the loss of ecosystem services associated with wind energy installations, and to construct methods to use these data as input in designing policy instruments and regulations in order to reduce the conflicts of interest across stakeholders. Results achieved According to a legal analysis conducted in the project, the limit of tolerance for environmental impact following from an approved WPP is expected to be high. Thus, an expansive development of WPP is likely to cause large conflict of interest and underscore the need for policy instruments to dampen the conflicts. The project has identified the most important ecosystem services that have been affected by new wind power plants and associated grid/infrastructure. Locally, these are related to impaired landscape aesthetics, noise, light flickering, loss of local nature and net degradation of recreation areas. Regionally and nationally, there are impacts on biodiversity and landscapes that potentially affect tourists and may reduce non-use values. Monetary estimates of the welfare losses of these impacts of new wind power plants have been analysed and estimated in the project. In addition, the project has investigated other aspects related to non-market valuation and stated preferences of importance for decision-making, including what determines people’s acceptability of new wind power plants and valuation methods for use in ecosystem service accounting. The project has made a framework for transferring values of impacts that has been used in energy system modelling. The framework is based both on benefit transfer methods deriving values from existing studies on the national level and of new valuation results from the project. By using valuation results in this way, we have contributed to the knowledge important for making good wind power plant location decisions. By combining the new information on environmental loss and evaluation of this loss with an energy system model developed by IFE (TIMES), we explore the siting of wind power plants (WPP) with the lowest social cost. In the analyses we have taken into account both the production costs, which differ spatially, depending on the wind conditions and the required investments and the environmental costs. Information on production costs of potential WPP are found in NVE’s database on license applications. This work contributes to the relatively limited literature analyzing potential spatial trade-offs between the economic and environmental aspects of siting WPPs, especially in combination with energy system modelling. The work provides a realistic and policy-relevant numerical illustration of efficient siting of WPPs in Norway by employing detailed information from the WPP licence applications. Furthermore, we propose an environmental taxation scheme which contributes to a more socially efficient expansion of wind power production, as investors in new WPPs must take into account the environmental costs of turbines and power lines when deciding whether or not to carry out their proposed WPP project. Furthermore, we have evaluated the impact on socially efficient spatial distribution of WPPs when certain potential WPPs are denied a production licenses due to especially valuable land in terms of biodiversity and wilderness. We have also considered offsetting schemes as an alternative to or complimenting environmental taxes. Offset schemes imply that the negative environmental impacts of WPPs must be compensated by environmental restoration of natural landscape and habitats. We have looked at two restoration projects in Norway and evaluated to what extent they could have been used as offsets for a recent WPP development in Norway. We conclude that they can, but an offset scheme demands good measurement methods and regulations to ensure equivalence in the values of ecosystem services lost and gained. Furthermore, the project has also analyzed the potential for finding the best siting of WPP by the Multi-Criteria Decision Analysis tool ConSite, developed by Norwegian Institute for Nature Research (NINA). The objective of the ConSite tool is to identify areas with the lowest possible conflict level and the highest possible production level by combining stakeholder dialogue with multi-criteria assessment.

The project has strengthened the interdisciplinary cooperation between the research partners, demonstrated by co-authorship of academic papers. Due to the potential for synergies and extra outputs, WINDLAND partners have also cooperated and co-authored academic papers with researchers from other institutions and thereby broaden the research network. Data from the project has been exploited in a Phd. WINDLAND has supported 7 Master thesis related to the topic of the project, by data collected during the project and/or by supervision. The large stated preference dataset acquired in project has given valuable insights and will likely by further explored in future research. The project partners have produced 11 peer reviewed scientific publications, 7 popular science publications and 43 various dissemination measures for users (reports, presentations etc.). By arranging workshops with the reference group, the project has contributed to a discussion among stakeholders with deviation opinions. The project team has contributed with reports, demanded by national authorities engaged in development of wind power and the environmental consequences. The project has provided new knowledge on the monetary estimates on nature degradation which can be used by policy makers and other stakeholders. The team has been very active in communicating and using the results in practical policy analyses and recommendations. In addition to many academic publications, the team has in particular contributed to discussions about use of cost-benefit analysis in wind power development, potential use of policy instruments such as nature tax, and the acceptability of further wind power construction. The results from the project is expected to be highly useful and synergistic for several public policy processes, ministries, directorates and other stakeholders. We thus consider the outcome of the project to be valuable input into the decision process of future development of WPP on land in Norway and contribute to policy design aiming at reducing the potential conflict of interests among stakeholders.

Over time, international and national climate policies will most likely make it profitable to increase the production of wind power in Norway. Although wind energy is a part of the solution to combat climate change, it creates new local environmental challenges. Wind farms and power lines have been found to negatively impact people in their surroundings. They affect landscape aesthetics, produce noise pollution and cause loss of wildlife and biodiversity both during their construction and operation. There is a risk of massive public resistance and conflicts associated with an unprecedented increase in the number of wind farms. However, distributional and institutional factors can significantly influence the support for wind farms. Using an interdisciplinary approach (economics, natural science, technology and law), we analyze the following policies aimed to decrease the conflict of interest and thereby facilitate the public support for wind farms: 1. A holistic plan for the geographical distribution of wind farms where not only the cost of energy production is taken into account, but also the impact on the local environment and local communities. 2. Schemes for compensating the environmental degradation caused by wind farms and new grid constructions. 3. Application of the polluter pay principle in pricing the use of land. 4. Legal protection of the environment. A prerequisite for the efficiency of all of the four policies above is knowledge on how increased wind energy production actually affects the environment, and the public opinion of these impacts. We will value the welfare loss caused by wind power production, and the associated power lines, and build a framework for transferring these values to decision making contexts while explicitly taking into account trade-offs between different types of environmental, social and economic values.