the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 License.
the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 License.
| 17 Jan 2024
Grand Challenges in Social Aspects of Wind Energy Development
Abstract. Social aspects are gaining traction in wind energy research. Increasing local opposition to wind energy projects is just one symptom of deeper-rooted challenges in the further expansion of the technology. A recent publication by Kirkegaard et al. (2023a) lays out the grand challenges related to the complex interactions between society and wind energy technology and outlines a research agenda for wind energy research from a socio-technical perspective. This article discusses these challenges in the context of a more technologically focused research audience. We begin by describing the role of social sciences in wind energy research, arguing for the diverse set of insights, research topics, and value that they can add, going beyond outdated concepts of social acceptance (such as NIMBY), and providing solutions for public engagement and planning processes, just ownership structures and value-based design. We discuss social grand challenges in five areas: (1) Project planning & spatial relations, (2) Wind turbine design & scalability, (3) Grid integration, roles & responsibilities, (4) General public perception of the technology, (5) Energy policy to support system transformation. We conclude by reflecting how social sciences and technical sciences can be better integrated to jointly advance wind energy research into a new interdisciplinary era that is able to provide holistic solutions for a transition to carbon-neutrality.
- Preprint
(477 KB) - Metadata XML
- BibTeX
- EndNote
Status: final response (author comments only)
-
RC1: 'Comment on wes-2023-174', Anonymous Referee #1, 01 Feb 2024
Review of wes-2023-174
January 2024
Admittedly, social sciences could and should play a more valuable role in understanding human aspects of the energy transition and the build-out of wind capacity in general. It is important to make the case for why social science matters, as we continually see disproportionately high levels of societal resources going to study natural science and engineering aspects of wind energy systems. It’s often been said that the obstacles of deploying the amount of renewable energy needed are political and sociological, not technical and I agree with that. Thus, I am supportive of the need for publications to communicate to non-social scientists the need and value of social science research. That said, this paper could do a much better job of achieving that goal. In my opinion, this paper would benefit from a stronger organization and focus. For instance, section 2 seems to want to integrate SS and H, but then it drops the humanities through the rest of the paper (yes, “H” appears on L196 but it is not discussed). I would prefer to see it focus on describing what social sciences are and what they have to contribute. If you want to talk about Humanities, put that in a different section. Then if you want to talk about the integration of SS & H, add a section for that. But my sense is that you really only want to talk about SS and it is probably beyond the scope of this paper to get into transdisciplinarity. Section 3 is about grand challenges, but the first thing the reader learns is that the grand challenges were laid out by Kirkegaard in a different paper. At this point, it is unclear what the purpose of this paper is, other than to give “a different perspective” – which is very vague. It would help the reader if you summarized what Kirkegaard said were the grant challenges and then added on your contributions to each of those items. Do you agree or disagree with Kirkegaard? As I read through Section 3, I thought this paper needed to make much clearer what it is contributing that adds to the work of Kirkegaard. There also needs to be some explanation as to why some of the dimensions addressed in Kirkegaard are absent here. The conclusion needs to summarize the key contributions of this paper. While I am sure that a lot of work went into writing this paper and I appreciate that effort, the paper reads like it was written by a committee. It would benefit from better consistency, focus, and flow.
I have added some line-based comments below to help point out to the authors some of the specific shortcomings I found in the paper.
L29 “Exhilarating” seems the wrong word as it implies universal excitement among all parties.
L35 The IEA forecast is not a prediction. It does not imply that it will reach level… It merely suggests that, given existing or expect policies, this outcome is possible. You seem to suggest IEA has a crystal ball.
L39. How could more build-out NOT be more visible? It certainly will be 100%, at least to someone.
L40. Why are these “energy landscapes” when there will be, by your own recognition, other uses. Just “landscapes” would be better.
L41. Coastal and offshore. There are people out there too.
L44-47 The quote by Veers is not helpful and it’s not needed. I agree that technology alone won’t solve all problems, but you should acknowledge that technology WILL contribute to solving some and also making some worse – bigger turbines means fewer monopiles but higher blades that lead to more visibility.
Section 1. Does not lay out the challenge clearly enough. This sentence on L46-49 gets at the challenge, but it’s convoluted, has a distracting citation in it, and it needs to be unpacked. You’ve lost all the non-social scientists at this point. What’s a “productive relationship?” What’s “constructive value of conflict and controversy?” After reading this, I still have little idea of what you see as “the grand challenge.”
Section 2. I found this section to be unfocused and insufficiently organized. You seem unsure if you are writing about social sciences or SSH. If the latter, you give far too little attention to the humanities. I suggest you think about this in a more structured way. Also try to be a little less focused on critiques of SS. It comes across as sensitivity. I think there is a danger is lumping humanities in with social sciences for the purposes of your paper here. They relate to different Weberian value spheres, they involve different ways of knowing and they serve different purposes to humanity. I know we want to be interdisciplinary and transdisciplinary, but where does your audience start from? You will lose the reader if you don’t first explain the pieces before you explain how the pieces are (or should be) integrated. If you feel you need to give a Wikipedia-style introduction to what is social science, I would start by noting that social science is science, just like the natural sciences. It seeks to develop generalizable understandings through systemic observation, collection, and analysis of data. Social sciences can study social norms and values as well as empirical phenomena such as behavior, prices, demographics, and so on. The sentence at L65 begs the question: “What are ‘human aspects’ of technology?”
Section 3.
The first thing I noticed in Section 3 is that humanities is gone. Since this paper is apparently not about the humanities, I would remove mention of H in section 2.
L117. How is this paper any different from Kirkegaard et al. (2023a)? What should someone read this paper and not just Kirkegaard? You mention “different perspective” but what is that perspective? Could you spell that out for us here? What is novel about this paper? And it would have made sense to recap Kirkegaard’s grand challenges in section 2.
L122. “locational and territorial challenges” suggests this is just about geography. What about all the other challenges?
L123-124 It’s because they contradict resource consideration that social science brings insights? That doesn’t make sense. Why is a contradiction necessary to find value in SS?
Citation: https://doi.org/10.5194/wes-2023-174-RC1 -
RC2: 'Comment on wes-2023-174', Anonymous Referee #2, 08 Mar 2024
General comments
The authors discuss several grand challenges in social aspects of wind energy development. Areas considered are (1) Project planning & spatial relations, (2) Wind turbine design & scalability, (3) Grid integration, roles & responsibilities, (4) General public perception of the technology and (5) Energy policy to support system transformation. The focus is mainly on the interconnection of technical and social aspects and how this can be taken more into account in the future since technology has dominated wind power development until now. Because of (global) risks like climate change, energy scarcity and growing international conflicts (e.g. about energy resources and land), the question of how to put a renewable energy system into practice is of central importance. As far as I can see it, addressing “grand challenges” with respect to this topic is very valuable and could add to significant progress in research as well as development.
I think two points have to be made clear right at the beginning of the paper. First of all, the normative perspective. Although it might seem obvious that we need renewable energy systems in future, there are still advocates of nuclear energy and perhaps even fossil fuels. On the one hand, this is due to business considerations. On the other hand, there are also scientifically discussed arguments like the potential of nuclear energy to combat climate change. Although this hypothesis has been empirically tested quite often (e.g. Bickerstaff et al. 2008, Spence et al. 2010, Pidgeon et al. 2008) and recent research showed that the public doesn’t really believe in it (Sonnberger et al. 2021), decision makers in politics and the economy may think (and act) differently. Because of that, I recommend stating the normative position that we need renewable energy systems all over the world for a sustainable future at the beginning of the paper. The other point refers to the spatial scope of the paper. Is it meant to refer to the whole world, specific regions (e.g. western, industrialized countries) or single countries? There are of course great cultural, economic, political and administrative differences between countries and regions. Do the grand challenges really affect them in the same way? I think this point is worth of consideration and I would also accept an answer that states some limitations.
Specific comments
I also have some more specific questions and recommendations:
- The authors state on p.2 that “[…] we will have to explore new ways of reconciling wind turbines with the livelihood of people by creating mutual benefits […] by granting people more power for co-shaping different elements in the process of developing and deploying wind farms”. I agree with that but how could this be done? Have you some ideas about that or is it simply stating more research need? The same applies for p.6, line 170-171.
- The authors are very enthusiastic on p.3: “Insights from social science studies can be used to improve design and implementation of wind energy is a way that is both technically feasible and socially desirable. For example, SSH can contribute solutions for smoother and faster deployment processes that lead to fewer contestations”. I am not sure if it is that easy. For example, we know very well that fairness of the decision making process is of great importance for the implementation of wind energy projects (e.g. Hall et al. 2013, Hoen et al. 2019; Sonnberger und Ruddat 2017). But what is considered as “a fair process” isn’t that clear in any instance. I recommend a more “realistic” or moderate formulation.
- The role of “[…] independent (but interrelated) social science research […]” is highlighted on p.4. I totally agree with that. We need it. But have you any ideas who will pay for it and why?
- Considering distributive fairness, the authors state that “distributional effects of wind energy (benefits and burdens) need investigation, and solutions for improved fairness need to be developed, e.g. including benefit sharing schemes and their implementation procedures” (p.5). This idea is not really new (see Ruddat 2022).
- What exactly does the concept of “urban wind” (p.5, line 159) mean? Are there “small-scale designs” thinkable and viable that would be accepted by the residents of a metropolitan area? And how much energy could be produced by such a design?
- “Social sciences can help wind energy experts and societal actors to come together to discuss and co-design wind energy systems of the future” (p.7, lines 203-204): Again, this view (or at least this formulation) is very optimistic. Of course, talking with each other helps a lot but not all conflicts can be solved that way. The possibility of a “consensus about dissent” (Renn 2004) has to be taken into account.
- What do you mean by the “[…] a truly interdisciplinary socio-technical perspective […]” on p.9, line 268-269? Maybe I didn’t get it in the text. I worked in some interdisciplinary energy projects and all in all I had the feeling that we were working together (although I have to admit that there always was the risk of technology domination).
References
Bickerstaff, I. Lorenzoni, N.F. Pidgeon, W. Poortinga, P. Simmons, Reframing nuclear power in the UK energy debate: nuclear power, climate change mitigation and radioactive waste, Public Understand. Sci. 17 (2) (2008) 145–169, https://doi. org/10.1177/0963662506066719.
Hall, N., Ashworth, P., and Devine-Wright, P.: Societal ac- ceptance of wind farms. Analysis of four common themes across Australian case studies, Energ. Policy, 58, 200–208, https://doi.org/10.1016/j.enpol.2013.03.009, 2013.
Hoen, B., Firestone, J., Rand, J., Elliot, D., Hübner, G., Pohl, J., Wiser, R., Lantz, E., Haac, T. R., and Kaliski, K.: Attitudes of U. S. Wind Turbine Neighbors: Analysis of a Nationwide Survey, Energ. Policy, 134, 1–11, https://doi.org/10.1016/j.enpol.2019.110981, 2019.
N.F. Pidgeon, I. Lorenzoni, W. Poortinga, Climate change or nuclear power—No thanks!: A quantitative study of public perceptions and risk framing in Britain, Global Environ. Change 18 (1) (2008) 69–85, https://doi.org/10.1016/j. gloenvcha.2007.09.005.
Renn, O.: The Challenge of Integrating Deliberation and Ex- pertise: Participation and Discourse in Risk Management, in: Risk Analysis and Society: An Interdisciplinary Characterization of the Field, edited by: McDaniels, T. L. and Small, M. J., Cambridge University Press, Cambridge, 289–366, https://doi.org/10.1017/CBO9780511814662, 2004.
Ruddat, M. (2022): Public acceptance of wind energy – concepts, empirical drivers and some open questions. Wind Energy Science, 7, S. 1679–1691, 2022 DOI: https://doi.org/10.5194/wes-7-1679-2022.
Sonnberger, M. and Ruddat, M.: Local and socio-political accep- tance of wind farms in Germany, Technol. Soc., 51, 56–65, https://doi.org/10.1016/j.techsoc.2017.07.005, 2017.
Sonnberger, M. / Ruddat, M. / Arnold, A. / Scheer, D. / Poortinga, W. / Böhm, G. / Bertoldo, R. / Mays, C. / Pidgeon, N. / Poumadère, M. / Steentjes, K. / Tvinnereim, E. (2021): Climate concerned but anti-nuclear: Exploring (dis)approval of nuclear energy in four European countries. Energy Research & Social Science 75 (5), pp. 1-12,
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1016/j.erss.2021.102008.Spence, D. Venables, N.F. Pidgeon, W. Poortinga, C. Demski, Public Perceptions of Climate Change and Energy Futures in Britain: Summary Findings of a Survey Conducted in January-March 2010, Technical Report, Cardiff, 2010.
-
EC1: 'Reply on RC2', Bonnie Ram, 22 Apr 2024
Thank you so much for your thoughtful comments. Your efforts are uch appreciated. Bonnie
Citation: https://doi.org/10.5194/wes-2023-174-EC1
Viewed
| HTML | XML | Total | BibTeX | EndNote | |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 489 | 179 | 21 | 689 | 13 | 13 |
- HTML: 489
- PDF: 179
- XML: 21
- Total: 689
- BibTeX: 13
- EndNote: 13
Viewed (geographical distribution)
| Country | # | Views | % |
|---|
| Total: | 0 |
| HTML: | 0 |
| PDF: | 0 |
| XML: | 0 |
- 1