Contrasting the core beliefs regarding the effective implementation of wind power. An international study of stakeholder perspectives

Maarten Wolsink and Sylvia Breukers

Journal of Environmental Planning and Management, 2010, vol. 53, issue 5, 535-558

Abstract: This paper analyses patterns in beliefs about the implementation of wind power as part of a geographical comparison of onshore wind power developments in the Netherlands, North-Rhine Westphalia and England. Q methodology is applied, in order to systematically compare the patterns in stakeholder views on the institutional conditions and changes in the domains of energy policy, spatial planning and environmental policy. Three factors represent support for wind power implementation from fundamentally different perspectives. The fourth perspective is critical opposed to wind power developments as well as critical to the manner in which wind projects are proposed, planned and implemented. These four perspectives exist across the geographical cases; however, some perspectives are prominent in one case and marginal in another. This relates to different legacies and varying implementation achievements in the three cases. The analysis shows that an approach that focuses on implementing as much wind power as possible, relying on technocratic reasoning and hierarchical policies is in practice the least successful, whereas collaborative perspectives with more emphasis on local issues and less on the interests of the conventional energy sector were particularly dominant in the most successful case, North-Rhine Westphalia.

Keywords: wind energy implementation; core beliefs; institutional capacity; stakeholder perspectives (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2010
References: View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (21)

Downloads: (external link)
http://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1080/09640561003633581 (text/html)
Access to full text is restricted to subscribers.

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:taf:jenpmg:v:53:y:2010:i:5:p:535-558

Ordering information: This journal article can be ordered from
http://www.tandfonline.com/pricing/journal/CJEP20

DOI: 10.1080/09640561003633581

Access Statistics for this article

Journal of Environmental Planning and Management is currently edited by Dr Neil Powe, Dr Ken Willis and George Bill Page

More articles in Journal of Environmental Planning and Management from Taylor & Francis Journals
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Chris Longhurst ().