Support for renewable energy: The case of wind power

Robert Germeshausen, Sven Heim and Ulrich J. Wagner

No 25-043, ZEW Discussion Papers from ZEW - Leibniz Centre for European Economic Research

Abstract: The rise of societal goals like climate change mitigation and energy security calls for rapid capacity growth in renewable electricity sources, yet citizens' support is put to a test when such technologies emit negative local externalities. We estimate the impact of wind turbine deployment on granular measures of revealed preferences for renewable electricity in product and political markets. We address potentially endogenous siting of turbines with an IV design that exploits quasi-experimental variation in profitability induced by subsidies. We find that wind turbines significantly reduce citizens' support locally, but this effect quickly fades with distance from the site. We assess policy instruments for enhancing citizens' support for renewable energy in light of our results.

Keywords: renewable energy; wind power; public support; elections; externalities (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: D12 D72 Q42 Q48 Q50 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2025
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-ppm
References: Add references at CitEc
Citations:

Downloads: (external link)
https://www.econstor.eu/bitstream/10419/327111/1/1936682397.pdf (application/pdf)

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:zbw:zewdip:327111

Access Statistics for this paper

More papers in ZEW Discussion Papers from ZEW - Leibniz Centre for European Economic Research Contact information at EDIRC.
Bibliographic data for series maintained by ZBW - Leibniz Information Centre for Economics ().