Resource rights and the evolution of renewable energy technologies

Saskia Vermeylen

Renewable Energy, 2010, vol. 35, issue 11, 2399-2405

Abstract: Modern renewable energy technologies such as wind turbines and photovoltaic cells are developing rapidly, which raises the risk of conflicts over a range of issues, from aesthetic impacts to rights of access. Although these conflicts arise from the deployment of a new technology, in many cases the underlying nature of the conflict is not novel, and historic cases can help to inform the development of a fair and effective management of these conflicts. This paper draws attention to one particular type of conflict; namely the right to gain or protect access to the energy flux. An examination of historic conflicts and judicial arbitration over the rights to extract useful energy by capturing the wind, water or sun, reveals that it is the nature of the energy capturing technology, the end-use of the energy and the local cultural and infrastructural setting which are key to the determination of local property rights over the flow of air, water or sunlight. Historical examples of wind and watermills, and a historic-contemporary comparison of ‘rights to light’, suggest that renewable energy technologies that are susceptible to multiple conflicts, for example due to the scale of the technology or the directionality of the energy flux across individual property boundaries, could be effectively governed in a more collaborative manner, with laws being both technology specific and locally adaptive.

Keywords: Property rights; Ownership; Windmills; Watermills; Solar (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2010
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (5)

Downloads: (external link)
http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0960148110001345
Full text for ScienceDirect subscribers only

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:eee:renene:v:35:y:2010:i:11:p:2399-2405

DOI: 10.1016/j.renene.2010.03.017

Access Statistics for this article

Renewable Energy is currently edited by Soteris A. Kalogirou and Paul Christodoulides

More articles in Renewable Energy from Elsevier
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Catherine Liu ().