Social Acceptance Interventions Framework

The overall objective of the WENDY project is to increase social acceptability of wind energy at the community level, by triggering a change in societal perception towards onshore and offshore wind energy projects. To this end, Project WENDY aims to study the factors underlying social acceptance through an in-depth analysis at three dimensions: social sciences, environmental sciences, and technological engineering. The deliverable 4.1 has been developed under Task 4.1, Work Package 4 (WP4) of the WENDY project and builds on the insights generated in WP2. WP4 aims to conduct a holistic impact assessment of wind installations and develop an assessment system to analyze cumulative social, technical, and environmental impacts of wind farms. The present report represents the social aspect of this impact assessment and conducts an in-depth review of the social acceptance literature to select relevant best practices, interventions used to enhance the community acceptability of wind farms, in response to stakeholders’ needs. In part 1, we review various definitions of the concept of social acceptance, highlighting its multidimensionality, followed by a classification system for categorizing the diverse factors that may support, enhance, or hinder social acceptance of wind farms. These factors drive not just community acceptance, but also socio-political and market acceptance. In part 2, for each of the category of factors described earlier, we present a subset of best practices and interventions based on wind farm case studies and empirical research. These best practices have been implemented in wind farms across the world with positive results. However, it is important to note, that “every project is unique and involves specific challenges” (International Energy Agency, 2013), thus it is advisable to modify these best practices as per the specific wind farm case. In part 3, we endeavor to convert the best practices framework into a user-friendly dashboard and briefly describe the characteristics of this social acceptance interventions tool. This tool, given a set of input information, will present a set of behavioral interventions and recommendations, designed to enhance social acceptance of existing or proposed wind energy projects. The target group for this tool would be those concerned with or affected by wind farm projects - stakeholders involved in project development, planning, policy making, local community.