WinWind seeks to raise social acceptance and support in wind energy scarce target regions (WESR) by assessing, disseminating, developing and transferring innovative community participation and engagement measures. Participation and engagement are regarded as key drivers for social acceptance and market uptake of wind energy. The partners have selected wind energy scarce target regions as the focus of most project activities and model regions with high wind energy penetration levels to provide potential best practice references especially regarding social acceptance.
The proposal considers from a multidisciplinary perspective the case of WESR in Germany, Spain, Italy, Poland and Norvegia. These selected countries represent a variety of realities ranging from large to very scarce wind energy penetration. In its turn,
Latvia is considered as a poor country in terms of the use of wind power, having only (2016.gadā) wind energy capacity of 1.084 MW per 1000 km2 state area and 35.9 kW per 1000 resident population.
WinWind analyses regional and local communities´ specificities, socioeconomic, spatial & environmental characteristics and the reasons for slow market deployment in the selected target regions. Best practices to overcome the identified obstacles are assessed and – where feasible – transferred. The operational tasks are taken up by national/regional desks consisting of the project partners, market actors and stakeholders in each country.
WinWind develops concrete solutions. The activities focus on novel informal/voluntary procedural participation of communities, direct and indirect financial participation & benefit sharing. Finally, policy lessons with validity across Europe are drawn and recommendations proposed.
