While national opinion polls often demonstrate unequivocal support for a new energy economy, there is a strong countermovement emerging across rural America against wind energy development. Communities from North Carolina to California are in the midst of furious battles to limit new installations through sweeping legislative acts and zoning ordinances. This political response is in part a consequence of outdated modes of public participation that fail to fully capture the socio-cultural dislocations and vulnerabilities that occur when vast new energy geographies emerge. The objective of this project is to advance understandings of the role of public deliberation in the design of the new American energy economy. With a focus on wind energy, this project seeks to design, test and evaluate a deliberative model that engages diverse publics toward envisioning a new energy landscape in regions of active development. The research will be performed over three phases. Phase I refines the landscape symposia approach so that it represents emerging best practices in deliberative planning, including the use of landscape visualization and foresight planning techniques. In Phase II, three test symposia will be conducted at diverse geographical locations at the county level involving samples of community residents. Phase III will comparatively examine the deliberative processes and outcomes of these test symposia. The comparative analysis will inform the production of a Community Guide for wind energy planning that will make results accessible to industry, agency and advocacy groups. The project?s intellectual merit lies in its extension of largely European STS models and insights on participatory science and technology assessment toward critical American environmental policy concerns. The project will also design and test a set of visualization techniques that elicit socio-cultural concerns about landscape change, including the use of dynamic mapping tools, field tours and photographic analyses. The project?s broader impacts focus on catalyzing participatory deliberation about the new energy technologies that are reshaping American communities and landscapes. In addition to academic and industry publications and presentations, the outreach components of the project include the training of undergraduate researchers, a science café, large public lecture, and the production of a national Community Guide for industry, NGO and agency professionals
Growing concerns about energy independence, climate change and economic development have led the Federal and state governments to enact laws and grant incentives to increase wind energy generation by electric utilities. Yet in communities across the country, local stakeholders hold mixed views about wind energy, especially when it concerns where to build wind turbines. Some welcome wind energy for the potential economic benefits and the possibility of low-carbon electricity production. Others react with strong opposition, citing impacts on local landscapes, community identity and character, wildlife, and health issues related to noise. What is driving the opposition to wind energy? Is it simply another case of NIMBYism — the "not in my backyard" syndrome? Or are there other, more complex, factors at play? To answer this question, a research team led by Principal Investigator Dr. Roopali Phadke of Macalester College designed and led three intensive one-day stakeholder symposia across the country, with the assistance of undergraduate students and facilitation support from the Consensus Building Institute. After a pilot symposium in Wyoming in 2011, the three workshops were held in diverse communities across the United States where wind energy development was proposed and meeting citizen opposition: western Michigan, western Minnesota, and western Massachusetts. Participants were recruited from the local communities, with the goals of balancing for age, gender, occupation and income level. The National Science Foundation funded the project with additional support from the Lincoln Institute for Land Policy. The research team designed the workshops to be highly interactive and engaging, using regional aerial mapping, interactive polling, visual simulations, and alternative analysis tools. Each workshop began with a photo essay of images of the regional landscape, displaying examples of local agricultural, industrial, and recreational land uses. Next, a keypad poll gauged participants’ initial opinions and attitudes towards wind energy. Participants then completed a questionnaire about their opinions of the impact of wind energy on a more specific set of issues. They took part in a question and answer session with a panel of experts, and divided into smaller groups to discuss landscape preferences and values, and policy guidelines or "best practices" for wind development. Each group’s recommendations were compiled into a larger list and then voted on by the whole group using the keypad polls. Lastly, participants completed the same opinion survey and questionnaire as they had in the morning in order to identify any changes in opinion throughout the day. The project website includes workshop reports from each of these four sites. The research team found that stakeholders bring complex social experiences to bear in how they value the landscapes where they live, work, and play. Underlying local cultural and political values drive views about the value, size, and scale of wind energy development. Whether people value the landscape as ‘primarily aesthetic’ versus ‘primarily working’ is a powerful predictor of views toward wind development. Michigan and Massachusetts have a small, older, decreasing agricultural base, while Minnesota has an active, long-term, and dominant agricultural sector. In Minnesota, the participants raised concerns about wind development, but primarily focused on practical questions such as: "Can I drive my tractor around a turbine site if one is placed on land I lease to a wind developer? Will new transmission lines be needed that might affect my operations?" Massachusetts and Michigan, in contrast, have active and growing tourism, second home, and retirement economies. In Michigan and Massachusetts, participants raised more concerns about potential impacts to property values, wildlife, visual amenities, and public health and safety. The workshops highlighted how certain typical cultural and political values of a region affect citizens’ reactions to various kinds of wind development. In Minnesota, residents’ questions and responses appeared to be shaped by practical concerns about landscape change and a commitment to local, working, privately-held property. In Michigan, a strong commitment to the tourist economy, a large second-home market, and more skepticism about government and strong support for free markets led to greater opposition to wind development. Long-time local Michigan residents who traditionally derived their income from agriculture, for instance, expressed greater ambivalence about the trade-offs between landscape impacts and economic development than did newer residents. In Massachusetts, most participants’ displayed a strong dislike for any wind development, with exceptions for the smallest possible, locally-owned, locally-beneficial wind development. These views were likely driven by their commitment to local industry, skepticism of corporations, strong values of home rule, and an intimate relationship with their direct surroundings. In addition to sharing the findings from these communities, the research team created a facilitation guide so that interested organizations can emulate this approach to citizen deliberation. More information about the project is available at www.macalester.edu/windenergy.
