The Politics of Social Acceptance of Alternative Energy

Political rows over the construction of sustainable energy infrastructures have become a frequent feature of nowadays’ politics. Whilst the general acceptance of alternative energy sources in many countries is high, specific projects often face staunch resistance. Yet the social acceptance of alternative energy forms is one of the keys for the energy transition. If it should not be possible to realize a large enough number of infrastructure projects such as power plants, storage units and transmission lines, the energy transition is going to fail and with it all efforts to limit global warming. Social acceptance of alternative energy is not hewn in stone, it is socially constructed, locally embedded and individually distinctive. It may be influenced by a number of factors, including information provision and social learning. Following participatory democratic theory, the latter factors play a role in participatory policy-making in the sense of “learning how democratic policy-making works”. If this is correct, the question of how political debates on alternative energy projects are taking place in local politics are important for making progress on questions of social acceptance. We have investigated a number of controversial cases of decision-finding processes on the siting of wind farms in one Austrian state (Land). We analysed the conflicts and the ways in which citizens became engaged, the roles of interest groups, political structures and the interplay between the different political levels. The most important question on the local level pertains to the willingness of the public to carry the concrete costs of the energy transition. On the local level these are not limited to rising electricity prices, but include e.g. the sight and sound of windmills, which now may already approach a height of 200 metres. We have found identity politics to be important, in the sense of the identification of people with a landscape, they are emotionally connected with, as they have lived in a certain area for a prolonged period of time or have moved to recently, fleeing crowded urban areas. We however found processes to be of equal importance as arguments and actors. For example in the question if and how citizen initiatives were taken seriously, if the mayor was ready to consider both pro and con arguments or if citizens had the possibility to influence questions put up in referenda. Indeed plebiscites had an important role in most case studies, although they more often than not were not able to decide if a wind park was going to be built or not. Rather, they frequently prolonged the political process, led to a divisive atmosphere and hindered deliberation and dialogue.