Recruiting the ‘silent majority’ to deescalate the energy conflict regarding wind farms in Amsterdam

To contribute to combating climate change the city of Amsterdam wants to build extra wind farms. Groups of residents organised themselves in energy communities which aim to finance and operate the wind farms. However, there are also residents with major objections. These citizens are represented by the social movement organisation “Windalarm” which successfully delayed/blocked the wind energy plans of the municipality. Because many conflicts arose between politicians, members of the social movement organisation and members of the energy communities, a ‘reflection phase’ was announced in which no irreversible decisions were taken. In this phase a Participatory Value Evaluation (PVE) was conducted to elicit the values that underlie the considerations and worries of different groups of citizens – not only the citizens who were already engaged in the conflict, but also the silent majority. In the PVE, 5435 citizens gave an advice to the municipality. The essence of a PVE is that citizens are effectively put in the shoes of a policymaker. In this PVE, participants were shown eight possible additional requirements that the municipality could impose on plans for wind turbines. For each requirement, participants were given information about the consequences of recommending an additional requirement. After participants indicated their preferences, they were given the opportunity to explain this with arguments. These written statements were analysed by 10 researchers to elicit people’s values. The quantitative analysis of participants’ choices in the PVE show that citizens can be divided in two extreme clusters of supporters and opponents and three moderate clusters. The three moderate clusters all think that Amsterdam should do as much as possible to generate sustainable energy within its boundaries, but two of the moderate clusters have serious doubts about whether building additional wind farms is the right means to reach this end. Members from the moderate clusters think that the health effects of windmills should be rigorously scrutinized, and that alternatives for wind energy must be carefully explored. The PVE shows that health, responsibility, sustainability, intergenerational justice, intragenerational and nature/landscape are important values for a large majority of Amsterdam's citizens when it comes to making choices concerning Amsterdam's sustainable energy ambitions. However, citizens with opposing views operationalize these values differently which is a key challenge for the dialogue on wind energy. For instance, supporters of wind energy think that Amsterdam should take responsibility for combating climate change. On the other hand, opponents believe that the municipality should take its responsibility to prevent negative health effects of citizens. The PVE had a deescalating impact on the policy process because all stakeholders (even the citizen activists) identified themselves more with the moderate clusters than with the extreme clusters. Hence, after discussing the PVE results stakeholders found the perspectives of parties on the other side of the table more reasonable than before. Moreover, the PVE provided a starting point for dialogue as stakeholders learned that they shared values such as health, responsibility and intergenerational/intragenerational justice. The dialogue that was started after the PVE focused on solutions that respected these values.