Targets and policies to accelerate the growth of wind power in Europe in spite of resistance and conflicts

Conflicts surrounding the expansion of wind power in Europe are increasing, [1-2] which has hindered its growth in recent years. [3] However, in the near future, wind power needs to expand much more rapidly to meet the EU's climate and energy security goals. Meeting wind power targets in the Fit-for-55 strategy [4] and REPowerEU [5] would require faster growth across the EU compared to what has been observed in most individual countries. [6] In this paper we seek to understand whether and how individual European countries plan to re-accelerate the recently stalling onshore wind deployment in spite of the increasing conflicts surrounding this technology. We start with analysing the current and historical growth patterns and maximum growth rates of onshore wind in European countries, and compare these to a similar analysis completed in 2021. [7] We show that in most European countries (except Finland, Greece, the Netherlands and Sweden), the growth of wind power is no longer accelerating or is even slowing down. Subsequently, we look into the countries’ recently updated National Energy and Climate Plans and other relevant documents to identify current national targets for wind power capacity or generation, and analyse whether and how these targets would change the growth phase and maximum growth rate. We find that eight countries have set national targets to re-accelerate the growth of wind power by 2030. Yet only in two of these countries (Austria and Germany) there are plans to re-accelerate the growth beyond the fastest rates observed historically. This demonstrates the challenges for policies to overcome the inertia of socio-technical systems surrounding the deployment of wind power. Subsequently, the paper reviews cases of re-acceleration of onshore wind growth in the past. We identify several notable cases of past re-acceleration (for example, in Austria, Denmark and Spain) and show that these have mostly been due to enactment and then removal of policies unfavourable to onshore wind deployment. This approach is not likely to work in the future for reducing conflicts surrounding wind power. Finally, the paper identifies and characterises policies that countries are planning to deploy in order to accelerate onshore wind deployment in presence of social conflicts. In particular, we show that many countries aim to shorten or simplify permitting procedures, top-down designate specific land for wind power development and to pay compensation to affected communities. We conclude with discussion of potential effectiveness of such measures. 1. Diógenes, JRF. et al. (2020) doi: 10.1016/j.erss.2019.101337 2. Lundheim, SH. et al. (2022) doi: 10.3390/en15144934 3. Pavlenko, A. & Cherp, A. (2022) When is it feasible for policies to accelerate energy transitions? The case of REPowerEU. Paper presented at ECPR General Conference 2023. 4. European Commission. (2021) https://eur-lex.europa.eu/legal-content/EN/TXT/?uri=CELEX%3A52021DC0550. 5. European Commission. (2022) https://eur-lex.europa.eu/legal-content/EN/TXT/?uri=COM%3A2022%3A230%3AFIN. 6. Vinichenko, V., et al. (2023). doi: 10.1088/1748-9326/acf47a 7. Cherp, A et al. (2021) doi: 10.1038/s41560-021-00863-0