Wind power conflict of interest: residential housing and socioeconomy

Wind power has experienced a rapid expansion during the past decades, and a continued rapid expansion is planned in order to reach the climate goals. Wind power also enjoys a strong public support, however this support has waned somewhat in recent years.

In relation to this, there exist quite little research on how many people actually live very close to existing, and future planned, wind turbines; as well as which sociopolitical groups that mostly live close to the turbines.

In this project we plan to use high quality spatial datasets to analyze where wind power has been built, and is planned to be built, in relation to residential housing and different socioeconomic groups. The research has implications for distributional justice, and thereby for continued public acceptance.

It also has implications for the ongoing debate of local compensation for wind power expansion.