Paradigm shift in Danish wind power: the (un)sustainable transformation of a sector

ABSTRACT

The Danish wind power sector grew out of a combination of small and medium-sized entrepreneurial firms and local pioneers forming small-scale wind farm cooperatives. This paper studies the initial organisation and subsequent transformation of the socio-technical assemblage or ‘agencement’ around wind power in Denmark, focusing on the changing roles and agency of electricity producers. We propose a conceptual model for mapping the transformation over time, following five entangled dimensions: capitalisation instruments, turbine technology, capital investment, regulation of finance and ownership modes. We show how changes in all five socio-material dimensions have produced a ‘paradigm shift’, reconfiguring wind power from a distributed power source to critical infrastructure. This shift has marginalised local players and mobilised new types of producers and ownership forms. Using the conceptual model, we map the controversy resulting from the paradigm shift. Our relational lens of market studies within Science & Technology Studies captures how wind power’s ‘sustainability’ has become contested, and how this cannot be understood as a matter of ‘community acceptance’ dissociated from material factors. Proposing our conceptual model for future studies, we contribute not only to the extant social acceptance literature, but also to critical energy debates on the governance of climate change and sustainability.

KEYWORDS:

• Danish wind power
• socio-technical agencement
• paradigm shift
• social acceptance
• conceptual model

Acknowledgements

We would also like to thank voluntary reviewers, hereunder in particular Professor Susse Georg. We are also grateful for receiving comments from panelists at the iREMB conference (Innovative Re-making of Markets and Business Models for a renewable energy system based upon wind power) held in Copenhagen (Oct. 23–25 2019). Especially we are thankful for comments from Professors Daniel Breslau and Alain Nadaï on the self-reinforcing nature of the development towards an industrialised wind power assemblage, and the way in which a potential solution might be the development of seemingly ‘sub-optimal’ solutions in techno-economic terms, in order to reach socially more robust sustainability transitions.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Notes on contributors

Julia Kirch Kirkegaard is a researcher at the Department of Wind Energy, at the Technical University of Denmark. She holds a PhD in Innovation Studies, Organisation Studies, and Science & Technology Studies from Copenhagen Business School, DK. Julia's overall research interest is to shed light on socio-technical controversies over the green transition, providing insight into industry and innovation dynamics related to grand societal challenges.

Tom Cronin is a senior advisor at the Department of Wind Energy, at the Technical University of Denmark. He has an engineering background and has been working with wind farm development and the technology used for 15 years. A more recent research interest has been interplay between technology and the network of actors that are involved in wind power deployment.

Sophie Nyborg is a researcher in the Department of Technology, Management and Economics, Innovation Division, at the Technical University of Denmark. She holds a PhD in Science and Technology Studies from the University of Aalborg, DK. Her overall research interest is in responsible governance of science and technology, technologies of democracy and co-creation in innovation processes related to grand societal challenges, in particular in the green energy transition.

Peter Karnøe is Professor at the Department of Planning, the Center for Design, Innovation and Sustainable Transitions at Aalborg University in Copenhagen, DK. Peter's main research interests focus on sustainable design and transitions, notably with an empirical focus on the Danish wind power sector.

Correction Statement

This article has been republished with minor changes. These changes do not impact the academic content of the article.

Notes

1 The paper acknowledges that ‘paradigm shifts’ are normally related to Kuhn’s (1962) idea of a paradigm shift as a fundamental change in the basic concepts and experimental practices of a scientific discipline, as well to Hall’s (1993) theory of policy paradigms (in Henriksen, 2013, p. 2). Our paper relates the paradigm shift to a fundamental socio-technical change of the Danish wind power STA. We follow Henriksen’s (2013, p. 3) performative take on paradigm shifts, by looking at the heterogeneous ‘assemblages of humans and devices as that which performs the action inside a paradigm’.

2 Property value loss scheme; ‘Green Fund’ from which municipalities could apply money to support recreational or landscape values in the municipality; Guarantee Fund that would secure loan options for conducting feasibility studies. The co-ownership scheme obliges a wind farm developer to offer the local community (within 4.5 km) to buy shares in the onshore wind farm equal to a minimum of 20% of the capital value (Retsinformation.dk; Køberet til vindmølleandele for lokale borgere §13 and §15.)

Additional information

Funding

This work was supported by The Danish Council for Strategic Research: [Grant Number 1305-00021B].