Contending Expertise: An Interpretive Approach to (Re)conceiving Wind Power's ‘Planning Problem’

Abstract

We explore the complex and multidimensional nature of wind power's ‘planning problem’ by investigating the ways different knowledges and knowledge holders seek to accumulate authority over the ‘facts’ of a situation. This is undertaken through an interpretive analysis of how different parties to contentious wind farm debates in Ireland strived to mobilize contending realities wherein they were advantageously positioned as credible sources of knowledge. We advance a novel approach grounded in rhetorical theory that reveals and explains how the different parties to these debates deployed nuanced discursive strategies that constituted their character (ethos) by skilfully interlacing implicit and explicit portrayals of scientific objectivity (logos) with emotive subjectivity (pathos). In doing so, we identify the important role played by ‘rescaling’ in privileging and marginalizing different perspectives within both the contending discourses and the formal processes of planning application assessment. We draw conclusions from this analysis regarding broader debates in environmental governance and suggest how wind power's ‘planning problem’ should be reconceived.

Key Words:

• Expertise
• discourse
• scale
• wind energy
• planning

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.

Notes

1. It is important to note here that pre-existing perceptions of somebody's character by an audience, and indeed the person themselves is not precluded. Rather, such pre-existing perceptions must be negotiated (consolidated or dissipated) through rhetoric. Thus, attention to rhetoric provides an additional dimension to an understanding of how perceptions of character may be cultivated in the audience.

2. Consequent on a precipitous collapse in national exchequer funding between September 2008 and November 2010, the Irish government requested international financial assistance from the International Monetary Fund, the European Commission and the European Central Bank in November 2010. The Irish government agreed a number of public expenditure reductions and tax increases as conditions of receipt of this financial assistance.

3. The ‘Targeted Review’ of the Irish Wind Energy Development Guidelines by the Department of the Environment, Community and Local Government (DoECLG) outlines ‘shadow flicker’ as follows:

Wind turbines, like other tall structures, can cast long shadows when the sun is low in the sky. The effect known as “shadow flicker” occurs where the rotating blades of a wind turbine cast a moving shadow which, if it passes over a window in a nearby house or other property results in a rapid change or flicker in the incoming sunlight. The effect will occur only for a short period during a given day and only under specific concurrent circumstances, namely when: • The sun is shining and is at a low angle (after dawn and before sunset), and • There is sufficient direct sunlight to cause shadows (cloud, mist, fog or air pollution could limit solar energy levels), and • A turbine is directly between the sun and the affected property, and within a distance that the shadow has not diminished below perceptible levels, and • There is enough wind energy to ensure that the turbine blades are moving

Extracted from page 18 of DoECLG (2013) ‘Targeted Review’ of the Irish Wind Energy Development Guidelines (DoECLG, Dublin, Ireland)

4. Ireland's southern province of approximately 24,680 km², with a population recorded as 1,246,088 persons in the 2011 Irish National Census produced by the Irish Statistics Office.

5. Flyvbjerg extends this idea by showing that it is the ‘appearance’ of such rationality rather than a genuine concern with its deployment that is important in governing activity (1998).