Public acceptance of large-scale wind energy generation for export from Ireland to the UK: evidence from Ireland

Abstract

Although international trade in energy may offer a flexible and cost effective means by which European countries could meet their renewable energy targets, developers in the exporting nation can face local opposition for reasons which are not always clear. Using focus groups and a public survey, we contrast perspectives between local stakeholders and wind farm operators and investigate the community impacts associated with large-scale wind energy for domestic use and export from Ireland to the UK. Although the export of renewable energy from Ireland to the UK is currently on hold, our findings suggest that significant investment is required by the state and wind farm operators in better information provision, trust building, effective instruments to internalise wind farm externalities and co-management arrangements before Ireland can fully capture the benefits of wind exports to the UK.

Keywords:

• Export
• wind farm externalities
• focus groups

Acknowledgements

The authors are grateful to the public participants and wind farm developers for their valuable time and effort. Thanks also to the three anonymous referees for their helpful comments to improve this paper.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.

Notes

1. Recent legislation in the UK means that electricity generated from wind farms is likely to be primarily restricted to offshore sources (DECC 2015) which is more expensive to produce than onshore power. This is not the case in Ireland, giving Ireland a considerable comparative advantage.

2. The SUSPLAN project aims to increase the share of RES in Europe and lead to a more integrated European energy market. In the project, nine regions/countries were selected to analyse their potential for grid integration (EC 2014a).

3. The Energiewende (energy transition) is the German transition to a low carbon renewable energy supply (Energy transition 2015).

Additional information

Funding

This work has been carried out as part of the Earth and Natural Sciences Doctoral Studies Programme, which was funded under the Programme for Research in Third-Level Institutions Cycle 5 (PRTLI-5) and co-funded under the European Regional Development Fund (ERDF).