Legitimacy and Efficiency in Planning Processes—(How) Does Wind Power Change the Situation?

Abstract

In land-use planning processes there often exists a tension between, on the one hand, making efforts to increase the democratic legitimacy of the process and, on the other, ensuring efficiency in the procedures. This is not least relevant in the case of large-scale wind power where development decisions balance between the need to safe-guard local self-determination and the urgency of mitigating climate change. This paper investigates how the issue of legitimacy versus efficiency is managed within the national planning systems of Finland, Norway and Sweden when faced with the expansion of wind power and how the national strategies for wind power planning are perceived by different stakeholders. As the EU Renewable Energy Directives set the conditions for national policy in the field, the empirical work starts with an examination of these documents before moving on to a comparison of the national planning and permitting processes. The results show that the development of wind power has been moving planning procedures away from more inclusive planning methods in favour of more top-down and streamlined ones.

Notes

1 A wind power construction/park of more than 10 MW or more than 5 MW if there can be major effects for the environment of the community (Ministry of Climate and Environment, 2009).

2 That is, projects with more than seven turbines higher than 120 m or more than two turbines higher than 150 m (Gradén, 2011).