Project partners      

• Freie Universität Berlin – Environmental Policy Research Centre, Germany (Coordination)
• CanaryAssociation of Renewable Energies (ACER), Spain
• Center for International Climate and Environmental Research (CICERO), Norway
• Ecoazioni, Italy
• ECORYS españa, Spain
• ICLEI European Secretariat (ICLEI)
• Institute of Physical Energetics (IPE), Latvia
• Latvian Environmental Investment Fund (LEIF), Latvia
• National Agency for New Technologies, Energy and Sustainable Economic Development), Italy
• Norwegian Water Resources and Energy Directorate (NVE), Norway
• Polish National Energy Conservation Agency (KAPE), Poland
• Seecon Ingenieure GmbH, Germany

Overall objective

The overall objective of WinWind is to enhance the socially inclusive and environmentally sound market uptake of wind energy by increasing its social acceptance in wind energy scarce regions. Specific objectives are: screening, analyzing, discussing, transferring/replicating, testing & disseminating feasible solutions for increasing social acceptance. The project makes use of a widely recognized conceptual framework for social acceptance of renewable energy technologies differentiating between socio-political acceptance, market acceptance and community (project level) acceptance.

Steps

WinWind is based the following steps:

1. Analysis of country and region specific market barriers and social acceptance problems in selected wind energy scarce target regions; development of a taxonomy of acceptance drivers and barriers for each target region;
2. Initiation of a dialogue with market actors and stakeholders from the target regions by setting up national/regional stakeholder desks; organization of thematic workshops and stakeholder consultations with the purpose of analyzing and discussing region specific acceptance problems and approaches, and to explore the perspectives of transferring best practice solutions;
3. Compilation of case studies covering proven ("best practice") and innovative measures and governance approaches which (can) contribute to improving the social acceptance, as for example, procedural and financial involvement of citizens and communities; voluntary agreements and public private partnerships, quality labels and certificates for project developers, or voluntary self-commitments of the wind energy industry; analysis of critical success factors and pre-requisites of a transfer of best practices to other regions within one partner country or between different partner countries;
4. Stimulation of a transfer of proven ("best practice") and innovative measures and governance approaches within and between the partner countries;
5. Initiation of a policy dialogue with decision-makers at the national/regional level and formulation of policy recommendations with the aim of optimizing national and regional policies and planning processes in terms of socially and environmentally acceptable wind power expansion in the target regions;
6. Initiation of policy dialogue with decision-makers at the European level addressing a) problems of social acceptance of wind power, b) proven (“best practice”) and innovative measures and governance approaches at national and regional level and c) on policies and measures of the European Union to promote the social acceptance of wind power.
7. Development of principles and criteria for fair, socially and environmentally acceptable wind energy serving as guidance for policy and market actors, taking into account the project outcomes and innovative bottom-up initiatives in selected Member States, such as voluntary agreements or regional quality labels for project developers.

Role of FFU

FFU is responsible for the overall project coordination. Additionally, FFU coordinates the work packages “Regional stakeholder dialogues” and “Policy lessons”. FFU is also involved in the coordination of the German stakeholder desk in co-operation with seecon Ingenieure GmbH. The German target regions are Thuringia and Saxony.

Follow the link to the WinWind website.