The impact of public acceptance on cost efficiency and environmental sustainability in decentralized energy systems

Jann M. Weinand; Russell McKenna; Max Kleinebrahm; Fabian Scheller; Wolf Fichtner

doi:10.1016/j.patter.2021.100301

The impact of public acceptance on cost efficiency and environmental sustainability in decentralized energy systems

Jann M. Weinand^*
, Russell McKenna
, Max Kleinebrahm
, Fabian Scheller
, Wolf Fichtner

^*Corresponding author for this work

Karlsruhe Institute of Technology
Technical University of Denmark

Research output: Contribution to journal › Article › peer-review

39 Citations (Scopus)

23 Downloads (Pure)

Abstract

Local resistance often hinders renewable energy technology developments, especially for onshore wind. In decentralized energy systems, the landscape impact of wind turbines or transmission lines is a key barrier to public acceptance. By using landscape scenicness as a proxy for public acceptance, we quantify its impact on the optimal energy systems of 11,131 German municipalities. In municipalities with high scenicness, it is likely that onshore wind will be rejected, leading to higher levelized costs of energy by up to about 7 €-cent/kWh. Onshore wind would be replaced mainly by solar photovoltaics and imports, and the cost-optimal energy systems would be associated with higher CO₂ emissions of up to about 200 gCO₂/kWh compared with an average of around 50 gCO₂/kWh. The findings help to identify municipalities where public resistance to onshore wind could be particularly high and support the scientific and policy debate about the location of onshore wind farms.

Original language	English
Article number	100301
Number of pages	16
Journal	Patterns
Volume	2
Issue number	7
Early online date	28 Jun 2021
DOIs	https://doi.org/10.1016/j.patter.2021.100301
Publication status	Published - 9 Jul 2021

Bibliographical note

Funding Information:
The authors would like to thank H.G. Schwarz-von Raumer as well as the German Federal Agency for Nature Conservation for providing the scenicness data. Large parts of the methodology of this study were developed during the first author's three-and-a-half year PhD study period. The first author would therefore like to thank the three funding bodies during this period: the German Federal Ministry of Education and Research (BMBF) within the Kopernikus Project ENSURE “New ENergy grid StructURes for the German Energiewende” (funding reference: FKZ 03SFK1N0 ), the PhD College “Energy and Resource Efficiency” ( ENRES ) from the Federal State of Baden-Wuerttemberg, as well as the German Federal Ministry for Economic Affairs and Energy (BMWi) within the TrafoKommune project (funding reference: 03EN3008F ).

Funding

The authors would like to thank H.G. Schwarz-von Raumer as well as the German Federal Agency for Nature Conservation for providing the scenicness data. Large parts of the methodology of this study were developed during the first author's three-and-a-half year PhD study period. The first author would therefore like to thank the three funding bodies during this period: the German Federal Ministry of Education and Research (BMBF) within the Kopernikus Project ENSURE “New ENergy grid StructURes for the German Energiewende” (funding reference: FKZ 03SFK1N0 ), the PhD College “Energy and Resource Efficiency” ( ENRES ) from the Federal State of Baden-Wuerttemberg, as well as the German Federal Ministry for Economic Affairs and Energy (BMWi) within the TrafoKommune project (funding reference: 03EN3008F ). The authors would like to thank H.G. Schwarz-von Raumer as well as the German Federal Agency for Nature Conservation for providing the scenicness data. Large parts of the methodology of this study were developed during the first author's three-and-a-half year PhD study period. The first author would therefore like to thank the three funding bodies during this period: the German Federal Ministry of Education and Research (BMBF) within the Kopernikus Project ENSURE ?New ENergy grid StructURes for the German Energiewende? (funding reference: FKZ 03SFK1N0), the PhD College ?Energy and Resource Efficiency? (ENRES) from the Federal State of Baden-Wuerttemberg, as well as the German Federal Ministry for Economic Affairs and Energy (BMWi) within the TrafoKommune project (funding reference: 03EN3008F). Conceptualization, J.M.W. and R.M.; methodology, J.M.W. R.M. and M.K.; formal analysis, J.M.W.; data curation, J.M.W.; writing ? original draft, J.M.W.; writing ? review & editing, R.M. J.M.W. and F.S.; writing ? interactive feedback, R.M. M.K. F.S. and W.F.; visualization, J.M.W.; project administration, R.M. and W.F.; funding acquisition, R.M. W.F. and J.M.W. The authors declare no competing interests.

UN SDGs

This output contributes to the following UN Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs)

SDG 7 Affordable and Clean Energy

Keywords

cluster analysis
CO emissions
cost efficiency
DSML 3: Development/Pre-production: Data science output has been rolled out/validated across multiple domains/problems
energy system analysis
Gaussian process regression
landscape esthetics
linear optimization
onshore wind
public acceptance
scenicness

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Weinand_etal_CP_the_impact_of_VOR
This is an open access article under the CC BY-NC-ND license (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/).
Final published version, 30.7 MBLicence: CC BY-NC-ND

Cite this

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title = "The impact of public acceptance on cost efficiency and environmental sustainability in decentralized energy systems",

abstract = "Local resistance often hinders renewable energy technology developments, especially for onshore wind. In decentralized energy systems, the landscape impact of wind turbines or transmission lines is a key barrier to public acceptance. By using landscape scenicness as a proxy for public acceptance, we quantify its impact on the optimal energy systems of 11,131 German municipalities. In municipalities with high scenicness, it is likely that onshore wind will be rejected, leading to higher levelized costs of energy by up to about 7 €-cent/kWh. Onshore wind would be replaced mainly by solar photovoltaics and imports, and the cost-optimal energy systems would be associated with higher CO2 emissions of up to about 200 gCO2/kWh compared with an average of around 50 gCO2/kWh. The findings help to identify municipalities where public resistance to onshore wind could be particularly high and support the scientific and policy debate about the location of onshore wind farms.",

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author = "Weinand, \{Jann M.\} and Russell McKenna and Max Kleinebrahm and Fabian Scheller and Wolf Fichtner",

note = "Funding Information: The authors would like to thank H.G. Schwarz-von Raumer as well as the German Federal Agency for Nature Conservation for providing the scenicness data. Large parts of the methodology of this study were developed during the first author's three-and-a-half year PhD study period. The first author would therefore like to thank the three funding bodies during this period: the German Federal Ministry of Education and Research (BMBF) within the Kopernikus Project ENSURE {\textquotedblleft}New ENergy grid StructURes for the German Energiewende{\textquotedblright} (funding reference: FKZ 03SFK1N0 ), the PhD College {\textquotedblleft}Energy and Resource Efficiency{\textquotedblright} ( ENRES ) from the Federal State of Baden-Wuerttemberg, as well as the German Federal Ministry for Economic Affairs and Energy (BMWi) within the TrafoKommune project (funding reference: 03EN3008F ). ",

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AB - Local resistance often hinders renewable energy technology developments, especially for onshore wind. In decentralized energy systems, the landscape impact of wind turbines or transmission lines is a key barrier to public acceptance. By using landscape scenicness as a proxy for public acceptance, we quantify its impact on the optimal energy systems of 11,131 German municipalities. In municipalities with high scenicness, it is likely that onshore wind will be rejected, leading to higher levelized costs of energy by up to about 7 €-cent/kWh. Onshore wind would be replaced mainly by solar photovoltaics and imports, and the cost-optimal energy systems would be associated with higher CO2 emissions of up to about 200 gCO2/kWh compared with an average of around 50 gCO2/kWh. The findings help to identify municipalities where public resistance to onshore wind could be particularly high and support the scientific and policy debate about the location of onshore wind farms.

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KW - public acceptance

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ER -

The impact of public acceptance on cost efficiency and environmental sustainability in decentralized energy systems

Abstract

Bibliographical note

Funding

UN SDGs

Keywords

Access to Document

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Cite this