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Beyond NIMBYism

At the launch of the film ‘The Age of Stupid’ earlier this year, Ed Miliband, Secretary of State for Energy and Climate Change, commented “The government needs to be saying, ‘It is socially unacceptable to be against wind turbines in your area- like not wearing your seatbelt or driving past a zebra crossing’.”

Certainly there has been a lot of invective hurled at so called NIMBY’s- those who, while perhaps professing to be in favour of renewables generally, resist deployment of wind farms and the like near where they live. The NIMBY, Not In My Back Yard, concept has gained credence because national opinion surveys show overwhelming support for renewables, but when it comes to specific schemes there is often a lot of opposition to projects, wind farms in particular.

Of course it may be that in many cases this opposition is only from a noisy minority- aided and abetted by national anti wind lobby groups like Country Guardian. But there is no question that opposition to wind power has slowed its progress in the UK. So NIMBYs are seen as a major problem.

Thus the Danish company Vestas, when seeking to explain why it was closing its wind turbine blade manufacturing plant on the Isle of White, with the potential loss of over 600 jobs, saw local opposition to new projects around the UK as part of the problem- along with the recession and the local planning process ,which it said ‘remains an obstacle to the development of a more favourable market for onshore wind power.’ The British Wind Energy Association echoed these views: ‘There is now a direct correlation between nimbyism and the curtailment of the economic benefits of wind power. A positive factor of this unfortunate crisis is that the public are now aware of the fact that the opposition to wind farms is affecting the economic opportunities available to this country.’

So are NIMBYs really the problem? A multi-University study funded by the ESRC and led by Dr. Patrick Devine-Wright (then at the University of Manchester, now at Exeter) aimed to deepen understanding of the factors underlying public support and opposition to renewable energy technologies. 8 case studies were undertaken covering 10 projects across 4 sectors - on and offshore wind, biomass and marine.

The research found little evidence of nimbyism - only 2% of the respondents to a survey of over 3,000 people fitted the stereotype of being strongly in favour of renewable energy in general, yet strongly against a local proposal.

Dr Patrick Devine-Wright, said: “We have identified what the key issues are that shape public concerns about new proposals. Developers and government should be acting to address these key issues, not labelling protestors as nimbies. They need to pay more attention to how the benefits or drawbacks of a proposal are perceived by local people.” and “avoid the politically expedient term of nimby”

He added: “Government needs to do much more to make sure that planning decision processes are open, fully informed and fair. At the moment local people often feel disenfranchised as their concerns are not properly listened to or decisions end up being taken in a ‘black hole’ in London. Under such conditions local resistance can easily escalate.”

The research summary notes that ‘When opposition occurred this was characterised in particular by developers as emotionally based and outside of what they saw as ‘rational’ planning concerns. These conceptions of the public have a number of implications. First, for the design and engineering of technologies, with marine developers, for example, aware of the need to ‘design in’ potential public reactions from the beginning. Second, for the locational strategies of where projects are developed. Third, for public engagement practices. Here it was found that engagement has become routinised and not dependent directly on public responsiveness. Engagement was essentially conceptualised in terms of information provision and addressing public concerns’.

Overall, they say ‘we found a range of supportive (38.1%), neutral (38.2%) and oppositional (23.7%) attitudes to specific projects. Marine energy projects tended to be most supported, whilst onshore wind projects tended to be least supported. Lack of trust in developers was consistently found, as well as strong concerns about the fairness of planning procedures. For example, in each of our Welsh case studies, there was substantial opposition to planning decisions being made in London. Only 2% (61 individuals) of survey respondents held the stereotypical NIMBY attitude of being strongly in favour of renewable energy generally, but strongly against a proposed project. We found no significant relationship between project support and personal characteristics commonly assumed to characterise opponents, including length of residence in the area, perceived proximity of home to project site, and age. Our analysis showed that project support was best explained by the perception of the local impact of the project (drawbacks vs. benefits); attitude to the technology sector; the perception that the developer listened to local residents; levels of trust in the developer and the perceived fairness of planning procedures’.

In conclusion they say: ‘The research found evidence of substantial social consent, both for renewable energy generally and for specific projects, and little evidence to support the continued use of the NIMBY concept to explain why some people oppose project proposals. We conclude that rather than trying to dismiss and undermine legitimate questioning and criticism of particular renewable energy projects, industry and policy makers should instead focus on protecting and nurturing social consent for what is a key part of a low carbon future. No simple formula will achieve this, as each place and context has distinctive characteristics, but our findings show the importance of factors such as enhancing local benefits; timely and meaningful engagement by developers; trust; and fair planning procedures’.

Project Summary Report

www.sed.manchester.ac.uk/research/beyond_nimbyism/

There may of course also be political aspects to opposition to wind projects. A Greenpeace survey found that between Dec 2005 and Nov 2008, Tory councils blocked 158.2MW of wind projects, approving just 44.7MW, while Labour councils fared only a bit better rejecting 62.6MW, while approving just 68.3MW.

It’s also perhaps worth noting that local opposition is much less apparent elsewhere in the EU e.g. in Denmark, which now gets around 20% of its electricity from wind projects. One reason could be that, unlike in the UK, most of them are locally owned by farmers or wind co-ops. As the Danish proverb goes ‘your own pigs don’t smell’.

Posted by Dave Elliott on August 15, 2009 12:09 PM | Permalink