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Navigating a Minefield? Wind Power and Local Community Benefit Funds

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Part of the book series: Energy, Climate and the Environment Series ((ECE))

Abstract

When critically reflecting on the UK wind power programme during the past 20 years it is clear that renewable energy policy has played to the preferences of large corporate players, at the expense of local communities (Stenzel and Frenzel 2008). In light of the absence of widespread UK community ownership models around individual, farmer and cooperative arrangements, a number of local tensions have arisen in wind power deployment (Ellis et al. 2009). In the UK there is now an established literature which highlights that local communities often feel powerless when new projects are proposed by commercial developers (Devine-Wright 2010) during their dealings with government planning officials and in the appeals process, often over an extended period of time (Cowell et al. 2011).

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© 2012 Peter A. Strachan and David R. Jones

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Strachan, P.A., Jones, D.R. (2012). Navigating a Minefield? Wind Power and Local Community Benefit Funds. In: Szarka, J., Cowell, R., Ellis, G., Strachan, P.A., Warren, C. (eds) Learning from Wind Power. Energy, Climate and the Environment Series. Palgrave Macmillan, London. https://doi.org/10.1057/9781137265272_9

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