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Together with Hartmut Fünfgeld, Sarah Olbrich published an article about

“Energy justice in wind energy development –Strengthening local acceptance through financial participation?”

Onshore wind energy development is often delayed or even prevented by local resistance. Against this backdrop, the authors discuss financial participation as a measure to promote local acceptance by positively influencing the perceived experience of justice. Building on the concept of energy justice, this paper investigates the extent to which different forms of financial participation are suitable for better distributing costs and benefits, creating opportunities for participation, and examining who can participate financially. In addition to a comprehensive literature review, interviews were conducted with wind turbine planners and operators. These show that stakeholders engage in financial participation to different degrees across different projects and that the preferred form of participation varies from one region to another. Moreover, no model of financial participation appears to be suited to address all dimensions of energy justice, as all models are characterised by certain advantages and disadvantages. Therefore, the availability of financial participation options alone is unlikely to increase local acceptance. Such options can, however, be effective when combined with other measures to increase acceptance.

doi: https://doi.org/10.14512/rur.150

The Chair for Sustainability and Transitions Research is looking for a student assistant. More information here. If you are interested, please send your application to: dierk.bauknecht@sustainability-transitions.uni-freiburg.de

19.11.2021

Together with colleagues from the Öko-Institut, Dierk Bauknecht published a paper in Economics of Energy and Environmental Policy on “Model-Based Evaluation of Decentralised Electricity Markets at Different Phases of the German Energy Transition” DOI: 10.5547/2160-5890.11.1.drit

This paper investigates decentralised markets in the German electricity system, defined as markets in specific regions in which regional electricity demand is met primarily by regional generation and the remaining demand is met on a system-wide level in a second step. The research question is: What impact do the size of decentralised markets and the type of authorised participants have in different phases of the energy transition? We conclude that from a system perspective decentralised markets can lead to negative effects if they are not regulated appropriately, especially during the  transformation phase of the electricity system.

The Chair of Sustainability and Transitions Research is represented with two full paper contributions at the conference "International Sustainability Transitions" (IST): "Energy sector integration: Delineating the policy mix for the case of Germany" and "Decentralized energy futures II: pathways and lock-ins towards emerging new logics of energy-system organization".

This year's conference is themed "Sustainability Transitions in a Global Context". Further information on the conference and registration can be found here.