Wind Farms in Rural Areas: How Far Do Community Benefits from Wind Farms Represent a Local Economic Development Opportunity?

Autor/inn/en	Munday, Max; Bristow, Gill; Cowell, Richard
Titel	Wind Farms in Rural Areas: How Far Do Community Benefits from Wind Farms Represent a Local Economic Development Opportunity?
Quelle	In: Journal of Rural Studies, 27 (2011) 1, S.1-12 (12 Seiten) PDF als Volltext Verfügbarkeit
Sprache	englisch
Dokumenttyp	gedruckt; online; Zeitschriftenaufsatz
ISSN	0743-0167
DOI	10.1016/j.jrurstud.2010.08.003
Schlagwörter	Economic Development; Community Benefits; Ownership; Rural Areas; Foreign Countries; Rural Development; Energy; Economic Change; United Kingdom (Wales) + Suchen Sie Ihr Suchwort? Wirtschaftsentwicklung; Eigentum; Rural area; Ländlicher Raum; Ausland; Rural environment; Development; Ländliches Milieu; Entwicklung; Energie; Ökonomischer Wandel
Abstract	Although the large-scale deployment of renewable technologies can bring significant, localised economic and environmental changes, there has been remarkably little empirical investigation of the rural development implications. This paper seeks to redress this through an analysis of the economic development opportunities surrounding wind energy development in rural Wales. The paper concludes that the economic development outcomes to rural areas from wind generation projects to date have been questionable. Increasing the flow of conventional economic benefits to rural economies in terms of incomes and jobs is shown to be difficult because of the nature of the local supply side in remote areas. Partially as a consequence of this, developers of wind farms have come to routinely provide diverse forms of community benefits to "affected communities," but these have yet to evolve into significant tools of economic development. In any case, the flows of revenues from community benefits are dwarfed, in quantitative terms, by the revenue streams that might be channelled to rural areas through a broader community ownership of wind energy projects. However, although a few local successes have been achieved, the scope for realising the returns from community ownership remains low in the Welsh case, with a series of impediments considered. We close the paper by suggesting means through which economic outputs might be improved. (Contains 2 figures and 3 tables.) (As Provided).
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Erfasst von	ERIC (Education Resources Information Center), Washington, DC
Update	2017/4/10