WinWind releases guidance for policy makers and wind industry

On April 2, the WinWind project consortium has released its final policy recommendations. These can be found in a comprehensive policy document addressing policy makers at European, national, regional and local levels. The policy document comprises cross-country recommendations with validity across Europe and recommendations targeting specifically the WinWind partner countries and the WinWind target regions.

The recommendations build upon the activities carried out in the WinWind project since October 2017, including stakeholder dialogues and consultations, best practice analyses and best practice transfer activities. The policy document formulates guidance for European, national, regional and local policy makers on how to support socially inclusive wind energy market deployment. The main thematic fields include:

• Framework conditions (planning and permitting, support schemes)
• Procedural fairness
• Distributional fairness
• Community Ownership
• Impacts on health, well-being and quality of life
• Impacts on landscape, nature and wildlife.

Some of the key messages and recommendations have been compiled in a policy brief.

On April 1, the consortium published its Principles and criteria for fair wind energy. These serve as an orientation for wind energy developers and investors interested in developing voluntary self-commitments or codes of conducts. However, they can partially also serve as an orientation for policy making. The P&C might be integrated into renewable energy support schemes (e.g. auction systems), financial support programmes, labelling schemes for fair wind energy or for green electricity, lending policies of public banks. They might also be used by municipalities and public bodies in general leasing their land to wind energy developers. The WinWind P&C can be applied as a “pick and choose” approach.

When developing those P&C, WinWind was inspired by the Guidelines for Fair Wind Energy and the corresponding Label developed by the Wínd Energy Service Centre in Thuringia, one of the target regions of the WinWind project. WinWind aimed to develop a more general set of Principles & Criteria which could be applied also in other countries and contexts. Another ambition was that they could, at least partly, also serve as an orientation for policy-making.