Social acceptance-taking the wind out of the sails

In many cases people want to have their cake and eat it too. This saying perfectly describes the “Not In My Back Yard”(NIMBYism) attitude towards sustainable energy development. This is a result of ignorance, selfishness and a lack of willingness to accept that actions have consequences. Especially in sustainable energy development, seemingly unconnected events, actions and their consequences tend to somehow get intertwined as issues become more complicated. This article intends to explore what social factors play a major role in the implementation of modern energy technologies, and especially what effect NIMBYism has in this sense.

To start off, given that you as a reader have stumbled upon this platform probably means that you are somehow involved in or at least interested in sustainability in one way or another. Given this common ground, we might as well take the liberty of skipping the argumentation on why the energy transition is needed sooner rather than later, and head directly to the point of this article.

Let’s first investigate ‘NIMBY- Not In My Back Yard’. The expression is widely used in public debate, it draws it’s core idea from the fact that people are open to all kinds of changes, for instance the widespread deployment of wind farms, solar parks and infrastructural developments, as long as these changes happen out of sight and the consequences do not influence their way of life in any way. Illustrative examples outside the scope of renewable energy sources are prisons and homeless shelters; they are essential to society, yet we do not want them near the areas we live. One likes to have their cake and eat it as well, so to say.

But on the other hand the “attitude of the public” is often used as the reason renewable energy developments are delayed or abandoned completely. Once local opposition is tagged as ‘NIMBY’ they are immediately disqualified from public debate, since the term implies selfishness and ignorance. This makes the debate moot. And there’s the rub, especially in renewable energy policy making an open and honest public debate is essential. NIMBYism is a term loosely thrown around in many cases without any further explanation or nuance. It is easy to discard opposing opinions based on prejudices, but it might just harm the public debate.

Crying out NIMBYism can be valid in plenty of cases. Whenever a lack of knowledge among the public opposition is prevalent it can be valid to interpret this opposition as such. However, the situation is usually more nuanced. In many cases communication between opposition and the developers is non-existent or insufficient. In order to go forward with any sustainable goals, the public debate must be kept open and honest.

About the author:

Raimon van Grootel

Raimon is a Dutch Sustainable Energy Technologies student. His main interests lie in the factors surrounding technological developments, such as the political and social impact of technological developments in energy production.

Sources:

fundooprofessor, V. (2020).Playing Socratic Solitaire on a Gal Called NIMBY. Fundoo Professor. Retrieved 23 April 2020, from https://fundooprofessor.wordpress.com/2012/10/08/nimby/

https://www.forbes.com/sites/forbesbusinesscouncil/2020/01/31/wind-power-at-the-crossroads/#194cf33f8abe

Petrova, M. A. (2016). From NIMBY to acceptance: Toward a novel framework—VESPA—For organizing and interpreting community concerns. Renewable energy, 86, 1280-1294.

Devine‐Wright, P. (2005). Beyond NIMBYism: towards an integrated framework for understanding public perceptions of wind energy. Wind Energy: An International Journal for Progress and Applications in Wind Power Conversion Technology, 8(2), 125-139.

Boyle, K. J., Boatwright, J., Brahma, S., & Xu, W. (2019). NIMBY, not, in siting community wind farms. Resource and Energy Economics, 57, 85-100.