Wind of Change: Offshore Wind Farms, Contested Values And
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WIND OF CHANGE: OFFSHORE WIND FARMS, CONTESTED VALUES AND ECOSYSTEM SERVICES by Sarah Catherine Klain B.A., Reed College, 2003 M.Sc. The University of British Columbia, 2010 A THESIS SUBMITTED IN PARTIAL FULFILLMENT OF THE REQUIREMENTS FOR THE DEGREE OF DOCTOR OF PHILOSOPHY in THE FACULTY OF GRADUATE AND POSTDOCTORAL STUDIES (Resource Management and Environmental Studies) THE UNIVERSITY OF BRITISH COLUMBIA (Vancouver) October 2016 © Sarah Catherine Klain, 2016 Abstract Increasing reliance on renewable energy promises to reduce carbon emissions. Although national-scale polls demonstrate high levels of public support for developing renewable energy, local opposition has led to cancelations of renewable energy projects globally. This dissertation empirically investigates barriers to the siting of offshore wind farms in reference to their perceived risks and benefits; people’s willingness to pay to mitigate environmental risks; values that influence these choices and attitudes; and public deliberation processes used to engage local citizens in decisions about local siting and alternative energy options. The first study investigates perceptions of offshore wind farm impacts and why risks to some ecosystem services (ES, i.e., benefits from nature to people) may induce greater concern than others. These differences are attributed to the affective ways in which people perceive risk. Affectively-loaded impacts (e.g., harm to charismatic wildlife, visual intrusion) were assigned greater weight than more easily quantifiable impacts (e.g., displacement of fishing, impact to tourism). This study suggests that government authorities and developers can anticipate and more explicitly address affective dimensions of renewable energy proposals. The second study quantifies stated preferences for specific attributes of wind farms: effect on marine life, type of ownership, distance from shore, and cost. The strongest preference was for farms that greatly increased biodiversity via artificial reefs at an additional cost of ~$34- 42/month. This research demonstrates substantial willingness to pay for ecologically regenerative renewable energy development. ii The third study pilots methods on ‘relational values,’ which link people to ecosystems and include associated principles, notions of a good life and virtues. Preliminary results suggest that relational values are distinct from standard methods of measuring ecological worldview and predictive of attitudes towards offshore wind farms. The fourth study assesses attributes of effective public engagement processes to site renewable energy projects as they played out in three island communities. Amongst the array of criteria for robust analytic deliberative processes, good public engagement may be condensable to two themes: enabling bidirectional deliberative learning and providing community benefit. Attending to these themes may improve relationships among communities, government authorities and developers when deciding if and where to site renewable energy infrastructure. iii Preface Chapters 2, 3, 4 and 5 of this dissertation are distinct manuscripts written with the goal of publication in academic journals. These chapters are meant to stand alone, which results in some repetition across chapters regarding descriptions of the broader research context and methods. I was responsible for the idea of exploring perceptions of a hypothetical wind farm, creating an animated visualization for the project, as well as the analysis and writing of Chapter 2. I collected data via interviews with the help of a local research assistant. Although I was the lead author of this chapter, my adviser Kai Chan and committee member Terre Satterfield helped me develop the theoretical framing, several research questions and analytical tools to address the questions. I also collaborated with Jim Sinner and Joanne Ellis from Cawthron Institute, who hosted me and others from my UBC lab group in New Zealand. They also provided important background information for my study and valuable feedback on drafts of my interview protocol, data analysis and the resulting manuscript. UBC’s Behavioural Research Ethics Board approved this project (certificate number H14-00842). I am the lead author of Chapter 3 having conceived of the research questions, selected the methods, conducted the analysis and written the manuscript. Kai Chan contributed with feedback that improved the design, interpretation, analysis and results of this study. I benefited from discussions with Gunilla Oberg about regenerative design. Robin Naidoo and Noah Enelow provided some technical guidance when I built my choice experiment models. Chapter 3 and 4 were approved by UBC’s Behavioural Research Ethics Board (certificate number H15-01325). iv Paige Olmsted and I share the role of first author on Chapter 4. Kai Chan, Terre Satterfield, Paige Olmsted and I collaborated to develop and refine survey questions that Paige Olmsted and I tested with different populations. Kai Chan and Terre Satterfield recommended statistical approaches, which Paige and I conducted. Paige and I equally shared the writing of the manuscript, which also benefited tremendously from Kai Chan’s and Terre Satterfield’s input. Chapter 5 was supported by UBC’s Public Scholars Initiative, which seeks to re-imagine the PhD process via expanding the types of contributions that are recognized as legitimate components of a PhD and dissertation. I oriented this chapter to bring academic literature to bear upon practitioner’s challenges with local rejection of renewable energy systems. As such, this contribution differs from how it would have been structured it if it had been purely an academic exercise (e.g., we selected our study sites based on the partner organization’s experience working with these communities, rather than a more academically rigorous method of selecting sites). This study was conducted in collaboration with a non-profit organization, Island Institute. Two of my co-authors, Suzanne MacDonald and Nicholas Battista, are staff at this organization. We worked together to identify the main thrust of this project: reflecting on lessons learned from engaging New England island communities with offshore wind. We drafted and distributed a report for public audiences based on our findings [Klain, S., MacDonald, S., & Battista, N. (2015). Engaging Communities in Offshore Wind (pp. 1–44). Island Institute], which is freely available on Island Institute’s website. I led the analysis and drafting of this manuscript with input from all co-authors. Terre Satterfield and Kai Chan provided critical feedback and guidance on several drafts to help me improve the structure of the manuscript as well as the figures and better relate these lessons learned to academic theories. v Table of Contents Abstract .......................................................................................................................................... ii Preface ........................................................................................................................................... iv Table of Contents ......................................................................................................................... vi List of Tables ............................................................................................................................... xii List of Figures ............................................................................................................................. xiii List of Abbreviations ................................................................................................................... xv Acknowledgements .................................................................................................................... xvi Dedication ................................................................................................................................. xviii Chapter 1: Introduction ................................................................................................................1 1.1 Dissertation goals ............................................................................................................... 2 1.2 Theoretical underpinnings ................................................................................................. 3 1.2.1 Social studies of risk ................................................................................................... 4 1.2.2 Ecosystem services ..................................................................................................... 7 1.2.2.1 Cultural ecosystem services ............................................................................... 10 1.2.3 Environmental and relational values ......................................................................... 11 1.2.4 Analytic-deliberative processes ................................................................................ 14 1.3 Chapter overviews ........................................................................................................... 16 1.4 Summary .......................................................................................................................... 20 Chapter 2: Bird killer, industrial intruder or clean energy? Perceiving the risks of offshore wind farms ....................................................................................................................................21 2.1 Introduction .....................................................................................................................