Best practice analysis to improve acceptance of wind farms in South Korea

Germany’s 20 year long energy transition experience holds valuable lessons learned, recipes for success, but also mistakes to avoid for other countries. Germany had the third largest installed capacity of onshore wind turbines and the second largest installed capacity of offshore wind turbines in 2019. While many factors contribute to such impressive expansion numbers, community acceptance of new wind turbines certainly ranks very high among them.

On behalf of the Korea Energy Economics Institute (KEEI), adelphi wrote a research study on "Germany’s policy practices for improving local acceptance of onshore and offshore wind farms". The main objective of the study was to explore the best solutions for improving local acceptance of onshore and offshore wind farms in South Korea by benchmarking Germany’s policy practice and experiences with local acceptance of wind farms.

As part of the study, adelphi conducted eleven case studies on specific wind energy projects in Germany, from which important lessons could be learned. The data for these case studies was collected through interviews conducted by adelphi with developers, planners, community representatives and/or local politicians. The study concluded with a list of expected challenges in adopting approaches or lessons learned from Germany for South Korea and made suggestions on how to improve local acceptance of onshore and offshore wind farms in South Korea.

adelphi provided the following services as part of the project:

• Conception of the study "Germany's policy practices for improving community acceptance of wind farms".
• Conducting extensive background and literature research, following a qualitative approach. On this basis, suitable cases were selected and a detailed explanation of the framework conditions in Germany were developed.
• Conducting a total of thirteen semi-structured interviews with political decision-makers and representatives of the private sector, based on a pre-selection of particularly interesting cases.
• Development of eleven case studies based on the interviews and research and completion of the fifty-page study.
• Development of twelve policy and other cooperation recommendations.