Governing wind energy acceptance in Ireland and Denmark: A Foucauldian perspective.

Community acceptance has been recognized as a major constraint for wind energy deployment. While there have been numerous studies identifying and dissecting the factors that can influence community acceptance, such as participation in planning, place attachment, distribution of benefits and ownership, there is a lack of appreciation of how the complex relationships between host communities and infrastructure development are managed overall and how this is handled in different governance regimes. In order to explore transnational wind energy strategies, we suggest that the adoption of Foucault’s concept of governmentality offers a fruitful way of understanding the management of social acceptance as a form of ‘conduct of conduct’. To illustrate the application of a governmentality framework, we draw on data, such as energy polices, policy papers and interviews with stakeholders, from two European countries, Denmark and Ireland, which have very different wind energy histories and trajectories, but which have ultimately adopted similar strategies to deal with community acceptance concerns. We make use of the Foucauldian concepts of problematizations, rationalities and technologies to analyse and compare the governmentality of community acceptance and highlight the efficacy of various governmental attempts to conduct ‘community acceptance’ locally through policies, acts, participation and incentives. We conclude with some general reflections on the usefulness of a governmentality framework in energy transition research and on the mobility of wind energy policies.