For more than a decade, the Danish Renewable Energy Act has applied various financial measures to promote local acceptance. A general characteristic of the measures is their compensatory purpose, which presupposes that renewable energy facilities have negative impacts. The current toolbox includes instruments aimed at compensating individual house owners for specific financial losses, as well as measures that in more general terms, and ex post, compensate for non-financial impacts. Nevertheless, the toolbox is not yet fully developed and there is a need for further understanding of how different measures work, also in relation to more recently introduced renewables within the local acceptance framework of the Renewable Energy Act, such as solar power. Suggestions are made for the development of more dynamic and flexible regulatory approaches that would include individualized measures tailored to meet the distinct needs of local communities or individual landowners.
Author:
Birgitte Egelund Olsen