Birgitte Egelund Olsen

Wind Energy and the Law: A Comparative Analysis

Wind energy as a renewable energy source attracts considerable interest in the climate change debate owing to its potential to reduce CO2 emissions. Its development, however, faces a number of challenges that depend not only on the physical, political and economic conditions, but also on the legal framework regulating, among other issues, jurisdictional, planning and environmental aspects as well as access to the resource, grid and market. This article provides a comparative analysis of the development of wind energy in selected countries. It identifies a number of regulatory challenges in the specific environmental and energy law fields and points to the necessity of an adequate balancing of positive as well as negative effects of wind energy.

Community Wind in Denmark

Since the oil crises of the 1970s, a low-carbon energy transition has been a major policy goal for Denmark. At the time of the first oil crisis in 1973, Denmark was totally dependent on the import of oil (Lund, 2010; Meyer, 2007). As a response to the strong concerns of energy security, Denmark has proved able to implement quite significant changes. This transition to renewable energies has partly been due to the significance of community-based initiatives, especially in relation to wind energy. Denmark today has the highest non-hydro contribution to the domestic electricity system from new renewables (Danish Energy Statistics 2014, 2015; International Energy Agency, 2011).1 Furthermore, it has a leading position when it comes to energy solutions such as wind turbines and energy saving technologies (International Energy Agency, 2011). The share of energy technology exports is accordingly very high, constituting 12 % of Denmark’s total export of goods in 2014 (Danish Energy Statistics, 2014, 2015).