Policy Solutions to Emerging Renewable Energy Development Conflicts
The goal of the project is to examine the conflicts associated with solar, onshore wind, and offshore wind development and to identify legal, regulatory, legislative, and related approaches to resolving them in three countries—the United States, United Kingdom, and Sweden. Finding solutions to conflicts is essential to meeting goals to reduce greenhouse gas emissions and to create regional development opportunities in renewable energy and the green economy.
This research will inform regional, municipal, and national policy on policy conflicts and tradeoffs and identify solutions to the various types of conflicts that will slow the transition to renewable energy. The project will contribute to scientific knowledge on how context shapes the choice of an intervention and how to adapt intervention to other contexts. The relevance reaches beyond renewable energy goals as renewable development is also an economic development engine to many regions and cities.
This research fits well with RSA goals of influencing policy and practice in creative and ambitious ways. In particular, this project fits within the RSA focus on infrastructural regionalisms and regional governance. Within this framework, this project emphasizes the importance of understanding how various stakeholders seek common interests in policies across regional and local jurisdictions.