Embedding Social Values in the Design of Offshore Wind Energy Systems Presentation Competition and Regulation in Network Industries Brussels, 22 November 2013 Rolf Künneke Economics of Infrastructures

Research problem How to systematically embed social values in the technical and institutional design of offshore wind energy systems in order to facilitate its social acceptance?

Research Approach: Towards a Value Sensitive Design Identify social values associated to different forms of acceptance Identify different technological and institutional designs of offshore energy systems Identify embedded values vis-à-vis the different technical and institutional designs Analyze value conflicts Analyze different technical and institutional designs that would meet social values: value sensitive design

Forms of social acceptance Social values in offshore wind Socio-political Sustainable, reliable, affordable Market Costs, efficiency, competitiveness Community Health & safety Impact on living environment Use of natural resources Use of space Adapted from Wüstenhagen et al 2007

Institutional design Examples of ‘ideal types’: Energy as a public utility Energy as a commodity Offshore energy as a public property Different values can be attributed to different institutional designs (Williamson 1998)

Values embedded in institutions Williamson 1998

Technological design Ideal types: Stand-alone wind parks: least technical complexity Super grid: high degree of interconnectivity (scale) Synergy: high degree of convergence (scope) Different values can be attributed to different technical designs

Value conflict type 1: Embedded value conflicts within T or I Value conflicts embedded in the institutional or technological design. Examples: Technology: Off shore wind is sustainable but not reliable (intermittency) Institutions: Need for centralized monitoring & control, whereas there might be preferences for decentralized governance.

Value conflict type 2: Incoherent values between T and I T and I support different values that might be conflicting. Example: Offshore wind requires significant space which might conflict with existing institutional arrangements (inherited rights of use: Fishing ground, oil & gas exploration)

Value conflict type 3: Conflicts between different forms of acceptance Socio-political acceptance might conflict with market acceptance of community acceptance (and vice versa). Example: High degree of socio-political acceptance (sustainability), but low market acceptance (high costs), and low community acceptance (health hazards of new to build transmission lines)

Value conflict type 4: Conflicting focus on social acceptance I and T are designed towards the resolution of different forms of social acceptance. Example: Technical system is optimized in order to support sustainability (socio-political acceptance) whereas the institutional arrangements are in support of low cost energy supply (market acceptance)

Towards a value sensitive design of offshore energy systems How to resolve possible value conflicts? What institutional and technological designs serve what values? Trade-offs, complementarities, dilemma’s? How to derive at ‘value robust’ designs? Need for context specific research & analysis

Conclusions Challenging effort to include values into the design of energy systems Differences compared to traditional studies on social acceptance: Ex ante approach Much broader than only ‘community acceptance’ Design oriented rather than process oriented