New publications on techno-economic and social trade-offs in onshore wind energy co-authored by Prof. Russell McKenna

Two new open access publications have recently appeared about the techno-economic and social trade-offs associated with historical and future onshore wind energy developments.
external page One paper focusses on the German context and demonstrates that historical developments have prioritized cost-efficiency, leading to a regionally unequal distribution. In order to enable achievement of the newly-introduced “south quota” for wind in the south of Germany, a more socially-equal distribution of wind energy plants across the country is required.
external page The second study relates to the European energy system, applying the GINI coefficient to analyse the distribution of existing wind energy plants, also exploring how the benefits and costs of this technology could be more equally spread across the population.
Both papers are in collaboration with the Department for Techno-economic Systems Analysis (external page IEK-3) at the Institute for Energy and Climate Research (IEK) at Forschungszentrum Jülich in Germany.