Bridging research and practice for transparent and inclusive onshore wind farm siting

QC 20260810

Abstract

Sweden’s ambition to achieve a fossil-free electricity system requires a substantial expansion of wind energy, which is central to climate mitigation across Europe. While necessary to reduce greenhouse gas emissions and meet growing electricity demand, wind power development involves complex tradeoffs between techno-economic feasibility and socio-ecological impacts. These challenges require spatial planning approaches that integrate stakeholder perspectives and conflicting objectives. However, current applications of Spatial Multi-Criteria Analysis (SMCA) often function as technical optimisation tools rather than participatory planning processes, limiting transparency, interpretability, and real-world applicability due to methodological complexity and underlying assumptions.

This thesis aims to improve the applicability of SMCA for onshore wind energy siting in Sweden and to analyse how SMCA is currently used and how it can be enhanced. The objectives are: 1) to review SMCA applications in wind energy planning; 2) to develop and apply the REWIND framework in Västernorrland; 3) to simplify the weighting procedure through the Ranking-Rating (RR) method and analyse SMCA practice through discussions with stakeholders in Västernorrland and Västra Götaland; and 4) to refine socio-ecological and techno-economic evaluation using the Östra Mellansverige region as a case study.

The research integrates qualitative and quantitative methods within the REWIND framework, structured into three stages: scoping, design, and evaluation. Scoping involves identifying and standardising socio-ecological and techno-economic criteria using literature and stakeholder input. The design stage combines GIS-based modelling and stakeholder-derived weights to generate constraint, suitability, and conflict maps for site identification. The evaluation stage assesses alternatives using socio-ecological and technoeconomic factors, including non-dominated sorting, distance-based ranking, levelied cost of energy, and annual energy yield.

Results show that SMCA applications remain dominated by techno-economic criteria, while socio-cultural and ecological dimensions are simplified and weakly integrated. The REWIND framework demonstrates that a conflict score  improves transparency by making trade-offs explicit and enabling user-defined thresholds for acceptable conflict. The framework supports structured site identification but reveals persistent challenges related to data quality, criterion representation, weighting, and uncertainty.

The RR method reduces the complexity of weighting while improving transparency and stakeholder engagement. Evaluation results show strong regional variation in wind power potential, with no correlation between technoeconomic and socio-ecological performance, indicating fundamentally different dimensions of suitability. Leader-follower analysis further reveals dominance structures in some regions and more diverse solution spaces in others, with key trade-offs linked to wetlands and outdoor recreation. Overall, combining conflict analysis, participatory weighting, and structured evaluation improves transparency and supports more flexible, context-sensitive and sustainable wind power planning.

Link to DiVA