Social Costs of Setback Distances for Onshore Wind Turbines: A Model Analysis Applied to the German State of Saxony
通过空间显式模型评估德国萨克森州风力涡轮机退让距离政策的社会成本，发现差异化退让比统一退让更有效，且针对红鸢巢穴的退让比针对居民区的退让更能降低成本。
Abstract Wind power is a key for decarbonizing economies. Yet, wind turbines can produce negative environmental externalities. These include bird collisions and disamenities for residents. Setback distances for onshore wind turbines to settlements and bird nests are a common policy instrument to address these externalities. In this paper, we evaluate the cost-effectiveness of setback distances. We use a spatially-explicit model to investigate the social costs of different options for setbacks to settlements and red kite nests. In terms of social costs, we consider production costs and external costs associated with residents’ disamenities and red kite impacts given an exogenously set wind energy production target. The model is applied using data for the German State of Saxony. Three key results are: (1) More restrictive setbacks may increase social costs. (2) Uniform red kite setbacks reduce social costs rather than uniform settlement setbacks. (3) Differentiated settlement setbacks for different settlement types lead to substantially lower social costs than uniform setbacks.