The Cost of Undisturbed Landscapes

TL;DR

This paper quantifies the opportunity cost of wind power compared to solar photovoltaics in Austria, highlighting significant landscape preservation benefits and potential compensation for local externalities.

Contribution

It provides a systematic comparison of wind and solar energy costs and impacts, emphasizing the value of undisturbed landscapes in energy planning.

Findings

Opportunity cost of wind power is high, especially when solar is rooftop-based.

Significant compensation can be justified for local externalities of wind turbines.

Undisturbed landscapes have considerable value in the context of renewable energy deployment.

Abstract

By 2030 Austria aims to meet 100% of its electricity demand from domestic renewable sources, with most of the additional generation coming from wind and solar energy. Apart from the benefit of reducing CO2 emissions and, potentially, system cost, wind power is associated with negative impacts at the local level, such as interference with landscape aesthetics. Some of these impacts might be avoided by using alternative renewable energy technologies. Thus, we quantify the opportunity cost of wind power versus its best feasible alternative solar photovoltaics, using the power system model medea. Our findings suggest that the cost of undisturbed landscapes is considerable, particularly when solar PV is mainly realized on roof-tops. Under a wide range of assumptions, the opportunity cost of wind power is high enough to allow for significant compensation of the ones affected by local, negative wind turbine externalities.