Résumé
The French government has committed itself to an ambitious target of boosting the offshore wind power capacity to reach 6 GW by 2020. Wind turbines onshore as well as offshore are highly contested on visual grounds. Affected stakeholders, ranging from business and property owners, fishermen and elected municipal planners, fear significant negative economic impacts on their ‘business' or their ‘property'. In the French Mediterranean region of the Languedoc Roussillon, the expectation is that the tourist industry will be chagrined in the presence of an offshore wind farm – giving a windy and cemented image of the region. Since talks began about 10 years ago, on the potential for ‘harvesting' the winds of the Mediterranean Sea, many postulates have been made with regard to the impact on coastal tourism. In particular, resistance mounted when plans to include the Languedoc Roussillon in the 2011 tender for the construction of 2 GW wind power capacity were materialising. In this light, it was considered of pertinence to investigate how offshore wind farms, installed at realistic distances from the coast (5, 8 or 12 km), would affect coastal tourism. Additionally, it was considered of interest to help define strategies that coastal community resort may adopt to boost visiting numbers or profit margins with or without wind farms. To answer these questions a full-scale choice experiment valuation survey with over 350 tourists was undertaken in the summer of 2010 on Languedoc beaches. Our survey results show (in chapter 3) that average visual disamenity costs tends to zero, when an offshore wind farm is installed somewhere between 8 and 12 km from the shore. We also find that there is considerable demand for “sustainable” coastal community resorts that favours local produce, bicycling, public transport, energy and water saving devices. Thus, our estimates show that a wind farm installed 8 km from the shore could be ‘compensated for' through the simultaneous ‘greening' of the coastal community resort. If in addition a wind farm is associated with artificial reefs and recreational user access, our results point to an actual rise in tourist related revenues when the wind farm is located min. 5 km from the coast. The policy recommendation is thus two fold: Everything else equals, a wind farm located 12 km offshore will have no negative incidence on tourism. With simultaneous application of a coherent environmental policy and wind farm associated recreational activities, wind farm siting can be conceived from 5 km and outwards. In a latter stage (chapter 5) we explicit account for the well-established fact that humans' over-estimate losses compared with equal-sized gains, in our econometric estimations. By incorporating so-called gain-loss asymmetry in the utility function, we observe that the WTP to remove wind farms had they already been installed is half the compensation required to accept their presence during a vacation. The disamenity costs associated with wind farm installation are thus of a significantly smaller magnitude had the wind farms already been installed. On the other hand, the welfare benefits associated with eco-efficiency and wind farm associated recreational activities are larger had they already been invigorated. The verdict is that asymmetry should be accounted for, or at least recognised in stated preference valuation studies that simultaneously use utility increasing and utility decreasing attributes. Finally, the thesis highlights (in chapter 4) that it is not only relevant to understand how the tourist industry and Languedoc service sector may be affected by the installation of offshore wind farms. It is similarly relevant to gain an insight into the wider factor governing public acceptance of offshore wind farm projects. In that regard the thesis provides evidence that there has been an excessive and not very constructive focus on NIMBYism as a mean to explain resistance to wind farm proposals. A large range of factors drives preferences for or against the installation of offshore wind farms - these have a direct bearing on the visual evaluation of wind turbines in the seascape. We find that concerns over the efficiency and costliness of wind energy and localized consequences on noisescape, seascape, fauna and flora, exacerbates disamenity costs. Climate change concern and aversion to traditional fuels on the other hand serve to lessen disamenity costs of wind farm installation. Similarly, respondents with a higher education also experiences a smaller disutility costs from the presence of wind turbines. Finally, it is noteworthy that nationality stands out as the single most important socio-demographic determinant of preferences for/against the installation of wind farms. This alerts us about the degree to which nation specific energy policies, social norms, and lobbying may be part of leading to widely divergent evaluations. Conclusively, preferences for the siting of energy producing facilities are inherently and deeply heterogeneous. This heterogeneity can fruitfully be addressed in valuation studies to help design efficient, sustainable policies and define dynamic responses to these.