Eefje Cuppen Discusses Wind Energy Opposition in Dutch Podcast
Conflicts are good! According to Eefje Cuppen, Professor Governance of Sustainability at Leiden University's Institute of Public Administration. But what is the status of the energy transition? That is happening at a very slow pace here the Netherlands.
'We're living in a country that simple doesn't have that much space' says Cuppen. 'So it's not very strange that everything that lays claim to that space results in conflict.' It may be an exaggeration that there is a lot of opposition against wind energy. Statistics Netherlands (CBS) states that the percentage of wind energy when compared with the total amount of energy that is being generated only amounts to 1.7%. So why is there already that much opposition against wind energy? Cuppen has the following to say on the subject: 'A big difference with the new energy sources is that energy will feature much more prominently in our landscape. At the moment, energy is generated on a large scale, far away on some industrial zone. The system we're transiting towards is a system that's decentralised.'
CO2
An argument against the local opposition to wind energy is that it will reduce CO2.. Should this argument not outweigh local interests? 'If we were to look at things only from a purely sustainable perspective, we would probably want to live in a green dictatorship,' says Cuppen. 'But we're not living in a dictatorship and we don't want to either. We're living in a democracy and conflict is an integral part of democracy. We all have different visions and interests.'
You can listen to the entire podcast (in Dutch) on Spotify or Apple Podcasts.
Interested in other podcasts (in Dutch) from the series: 'Uit de Ivoren Toren' (Outside the Ivory Tower) by the universities Leiden-Delft-Erasmus? Here is the complete overview.