Discourse, Power, and Energy Conflicts: Understanding Welsh Renewable Energy Planning Policy

The Welsh Assembly updated their planning policy for renewables in the form of Technical Advice Note 8 (TAN 8) on renewable energy in 2005. The policy-making process was in line with the Assembly's commitment to participative and stakeholder policy-led development. I explore the policymaking process through a Foucauldian understanding of power, discourses, and policy rationalities, identifing four primary rationalities within the TAN 8 policy: spatial planning, energy targets, reliance on large-scale wind power, and the rationale that the traditional planning paradigm can resolve deep-seated conflicts over renewable energy. I explore how these rationalities emerged and were reinforced through the powerful discourse coalitions that emerged within the TAN 8 stakeholder group. As a result, I suggest that ‘consensus' should not necessarily be the aim of participative policy making and that the participatory process should not be relied upon to deliver ‘rational’ planning policies, leading to sustainable development. Instead, we must embrace the notion of pluralism with an understanding of the discursive powers at work within the policy-making process.

[1]  N. Phelps,et al.  Scratching the Surface of Collaborative and Associative Governance: Identifying the Diversity of Social Action in Institutional Capacity Building , 2000 .

[2]  Paul Williams,et al.  The Governance of sustainable development in Wales , 2006 .

[3]  Richard Cowell,et al.  Wind power and ‘the planning problem’: the experience of Wales , 2007 .

[4]  Sarah Mander,et al.  The Role of Discourse Coalitions in Planning for Renewable Energy: A Case Study of Wind-Energy Deployment , 2008 .

[5]  P. Devine‐Wright.  Local aspects of UK renewable energy development: exploring public beliefs and policy implications , 2005 .

[6]  Bishnu Raj Upreti,et al.  Conflict over biomass energy development in the United Kingdom: some observations and lessons from England and Wales , 2004 .

[7]  Joseph Szarka,et al.  Wind power, discourse coalitions and climate change: breaking the stalemate? , 2004 .

[8]  M Tewdwr-Jones,et al.  Deconstructing Communicative Rationality: A Critique of Habermasian Collaborative Planning , 1998 .

[9]  A. Mol,et al.  Participation and Environmental Governance: Consensus, Ambivalence and Debate , 2003, Environmental Values.

[10]  Michael Woods,et al.  Conflicting Environmental Visions of the Rural: Windfarm Development in Mid Wales , 2003 .

[11]  A. Barker,et al.  Attitudes Towards Planning in a Devolved Scotland , 2001 .

[12]  Catherine Mitchell.  Special Edition: Energy policy for a sustainable future , 2004 .

[13]  P. Healey.  Collaborative Planning in Perspective , 2003 .

[14]  Eric Darier.  Environmental governmentality: The case of Canada's green plan , 1996 .

[15]  Arthur P.J. Mol,et al.  Sociology, environment, and modernity: ecological modernization as a theory of social change. , 1992 .

[16]  Tim Richardson,et al.  Policy Integration for Sustainable Development: Exploring Barriers to Renewable Energy Development in Post-devolution Wales , 2003 .

[17]  Gordon G. Brittan,et al.  Wind, energy, landscape: Reconciling nature and technology , 2001 .

[18]  A. Hull.  Local strategies for renewable energy , 1995 .

[19]  Anna R. Davies.  What Silence Knows – Planning, Public Participation and Environmental Values , 2001, Environmental Values.

[20]  Ole B. Jensen,et al.  Nested Visions: New Rationalities of Space in European Spatial Planning , 2001 .

[21]  R. Slocum,et al.  Polar Bears and Energy-Efficient Lightbulbs: Strategies to Bring Climate Change Home , 2004 .

[22]  R. Paddison.  Decoding Decentralisation: The Marketing of Urban Local Power? , 1999 .

[23]  D. Bell,et al.  The ‘Social Gap’ in Wind Farm Siting Decisions: Explanations and Policy Responses , 2005 .

[24]  T. Richardson,et al.  Reflections on Foucauldian discourse analysis in planning and environmental policy research , 2001 .

[25]  Claire Haggett.  Over the Sea and Far Away? A Consideration of the Planning, Politics and Public Perception of Offshore Wind Farms , 2008 .

[26]  J. Kellett.  Renewable Energy and the UK Planning System , 2003 .