Low-income resident’s preferences for the location of wind turbine farms in the Eastern Cape Province, South Africa

Abstract

There is a general consensus that South Africa should be generating more power through harnessing renewable energy resources, such as wind power. However, there is no consensus with regard to the location of such generating projects. This paper describes a wind farm project proposed for development in the Kouga Local Municipality, reports low-income local residents’ preferences on its nature and applies choice modelling to analyse these preferences. A questionnaire was presented to each respondent, the discrete choice experiment component of the questionnaire included two different onshore wind energy development scenarios and a status quo option. The scenarios differed by the combination of four elements: the distance of the wind turbines from residential areas, job creation, the number of turbines and a subsidy allocated to each household.