Klimawandelbewusstsein und Akzeptanz erneuerbarer Energien

Abstract

The EEG promotion led to an expansion of decentralised wind power and biogas plants throughout the northwest region of Germany. Without a broad socio-political acceptance of this development, the transformation to a climate-friendly energy supply system is facing a major hurdle. This dissertation contributes to research on social acceptance of renewable energies by showing that climate change awareness increases the acceptance, and that as a background variable, can increase or mitigate the effects of the perceived advantages and disadvantages of plants. For this, a postal cross-sectional survey with 577 respondents was carried out in the northwest region based on a registration office sample. The results showed that climate change awareness had a greater total effect on the acceptance of regional wind power plants than the perceived economic benefits, landscape effects or electricity price increases. The structural equation model for biogas plant acceptance showed climate change awareness as a less relevant predictor. Therefore, in the future, integrative studies on acceptance of renewable plants should consider the impact of climate change awareness.