Social Acceptance and Social Innovation in Wind Power Technology

The purpose of this paper is to describe various social changes, which are brought about by community wind power in Japan. As the number of wind power station increase, there are two inconsistent reactions. One is the rise of protest movement lead by naturalists, based on destruction of nature including avian collision problem and/or landscape. The other is the rise of community wind power, in which the amount of facilities and participants are rapidly growing.

We focus on this contradiction from a framework of social justice, such as distribution justice between global and local societies, which composes a background of dualistic conflict between pros and cons of wind power. In addition, we will make it clear that a “Social Innovation” accompanied with community wind power has a key to solve the problem, by changing the rule of distribution justice and the role of social actors.