Social Attitudes and Landscape Capacity towards Wind energy Parks in the Belgian Countryside

Due to the recent changes at the world scale like the increase in raw material prices and the awareness of the global warming, several countries experience development of renewable power production. These renewable productions often need a lot of place and they are localized in the countryside. This is the come back of the energy production in the rural system after fifty years of concentration of the production in towns, in nuclear power stations, and in large hydropower units. The paper focuses on the wind energy parks development in Belgium countryside, a high-populated area in northwestern Europe. From the experiences in the neighbouring countries, it transpired that social (residents’ reactions) and environmental (landscape impact) aspects are worthy of attention. The paper presents the results of Lacsawep, a two-year federal research project (www.belspo.be/ssd/), that examines which landscapes are adapted to wind energy in Belgium and how Belgian citizens in different contexts perceive those projects. The attitude toward wind energy parks in Belgium is based on information coming from several levels: the mouth to ear, the municipality’s, communication and project leader’s communication, the regional, national, and international Medias. The citizens difficultly analyse the mishmash of pro- and contra- information. The discourses and the bases of attitudes toward wind energy parks are a complex of physical annoyances, economic arguments, symbolic arguments, and type of decision-making process. Last but not least, these attitudes may change quickly due to the international concerns and the upsurge of wind energy parks. In Belgium, it was noticed that during the research project, the attitude toward wind energy parks changed positively.