Burdened by renewable energy? A multi-scalar analysis of distributional justice and wind energy in the United States

The transition towards renewable energy is likely to be uneven across social and spatial dimensions. To ensure this transition is equitable and just, energy injustice has become the key framework for analyzing and interpreting the distribution of energy infrastructure. Wind energy development has experienced a significant gap between broad public support for increased development but persistent localized opposition to proposed projects, indicating that wind represents a locally unwanted land use. We argue that although the negative impacts of wind energy infrastructure are less extreme than those posed by other, more toxic, unwanted land uses, their status as a locally unwanted land use will produce similar distributional injustices as have been found throughout the environmental injustice literature. Using data from both the American Community Survey and the U.S. Wind Turbine Database, we use logistic and Poisson regressions, fixed effects, and temporal lags to evaluate the current landscape of wind energy injustice along the social dimensions of income, race and ethnicity, age, education, labor force participation, and rurality at three spatial scales: between all counties within the contiguous United States, between counties within states with wind energy, and between census tracts within counties with wind energy. We find results vary by scale and whether the model is comparing the presence of any development or the size of that development. The most evidence of injustice is visible at the within-county level related to whether or not there is any wind energy development, with few relationships present when evaluating the absolute size of development.