Socioeconomic impacts of wind farms in small and rural areas: a case study in North-eastern Spain

Abstract It is now clear that the adoption of renewable energies is of high importance in addressing climate change. In this sense, this work aims to contribute to the discussion on the net socioeconomic effects of renewable energy deployment on the places, especially rural areas, in which the plants are installed. To this end, we particularise the analysis to the case of wind power in an Aragonese county: Matarraña, in North-eastern Spain. We use the input–output approach to account for the local direct, indirect, and potentially induced effects in terms of value added and employment. Unlike previous versions of this methodology, the multiregional input–output method, with a high level of spatial and sectoral disaggregation, allows us to identify the place and the economic sector in which those effects occur. This high granularity of both the data and the model we use constitutes one of the main contributions of the paper. At the same time, we take into account the temporal sequence of the effects, an aspect that is essential in this case. Our results provide information on the issue of local acceptance of renewable energy deployments. Specifically, they suggest that, in the absence of other compensations, wind power does not seem to generate meaningful economic value or employment in the area (Matarraña county) where the windmills are installed. Graphical abstract