Public perception and policy implications towards the development of new wind farms in Ethiopia

As part of the global effort in the development and deployment of renewable energy, Ethiopia is aggressively working to increase the share of those energy resources into the energy mix. Ethiopia is known for the use of hydropower generation systems but recently the country is introducing wind energy technologies and developed wind farms that started power generation in 2011. However, the public perception towards this new entrant of power generation system is not well understood. This paper therefore explores the perception of the public living within the wind farms. This is achieved through structured survey and conducting household level discussions with the community. The results showed that generally the public is supportive of such development but critical issues have been raised such as lack of prior consultation with the community by the developers, fairness of land compensation and generally lack of inclusive benefit packages from the wind farm development for the community. With the country planning for new wind farm development, it is crucial to devise comprehensive solutions and consider the recommended policy directions in this paper in order to develop public confidence and ownership for sustainability of the developed power generation systems.