Survival of the largest: Why regulators fail to develop a heterogeneous wind energy sector

A diverse wind market with large and small wind offers benefits relative to one that is dominated by large projects. However, the adoption of small wind lags behind large in many locations. We ask what factors might account for small wind's relative lack of success. We analyze a case study looking at an Israeli policy that explicitly provided advantages for small-scale wind but resulted in a sector dominated by large projects. We conducted a quantitative text analysis of minutes from government planning meetings to assess differences between small and large projects in terms of the challenges they face and the support they receive from various stakeholders, supplemented by interviews with key actors. Our results indicate that the hurdles for both small and large projects were similar, with environmental requirements prominent. However, developers of large projects succeeded in overcoming these, while smaller projects did not. This appears to be due to the correlation between large projects and large developers, with greater resources in terms of funds, lobbying power and expertise, who are better able to withstand regulatory delays. In order to promote small wind, regulators may need to provide developers of small projects with greater capacity for addressing planning requirements and delays.