Do feed-in tariffs promote environmental efficiency among wind farms? : a two-stage LCA + DEA efficiency case study on 75 Danish wind farms

Sammanfattning: It is generally known that wind power has an offsetting effect on emissions by crowding out fossil dependent energy sources. What has not been studied to any further extent is the variability in environmental impacts caused by wind turbine erection and manufacturing. Also, it is not known how economic incentives could affect these impacts. The argument made in this thesis was that the Danish price-premium feed-in tariff system provides incentives for WF operators to upscale, as this maximizes profit. Upscaling in turn is hypothesized to reduce the environmental impacts of the Danish wind farm (WF) fleet. The aim was to investigate whether the Danish wind subsidization policies indirectly have a positive effect on environmental efficiency for WFs, and if so, what factors mediate this effect. An environmental and operational two-stage LCA + DEA (SBM-I) efficiency analysis on a sample of 75 onshore and offshore Danish WFs was performed. The second stage analysis showed a strong association between environmental efficiency and feed-in tariffs per MW. There is suggestive evidence that the main driving factors behind this association are upscaling related variables, as well as production type. Such that Danish policy makers explicitly want to target environmental impact reductions of the WF fleet, it is recommended to promote large-scale operations, and preferably offshore.