Distributional justice in Swedish wind power development - An odds ratio analysis of windmill localization and local residents' socio-economic characteristics

•The distributional justice of windmill siting in Sweden is statistically evaluated.•Windmill siting decisions are related to people's socio-economic characteristics.•The results indicate some distributional skewness for wind power development.•The study gives statistical rigour and generalisability to energy justice findings.•The results warrant follow-ups and policy guides for how to handle benefit-sharing.

With a fast rise in large-scale wind power development in Sweden and other countries in recent years, issues related to energy justice generally and distributional justice specifically have become concerns in windmill siting. Some research, for instance, has indicated that it is easier to build windmills in economically marginalized communities. The evidence for this, however, is still limited. Thus, this study aims to statistically evaluate the extent to which the decisions to approve or reject windmill proposals in Sweden can be explained by factors related to the socio-economic characteristics of people living in the areas surrounding windmill sites. The study is based on an odds ratio analysis of decisions on all windmill proposals in Sweden, in which geo-referenced socio-economic data on an individual level for all inhabitants within 3 and 10 km of the windmill sites are studied. The results show skewness in the distribution of windmills, with a higher likelihood of rejection in areas with more highly educated people and people working in the private sector, compared to a higher likelihood of approval in areas with more unemployed people. This skewness, while not necessarily unjust, warrants further policy and research attention to distributional justice issues when developing wind power.