Spatial distributive justice has many faces: The case of siting renewable energy infrastructures

Infrastructures for using renewable energy sources (RES) produce local benefits and burdens for communities in their vicinity. The spatial distribution of these local benefits and burdens is typically heterogeneous, which frequently raises concerns of spatial distributive justice. In this paper, we first develop an analytical framework to synthesize the literature in this field. Our framework highlights that approaches to spatial distributive justice have to answer three fundamental questions: Who are the recipients of spatial distributive justice? Which local benefits and burdens are to be distributed in space? Which principle of spatial distributive justice is applied? We observe that existing studies use very different specifications of spatial distributive justice, and usually only one specification at a time. We complement our analysis by an exemplary numerical illustration using data for current RES deployment in Germany. Varying our specifications regarding recipients (states vs. counties vs. individuals), RES infrastructure (onshore wind power vs. utility-scale solar photovoltaics) and the principle of distributive justice (equality principle vs. ability principle vs. benefit principle) leads to a relatively wide range of Gini coefficients (an established measure of spatial disparity) from 0.37 to 0.84. This illustrates that different specifications of spatial distributive justice may lead to deviating, even contradictory, assessments of the existing spatial distribution of RES infrastructures. Our analysis suggests that assessments should apply a transparent and comprehensive approach to spatial distributive justice, including all relevant RES infrastructures, the full set of local benefits and burdens, and variations in the assumed recipients and principles of spatial distributive justice.