This chapter gives an introduction to the debate between resourcists and capabilitarians on the best metric for interpersonal comparisons of ‘advantage’. It starts by identifying a number of factors that complicate the debate and should be kept in mind while reading this body of literature. The remainder of the chapter zooms in on the philosophical literature about justice, addressing two main topics. The first is the existence of immense human diversity, which resourcists like Rawls and Pogge insufficiently acknowledge and address according to capabilitarians. The second topic is neutrality towards the good life, a value which capabilitarians like Nussbaum fail to respect according to resourcists. In the course of the chapter, several theoretical distinctions are identified that underlie the debate: chance versus choice, natural versus social causes, ideal versus non-ideal theories of justice and distributive justice versus justice as recognition. The difference between resourcists and capabilitarians, so it is concluded, is as much a difference in how they frame the debate about justice as a difference in the evaluative space that they defend.@en

Community acceptance still remains a challenge for wind energy projects. The most popular explanation for local opposition, the Not in My Backyard effect, has received fierce criticism in the past decade. Critics argue that opposition is not merely a matter of selfishness or ignorance, but that moral, ecological and aesthetic values play an important role. In order to better take such values into account, a more bottom-up, participatory decision process is usually proposed. Research on this topic focusses on either stakeholder motivations/attitudes, or their behavior during project implementation. This paper proposes a third research focus, namely the ‘objects’ which elicit certain behavioral responses and attitudes—the wind turbine and parks. More concretely, this paper explores Value Sensitive Design (VSD) as way to arrive at wind turbines and parks that better embed or reflect key values. After a critical discussion of the notion of acceptance versus acceptability and support, the paper discusses existing literature on ecology and aesthetics in relation to wind turbine/park design, which could serve as ‘building blocks’ of a more integral VSD approach of the topic. It also discusses the challenge of demarcating wind park projects as VSD projects. A further challenge is that VSD has been applied mainly at the level of technical artifacts, whereas wind parks can best be conceptualized as socio-technical system. This new application would therefore expand the current practice of VSD, and may as a consequence also lead to interesting new insights for the VSD community. The paper concludes that such an outcome-oriented approach of wind turbines and park is worth exploring further, as a supplement to rather than a replacement of the process-oriented approach that is promoted by the current literature on community acceptance of wind parks.@en

The development of offshore wind energy systems is a complex challenge from a technical, socio-economic, ethical and legal perspective. The proposed paper elaborates a general framework for systematically embedding social responsibility into the technical and institutional design of offshore wind energy systems. Taking a systems perspective we investigate how values can be embedded in the technical design of offshore energy systems in relation to other surrounding (energy) systems and beyond. Thereby we use a value sensitive design approach. Here, the empirical basis is given by the current development of offshore wind in the Netherlands and the values and conflicts articulated by various stakeholder groups. The conceptual framework is provided by the capability approach. It will be argued that the capability approach is particularly well suited for addressing ethical issues in the context of energy supply (and demand) as it allows taking into account positive and negative aspects of various energy technologies, while also including their positive aspects in the terms of freedom of action. In this respect, a capability perspective distinguishes itself from various other forms of ethical assessments that predominantly focus on the negative impacts of technology. We will sketch how the institutional design of offshore wind energy systems addresses the regulation and governance of the energy sector in relation to the ethical requirements that arise in a value sensitive design approach as sketched above.@en