The multiple understandings of wind turbine noise: reviewing scientific attempts at handling uncertainty

Abstract

The noise from wind turbines has been an issue in the planning and development of wind power for many years, giving rise to both controversies during the deployment of onshore wind farms and a significant amount of research by various communities of scientists or what we treat here as epistemic communities founded in engineering and acoustics engineering, psychology and medicine, and the social sciences. Despite iterative attempts at fixing the noise issue through investments in technological developments and regulatory determination of allowable decibel noise levels, noise remains a contested and difficult object to find solutions to. In the Co-Green project, we instigated a social-science-based study founded in science and technology studies (STSs) to look at why and how it is that noise continues to be so controversial. We do this through a narrative literature review of three different literatures, namely the technical, health-based, and social acceptance literatures. We trace how these literatures, founded in three different epistemic communities, have produced the knowledge object of wind turbine noise. We illustrate how noise remains a "troublesome (or 'unruly') knowledge object"that defies stabilization within and between the three epistemic communities: instead, noise is understood as fundamentally different things between them, fuelling controversies over the solutions proposed, where the "fixes"might sometimes not address what was intended. We end by pointing to the potential benefits of more interdisciplinary engagement between epistemic communities as well as - in the context of science for policy - by probing the potential value of finding ways to translate qualitative research findings into noise regulations, other legislation and even the operation of wind farms.