Exploring the Social Compensation Patterns in Process of Developing Wind Energy in China

As one of the world's largest wind energy countries, the Chinese government has formulated a series of regulations and laws to encourage the development of wind power industry in the last decade. The relationship and mutual responsibility between the government and wind power companies was put in place by these laws and regulations, but the interaction between the wind power industry and the local residents was ignored or minimized to some extent. With perspective of time dimension, the life of local residents and the development of wind farms go forward hand in hand, and they are relationship with affecting and being affected. During the interaction process, the need to establish a comprehensive social compensation mechanism to mitigate the loss of “the victims” (both material and spiritual), then promote to achieve a harmony “energy sustainable communities”. Based on the cases of wind power development in different rural area of China, this paper contrasts the different patterns of social compensation in local contexts and targets on showing the interaction relationship between social compensation patterns and different degree of social acceptance of wind power. It discusses and analyzes of the social compensation mechanism of Chinese characteristics for wind power, and tries to explain the deep-seated institutional and social cultural reasons for the formation of these compensation patterns.