Walking the field: wind power planning and the politics of visualisation (Eure-et-Loir, France)

International audienceIn spite of supportive policy frameworks in many countries, wind power deployment has remained uneven at the national level, partly because of local opposition and landscape issues. Recent case studies suggest that the process through which landscape is visualized is decisive for spatial planning to account for these issues (Cowell R.; Nadai A. & Labussière O.). When scenic landscape - meaning by this the visual dimension of landscape - is an object of State protection, which definitely is the case in France, visualising wind power project before they are constructed and sited, is a prerequisite for the State to gain legitimacy in planning and regulating wind power development. This issue is all the more critical when visualisation is under the hand of diverging, sometimes conflicting interests, such as wind power developers or opponents and State officers. The question then points to a politics of visualisation in wind power processes. The issues are twofold. First, how do State officers manage to visualise not-yet-installed wind power projects? Second, how does such a visualisation allow for a State viewpoint on the planning of wind power to emerge? The paper draws upon STS developments in the fields of visualisation (e.g. Amman K & Knorr Cetina K.; Lynch M.; Yaneva A.) and upon analyses of construction of State frontiers as an uncertain and multi-sited perimeter (Mitchell T., Linhardt D.) in order to analyse the politics of wind power visualisation. The analysis will rely on a case study undertaken in La Beauce, in the Eure-et-Loir, about 100 kilometres South of Paris (Nadaï A. & Labussière O.). It will be based a close follow up of the local administration at work in its attempts to visualize future wind power projects (Labussière)