Samenvatting

In the Netherlands, an ambitious policy goal of 1,000 MW of wind power capacity by the year 2000 had already been formulated in 1985 and remained the official basis for wind energy policy until 2000. The pace of realisation of wind turbines however did not keep up with this policy objective. An important reason is that it proves difficult to provide enough locations for wind turbines in spatial plans. Over the last 15 years two covenants have been concluded between the Dutch central government and provinces in order to overcome this problem: the 1991-Governmental Agreement on Planning Problems Wind Energy (BPW), and the 2001-Governmental Agreement on the National Development Wind Energy (BLOW). In the BLOW provinces have agreed to work towards the realisation of wind turbines with a total capacity of 1,500 MW in 2010. For this purpose provinces need the co-operation of municipalities, wind power project developers and local communities. Municipalities have a crucial role because of their discretion of detailed allocation of land use in local spatial plans. They are no partners to the covenant however. Provinces can use several governance strategies for mobilising co-operation: from top-down governance in which provinces specify locations to bottom-up approaches in which the initiatives are left to municipalities and project developers. This paper compares both covenants and assesses the effectiveness of different governance strategies employed by three distinct provinces.