Justice-Adjusted Wind Development: Spatial Conflict, Community Rights and Legal Governance

Wind-energy expansion is indispensable to decarbonization, but a strong wind resource does not by itself establish that development is spatially suitable, socially legitimate or institutionally deliverable. This article develops an empirical spatial–legal screening framework that converts technical wind opportunity into Justice-adjusted Wind Development Potential (JAWDP). The analysis covers Australia, Brazil, Canada, Chile, China, Denmark, Germany, India, Kenya, Morocco, South Africa and the United Kingdom. A 25 km grid is used for the primary analysis and a 10 km grid for resolution sensitivity. The Wind-Resource Potential Index (WRPI) combines 100 m wind power density with grid remoteness; the Landscape-Conflict Index (LCI) combines protected-area coverage, ecological sensitivity, agricultural land, settlement exposure and cultural-heritage proximity; and the Legal and Justice Friction Index (LJFI) codes nine functional safeguards on a 0–2 scale. Equal component weights and a preregistered symmetric baseline of α = β = 0.25 are used in the multiplicative JAWDP model. The United Kingdom and Denmark rank first and second (0.702 and 0.697), followed by Morocco under a disclosed midpoint legal scenario (0.539). Grid-resolution changes leave ten country ranks unchanged and shift Chile and Germany by one position. Across the full preregistered sensitivity set, eleven countries are classified as stable and Germany as moderately stable. As an external plausibility check, JAWDP correlates with 2024 installed wind-capacity density (Spearman ρ = 0.692, p = 0.013) and 2015–2024 capacity-addition density (ρ = 0.699, p = 0.011). An additive equal-weight multicriteria benchmark produces only moderate rank correspondence (ρ = 0.559), illustrating the non-compensatory purpose of the justice adjustment. The framework is intended for comparative screening, not as a prediction of generation, a grid-feasibility model or a substitute for project-level legal review. Additional robustness checks show high stability to sample composition and transmission-vintage perturbation, but the deployment association weakens under wind-suitable-area denominators; the external comparison is therefore interpreted as a denominator-sensitive plausibility check rather than empirical validation.