Latin America's largest state for wind energy is Ceará, Brazil, with 520 MW of operational capacity. This article presents the impacts of this rapid wind industry growth on local rural development and regional economic development. The article also describes a growing opposition movement against the wind industry. This research was based on 129 qualitative interviews with local and regional stakeholders in Ceará. According to many local residents, wind power plants have created few local benefits and many negative local impacts, including blocked access to fishing areas and damage to homes from construction equipment. In contrast, the largest benefits of wind power are on a regional scale, including some job creation and mitigated pollution. Local protests against wind projects have levied serious costs on the wind industry. With support from some academics and non-governmental organizations, a dedicated opposition movement is spreading to towns where wind projects have merely been proposed. Wind developers can likely mitigate their negative local impacts and provide more local benefits to safeguard the growth of the industry.
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Keith Brower Brown (2011) studied this question.