Permitting & Social License to Operate

Permitting & Social License to Operate

The discussion focused on challenges and solutions around permitting and social licence to operate for energy projects. Key challenges include:

• Lengthy Planning Processes: Some projects take up to 10 years (or more!) for approval due to site identification, community engagement, aviation concerns, and market saturation.
• Politicization of Energy: In the U.S., as with some other countries, ideological opposition to renewables has grown, fuelled by party politics rather than project merits.
• Sophistication of Opposition: Modern opposition is more organized and ideologically driven, and often comes from outside the communities themselves, which leads to the difficulty of:
  • Astroturfing vs. Grassroots Opposition: whereby developers face difficulty distinguishing between genuine community opposition and coordinated external opposition (astroturfing), which requires different strategies.
• Complex Decisions Without Support: Local officials are often required to make complex planning decisions and often lack resources and frameworks to make informed decisions, leading to delays and inefficiencies.
• Permitting Reform Limitations: While federal permitting reforms are helpful, many challenges arise at state and local levels, especially concerning zoning rules and community trust. Federal reforms address interconnection, cost allocation, and judicial processes but do little for the “ground game” of engaging communities.

 

The group discussed systematic approaches that can help streamline the permitting and social licence process, but recognised that until more systemic changes are implemented, the focus should be on early engagement with communities that is genuine and respectful.

• Early Stakeholder Engagement: Successful projects require developers to engage early with communities, speaking their language and understanding their values. This means introducing yourself to the community (particularly key stakeholders in that community) before asking them for anything: building trust and relationships before asking for decisions is essential.
• Humanize the process: related to point above, it is important to engage with communities with respect, curiosity, and humility, not just persuading communities but genuinely understanding and addressing their concerns. Humanize the process! Respecting community dynamics and addressing both immediate and long-term concerns with strategies tailored to specific contexts is critical.
• Meeting Communities Where They Are: It is crucial to align conversations with local priorities, and frame the benefits of the projects that are of interest to those communities. For example, in agricultural communities, discussions might revolve around property rights and income sources rather than climate change.
• Unobvious Influencers: Developers often rely on traditional power structures (e.g., mayors) and in doing so, might miss other important issues. Seek out other community influencers, such as Church leaders.

 

The UK takes a more ‘judicial approach’ akin to a trial system where one side is ‘right’ and the other ‘wrong’; this slows down approvals and is heavily influenced by political cycles. In other countries, like France and New Zealand, they approach it with a problem-solving model, which actively involves communities to address concerns collaboratively.

• New Zealand: NZ has ‘environment courts’ that consist of panels with diverse expertise (e.g. industry, social engagement, legal expertise). These panels impose deadlines for resolving disputes.
• France: France utilises an Administrative Courts approach, to assess whether a project is of public interest, with similar fixed timeframes to address issues.

These kinds of approaches have important characteristics, such as:

• Time-Limited Decisions: Fixed deadlines (e.g., six months for dispute resolution and decision-making) are crucial for timely project deployment. Delays can effectively “kill” projects despite their economic and social benefits.

• Mediation and Facilitation: Involving mediators or facilitators early in projects has ensured that environmental and social concerns are addressed collaboratively. Even without these kinds of ‘environmental panels/courts’ this approach has proved effective in some African countries, and prevented conflicts from escalating and stalling projects.

Other systematic approaches include:

• Statewide Standards: A US-state example was given whereby an exhaustive stakeholder process was developed to address these challenges in a particular municipality, and the findings from this process were then rolled into statewide standards, replacing inconsistent municipal rules. This approach preserved community voices while streamlining development.
• Shared Ownership Model: Thrive Renewables has a co-ownership approach, which allows local communities to co-invest in renewable energy projects, such as wind farms, taking stakes of 10-50% in larger projects. This fosters local involvement and ensures a portion of profits is reinvested into community initiatives after covering costs. While the model offers significant benefits, challenges include structuring finances and managing numerous shareholders effectively. Thrive supports communities by simplifying the process and acting as a co-investor.