The Power of Energy Justice for Attaining and Maintaining Acceptance for Renewable Energy Projects

Abstract

The renewable energy (RE) industry faces a significant challenge globally: gaining and maintaining social acceptance. Social acceptance of RE projects, including associated infrastructure such as transmission lines, is deeply rooted in justice and equity concerns regarding environmental and social impacts, cultural implications, land use conflicts, and the legitimacy of consultation processes, among others. This paper argues that if addressing injustices is a condition for securing social acceptance, energy justice can serve as both a goal and roadmap to unfold acceptability towards RE projects while serving to identify critical elements that must be addressed. It does so by outlining considerations for achieving energy justice in RE projects and presenting an example on the role, potentialities, and challenges of the figure of community advisors as critical actors for ensuring energy justice.

1 Introduction

Social acceptance is among the most significant challenges faced by the renewable energy (RE) industry worldwide.¹ The energy transition is not merely a question of technical or economic feasibility, but also a question of social acceptance framed on the interplay between landscape changes in energy policy and on-the-ground support. Social acceptance for RE and associated infrastructure (e.g. transmission lines) is heavily underpinned by justice and equity concerns around environmental and social harms, cultural impacts, land use conflicts, and legitimacy of consultation processes, among others.² After all, RE projects are not inherently (un)fair and must include proactive community-focused strategies rather than assuming that societies will accept all new developments per se.³ Hence, a rapid upscaling of RE generation inherently depends on the support of those people whose perspectives of justice can delay or halt project development.⁴

If addressing injustices is a condition for securing social acceptance,⁵ energy justice can serve as an enabler. Energy justice has emerged as a powerful analytical tool to engage with social expectations while managing and potentially measuring acceptance throughout a project or activity life cycle. A feature that adds more value to energy justice is that it intends to address inequalities before the project or activity happens,⁶ i.e. in an early stage of planning through identifying and dealing with questions of justice across time and geographies.

2 The Key Energy Justice Considerations

The energy justice framework consists of five forms of justice that should be addressed in a systematic and complementary way⁷: distributional, procedural, recognition, restorative, and cosmopolitan justice. The literature has highlighted considerations to ensure each form of justice with an especial focus on the first three known as “triumvirate of tenets”.⁸ These considerations serve as drivers for guiding the achievement of procedural, distributional, and recognition justice.

Considerations for ensuring procedural justice (as the idea of due process, public engagement, and the rule of law at different levels) include at least⁹: (i) full participation in the project life cycle, (ii) ability to be heard and express opinions freely, (iii) adequate and timely information, (iv) impartiality of the decision-maker, (v) being treated with respect, and (vi) decisions that are correctable in the face of new information. Strategies for effectively tackling these include establishing formal and informal information channels, ensuring communities legitimate representation, early notification, and full disclosure of information and mobilising local knowledge, among many others that would closely depend on the specific context.

In terms of distributive justice, considerations relate to making sure the costs of project development are born evenly while clear benefits are provided. A fair allocation of costs includes discussing infrastructure location, landscape impacts, and negative effects on flora and fauna. On the other hand, a fair allocation of benefits includes employment opportunities, providing energy access and lower electricity costs, enabling co-ownership opportunities and local compensation schemes, among others. The role of the government is key in ensuring that local communities can reap the benefits of the energy transition by establishing appropriate institutional and regulatory frameworks that promote benefit sharing.

Recognition justice has a more holistic approach based on the protection and recognition of rights and identities of the different actors involved. There are many ways to articulate the linkages between human rights and clean energy. For example, the Business & Human Rights Resource Centre defines 11 indicators to assess RE companies’ human rights performance.¹⁰ Hence, recognition justice requires ensuring voluntarily standards and legal concepts legally incorporated in certain jurisdictions are applied, such as the Free Prior and Informed Consent (FPIC).¹¹ It underpins distributional and procedural justice since the idea of due process and impacts’ allocation are firmly grounded in recognising disadvantaged populations rights and their needs.¹² Governments and clean energy advocates have a role to play in respectively regulating and holding accountable those companies and investors on their human rights practices.

3 Conclusions

Energy policies will have to be designed in such a way as to reduce emissions rapidly while capturing the subjectivity of justice. Through utilising the energy justice framework of analysis and taking into account the key considerations outlined above, energy justice becomes both a goal and a roadmap for contextualising justice while helping to determine actions, steps, and resources needed to attain acceptance.

For example, applying the energy justice framework in the case of upscaling renewable energy in indigenous peoples’ territories within the region of La Guajira, Colombia, has allowed to identify both fairness concerns affecting the strength and quality of community acceptance, and potential solutions.¹³ This includes relevant aspects that have received scarce attention such as the role and scope of community advisors as actors with the knowledge and expertise that communities often lack for balanced consultation process. Their role is expected to focus on, for instance, helping the local community to identify project impacts, manage the unawareness of rights and due diligence compliance, and guarantee fair compensations and benefit sharing, all related to the tenets of energy justice. However, advisors are normally paid by the project developer often without guaranteeing impartiality or technical expertise, with limited knowledge of the local indigenous culture and holding an economic interest not necessarily aligned with those of the community(s) represented. Hence, although highly influential actors for the achievement of energy justice, if not closely monitored and regulated they can undermine the achievement of justice and acceptance. Building capacities in local communities would serve to adequately represent their own interests instead of relying on external actors.

This experience shows that overall using the energy justice lens allows policymakers to examine what is needed to unfold acceptability in areas of high importance for any country’s energy transition and electricity expansion plans.