Why Better Community Engagement Is Key to the Future of Clean Tech

October 24, 2023

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by Justin Worland (Time Magazine) ... Across the country, as money begins to flow from the Inflation Reduction Act, many project developers are now urgently facing this hurdle: to build they’ll need to win over local communities. In the public dialogue, many supporters of clean energy have dismissed opposition to infrastructure projects as NIMBYism, short for “not in my backyard.” The term is derisive and refers to local people who have a negative knee-jerk reaction to any project near their community. There is certainly some truth to the NIMBYism allegation.

But to ignore all community concerns as NIMBYism would be a mistake. First, research has shown that community opposition is often grounded in important, real-world concerns, including and especially in low-income communities of color where companies have historically built industrial facilities that have contributed to health ailments, among other impacts. There’s a business case, too. Engaging communities makes projects more likely to succeed in the short term and makes them more sustainable investments in the long run.

“Education of the community is essential,” said Jigar Shah, director of the U.S. Department of Energy’s Loan Programs Office, at a September round table alongside clean energy executives. “And you're going have to do that intelligently, smartly, to try to get the best amount of buy-in.”

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Climate scientists broadly agree that we need carbon dioxide removal technology to get anywhere close to meeting global climate targets. But the technology can, on the surface, sound precisely like the sort of sci-fi industrial project you don’t want in your backyard: the most widely discussed approach involves sucking up carbon using industrial facilities and then storing it underground.

Many on the ground are skeptical. Because of existing infrastructure and favorable geology, many companies are trying to deploy this technology in places that have historically been home to the oil-and-gas industry. After decades of fossil fuel projects that have harmed human health, trust is often low.

In the past, fossil fuel firms might have just pushed past these concerns, promising jobs and using their political clout to achieve their objectives. But that’s no longer viable. Beyond the ethical issues with such an approach, a changing political climate has made that more difficult. Environmental justice groups have access to more resources to sue. And the Biden Administration has made community engagement a consideration for federal funding.

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A 2022 study of reasons why proposed clean-energy projects don’t get built found that a lack of engagement with the local community occurred in nearly 30% of project failures. “Incorporating all stakeholder perspectives from the outset of a siting process will probably save time and money,” wrote the report authors. “Better to deal with perceptions of possible risks and potential benefits before opponents have made up their minds, and banded together, to block the project.” READ MORE

Carbon Capture Must Generate Commercial Revenues (Energy Intelligence)

On carbon pipelines, regular Iowans are winning some rounds against powerful ag interests (Des Moines Register)

CCUS – Too Little, Too Late, Too Slow – It’s No Panacea (S&P Global)

Excerpt from Energy Intelligence: He said the Inflation Reduction Act should give CCS a welcome "shot in the arm" that will help move it forward in the US, but that given the expense involved, similar public support is unlikely elsewhere.

On the stick side of the equation, Tolmasquim said Europe's carbon border tax will probably help to boost CCS in Brazil because Brazilian steelmakers will want to keep exporting their steel to Europe.

This is exactly how the border tax is supposed to work, by encouraging other countries to match the EU's emissions standards and avoid putting European companies at a disadvantage.

Social Acceptance

Jackson said governments and industry will have to work hard to build social acceptance of CCS.

Monitoring, reporting and verification will be "critical" to ensure that carbon is permanently and safely removed from the atmosphere, he said.

Jackson emphasized that CCS is a natural fit for the oil industry, noting that Occidental has been transporting, separating, storing and using CO2 for several decades.

Similarly, Petrobras says it currently captures and stores 10 million tons of CO2 per year, or about 25% of the worldwide total.

McKinsey estimates that CCS could reach 3 billion to 6 billion tons of CO2 per year by 2050, which would be a huge increase from around 40 million tons or so today.

However, that would still only represent 10%-15% of current energy-related emissions, which amounted to 37 billion tons in 2022, according to the International Energy Agency.

To get close to net-zero emissions, the remaining 85%-90% of emissions would have to be eliminated by shrinking the use of fossil fuels and using nature-based solutions such as planting forests. READ MORE

Excerpt from Des Moines Register: Groups such as the Sierra Club, Bold Alliance, Food & Water Watch and others have organized invaluable public and legal resistance. But a significant segment of the voices in opposition has been from landowners and tenants affected by the plans and no small number of other regular Iowans. Tangibly, their comments fill pages and pages of Iowa Utilities Board dockets for the pipelines, and their letters to lawmakers, the news media and others are equally voluminous.

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“This is an issue that anybody can look at and just see it's not right. It's not right to be giving away our land to a massive corporation while using our tax dollars to let them profit,” Emma Schmit, Pipeline Fighters organizer with Bold Alliance, said Wednesday. Schmit said she thinks the resistance is causing problems for Summit’s leadership as it did with Navigator’s.

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“While the federal government keeps trying to waste billions of dollars to promote these massive carbon pipelines, grassroots organizing is winning the fight to stop these egregious handouts to corporate polluters,” said Food & Water Watch Managing Director of Organizing Emily Wurth in a statement.

The outcome is far from certain

Victories like those that pipeline opponents have achieved so far can be fleeting. In December 2016, opponents of the Dakota Access oil pipeline, which includes about 350 miles in Iowa, celebrated the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers’ denial of a permit for the pipeline in North Dakota. The pipeline has been fully operational for over six years, and an Iowa activist convicted of damaging equipment used in the pipeline’s construction is due to remain in prison at least four more years.

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It's entirely possible that Iowa’s regulators will overlook the concerns that have slowed Summit in other states.

But optimism has never been higher that Kim Reynolds and Bruce Rastetter won’t, in fact, be allowed to take private property for a project that does not meet any sensible definition of serving a public use and pencils out only by relying on billions in taxpayer subsidies. READ MORE