A group of 11 European energy, climate, municipal, environmental, and youth organizations is looking ahead to a surge in renewable energy deployment and an end to local opposition after negotiating a “fast and fair” framework that puts community benefits at the heart of the effort to speed up project development.

The five-point statement of principles, the result of an intensive set of cross-sectoral negotiations led by ICLEI Europe, describes power sector decarbonization as an economic opportunity for Europe, offering new electricity supply at lower cost than coal or gas. But it warns that new deployment “is not advancing at the necessary scale required to achieve climate neutrality. The same concerns the deployment of electricity grids at all voltage levels, which sustain and enable the pace and magnitude of investments in generation and storage assets for renewables across the EU.”

The statement cites long permitting times and limited political support as key obstacles, adding that “frequent questions on fairness regarding benefits for local communities also weigh on the speed of realization of new projects.

To bridge that gap, the statement affirms that:

• Building “early, continuous, and meaningful engagement of all relevant local stakeholders” into the development of renewable energy and energy storage projects “increases local perceived fairness and results in smoother realization” of new renewables and grid infrastructure.

• Projects should deliver “tangible, appropriate, and proportionate community benefit opportunities in conformance with national and regional legislation as well as with the aims of the local communities involved,” including jobs, business development, and benefit-sharing schemes for citizens.

• Communities deserve transparency on new revenue brought in by local renewable energy projects, and on the overall process for getting new infrastructure in place.

• While renewable energy and grid projects, “like any infrastructure, [have] an impact on nature and biodiversity,” that impact “can be minimized and mitigated, and the impact can be an overall positive one” with proper coordination. That means projects “have the potential to effectively address the twin climate and biodiversity crises, and their deployment should go hand-in-hand with nature protection and restoration.”

• Community empowerment and a “level playing field” among all stakeholders is “instrumental” in any successful project. That means citizens and community-led initiatives may need “special support to allow them to develop their own projects and to access the grid on an equal footing” with more established market participants.

Signatories to the statement of principles include Solar Power Europe, Wind Europe, REScoop.EU, Energy Cities, the European Environmental Bureau, and Climate Action Network Europe, among others.

Local Conflict Sets Back Deployment

Until now, project development in Europe has come down to an individual company or sector presenting “what it thinks is best” to ensure fairness and build community acceptance, said ICLEI Europe’s Senior Expert on Sustainable Energy Systems, Arthur Hinsch. But “what actually sets back accelerated deployment of renewables is local conflict,” with commercial developers and investors focused on profit, environmental groups determined to protect nature, citizens or energy co-operatives looking for local ownership, and landowners interested in the revenue a project can generate.

“All of those stakeholders have different perspectives on what would be fair when it comes to deploying and/or living with renewable energy infrastructure,” he told The Energy Mix. Often, “these conflicts go on and on and on until the project ends up in court.”

The new framework is meant to avoid that outcome and deliver faster project development with a set of shared principles that “bring a bit of order into the complexity that is fairness around energy,” Hinsch explained. The approach will also add a degree of accountability, he added, setting the expectation that stakeholders across the spectrum will adhere to similar standards of fairness.

ICLEI Europe hopes to see the initiative develop into a “one-stop for accelerating renewables fairly,” Hinsch said. For that to happen, an EU-wide initiative will have to trickle down to 27 member countries, many but not all of which have set their own good or best practices for acceptance of renewable energy projects, community benefit schemes, and consultation practices.

He added that the industry is largely onboard with the process.

“Many developers, not all of them, but many developers understand the added value of going the extra mile in terms of public participation,” he said. “The sector has agreed to have continuous and meaningful engagement of relevant stakeholders,” to increase “perceived fairness” and smooth project development. At the same time, industry often needs help with data monitoring and analysis, developing community benefit schemes and compensation measures, and navigating the “truckload of paperwork for a developer to go to the permitting authority and get the building permit.”

Those concerns apply equally to smaller community projects and larger developers backed by more traditional investors, Hinsch added—since it’s well understood that bigger capital pools will be needed to push renewable energy deployment far enough, fast enough to respond to the climate and biodiversity crises.

While the “fast and fair” initiative originated in the EU, Hinsch said he’s received queries from other parts of the world, and ICLEI Europe has pitched the approach to the International Energy Agency. “We’ve established something that has the potential to really be a reference point for talking about fairness and acceleration efforts for renewables,” he told The Mix.