Good Neighbours, Public Relations and Bribes: The ...

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Good Neighbours, Public Relations and Bribes: The Politics and Perceptions of Community Benefit Provision in Renewable Energy Development in the UK a

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Noel Cass , Gordon Walker & Patrick Devine-Wright a

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Lancaster Environment Centre, Lancaster University, Lancaster, UK

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School of Geography, University of Exeter, Exeter, Devon, UK Published online: 17 Sep 2010.

To cite this article: Noel Cass , Gordon Walker & Patrick Devine-Wright (2010): Good Neighbours, Public Relations and Bribes: The Politics and Perceptions of Community Benefit Provision in Renewable Energy Development in the UK, Journal of Environmental Policy & Planning, 12:3, 255-275 To link to this article: http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/1523908X.2010.509558

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Journal of Environmental Policy & Planning Vol. 12, No. 3, September 2010, 255– 275

Good Neighbours, Public Relations and Bribes: The Politics and Perceptions of Community Benefit Provision in Renewable Energy Development in the UK

Downloaded by [Lancaster University Library] at 03:51 24 May 2013

NOEL CASS∗ , GORDON WALKER∗ & PATRICK DEVINE-WRIGHT∗∗ ∗

Lancaster Environment Centre, Lancaster University, Lancaster, UK School of Geography, University of Exeter, Exeter, Devon, UK

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ABSTRACT The provision of community benefits has become a more common component of renewable energy project proposals in the UK. This raises questions as to the purposes these benefits are fulfilling and the ways in which they are perceived by the many different stakeholders involved in the processes of project development and approval. Are they seen as an effective strategic element in negotiations around planning consent; as a right for communities whose resource is being exploited, or who are experiencing the dis-benefits of technology implementation; or as a way of bribing or buying off protestors or key decision-makers? In this paper, we draw on evidence from a series of interviews with key stakeholders involved in renewable energy policy and development and from a set of mixed method, diverse case studies of renewable energy projects around the UK to examine the viewpoints of different stakeholders (including developers, local publics, politicians, activists and consultants). We discovered variation in the extent and type of benefits on offer, reflecting the maturity of different technologies, based on a number of rationales. We also found in the public’s views a high degree of ambivalence towards both the benefits on offer (when they were known or acknowledged) and the reasons for providing them. The normative case for providing community benefits appears to be accepted by all involved, but the exact mechanisms for doing so remain problematic. KEY WORDS: Renewable, energy, community, benefits

Introduction Why not, why not? If we let them put their wind farm, why not [laughs]? You know, they’re using our space. Of course they should, it’s public relations anyway, isn’t it? They’ve got to be seen to be doing it, haven’t they? It would appease all the people who don’t like it. Yeah, they could restore the Pier, couldn’t they? Correspondence Address: Noel Cass, Lancaster Environment Centre, Lancaster University, Farrer Avenue, Lancaster LA1 4YQ, Tel.: +44 1624 510256; Email: [email protected] 1523-908X print/1522-7200 Online/10/030255-21 # 2010 Taylor & Francis DOI: 10.1080/1523908X.2010.509558

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They could do something decent, not just a token effort. Yeah, not just take the councillors out for a meal. (OFWW,1 focus group) The need for an increased deployment of renewable energy technologies (RETs) is widely accepted and well-rehearsed in the policy and academic literature. The UK has set itself emissions reductions targets, unilaterally (DTI, 2003) and in conjunction with the EU (EU Council of Ministers, 2008), and has strategies in play for achieving these. The UK Committee on Climate Change’s First Report of December 2008 addresses different scenarios aimed at ‘Decarbonising Electricity Generation’ in order to fulfil the 2050 target of an 80% reduction in emissions. It suggests that ‘in the period to 2022, decarbonization will be primarily achieved through deployment of renewable energy’ (Committee on Climate Change, 2008, p. 173). It also sets out assumptions that three RETs—wind, biomass and tidal barrages—will play a significant role in emissions reduction in the near future, while wave, tidal stream and solar photovoltaic RETs are unlikely to do so. The academic and policy literatures as well as industry and media commentators have identified a series of problematic aspects to achieving the widespread and rapid roll-out of these technologies in the UK, including questions of public acceptability assumed to be linked to the gaining of planning consent for onshore wind farm and some other RET projects (e.g. Upreti, 2004, although see Loring (2007) and Toke et al. (2008) for examination of factors influencing planning outcomes). Local planning authorities are responsible—in the first instance—for granting or denying permission for such deployments, and ‘bottlenecks’ or logjams2 have been identified in the planning system, with a 60% refusal rate for planning applications for onshore wind farms being reported in England and Wales (Toke, 2005; Toke et al., 2008). Public opposition to (particularly on-shore) wind-farms has been frequently characterized as a manifestation of ‘NIMBYism’ (Barnett et al., 2010; Devine-Wright, 2007; Van der Horst, 2007) in the face of locally unwanted land uses (LULUs, see Freudenburg & Pastor, 1992), although this characterization has been criticized as inaccurate, unhelpful and an attempt to de-legitimize and dismiss opposition (Bell et al., 2005; Burningham et al., 2006; Wolsink, 1996, 2000, 2006, 2007). In practice, many influences have been found to shape the levels of opposition to specific RET projects. For example, Eltham et al. (2008, p. 25) characterize key factors as: the campaign stance of a community group (Van der Horst, 2007), the beliefs held by the public regarding particular wind farm impacts (Wolsink, 1996), the communication and consultation methods employed from the outset of the planning process (Gross, 2007), the nature of the planning system and suspicion of the developer’s motives. (Wolsink, 2000). Given recent experience of public opposition to wind power in particular, developers and policy-makers in the UK have looked to the relatively successful roll-out of wind power in other European countries (CSE, 2005; Gipe, 2006; Loring, 2007; Toke, 1999, 2002; Toke et al., 2008) in order to try to emulate their success. In particular, it has been suggested that the mode of deployment (Walker & Cass, 2007) in countries such as Denmark and Germany has been better at returning more benefits from wind farms to local communities (CSE, 2005; Kildegaard & Myers-Kuykindall, 2006; Devine-Wright et al., 2007; Toke et al., 2008). In the case of Denmark, Bolinger et al. (2004) attribute the early rapid growth of wind power capacity in part to the deliberate localization of benefits that has fed directly through to local public support:

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Since the negative external costs of wind power—namely noise and visual intrusion on the natural landscape—are borne locally, while the positive external benefits accrue on a national or global basis, the government has taken steps to ensure that only those bearing the costs receive the financial benefits of government subsidies. This strategy has gone a long way towards bolstering public support for wind power in Denmark. (Bolinger et al., 2004, p. 13) There are other relevant differences between the UK experience and that of countries like Denmark and Germany, such as economic and financial policy measures (Breukers & Wolsink, 2007; Mendonc¸a et al., 2009) or the different institutional arrangements of energy generation pertaining during periods of rapid deployment. However, the differences between the UK and other countries in patterns of local ownership and benefit provision have repeatedly been emphasized. For example in 2005, the UK’s Department for Trade and Industry (CSE, 2005) commissioned a study of community benefits provision linked to wind-farm developments in the UK and in three other European countries. This reported that in the other countries, benefits more naturally accrued to local communities due to different local and regional planning strategies which historically have delivered local taxes, jobs, investment opportunities for local individuals and cooperative local ownership models as a matter of course. By comparison, it was concluded that opportunities for local benefits in the UK were normally limited to voluntary contributions from developers, which cannot be considered ‘material’ to the decision of whether or not to grant permission. RET developments in the UK, then, have been compared both with forms of LULU and with practices of deployment overseas, and a series of assumptions have been drawn from these comparisons. These assumptions are that the (inherently political) process of deployment of RETs can better overcome resistance, or smooth the path of local public acceptance, if projects can be implemented in a way that increases local community ‘ownership’, literal or symbolic, and/or that provides local benefits sufficient to overcome the imposition of perceived negative impacts. Such assumptions have been both tacitly and explicitly made by those supporting UK RET development, so that, for example, considerable effort has gone into identifying potential ways of introducing the localization of benefits into UK practice, such as through ‘ring-fenced business rates’ (BWEA, 2009) or ‘community tariffs’ (LGA, 2009). In this evolving context, we aim in this paper to develop a better understanding of the moves that have been made in the direction of local benefit provision in the UK. We do not include in our analysis the distinct community mode of implementation of RET (Walker & Cass, 2007) in which community-based processes and ownership arrangement patterns are deployed, as these are—to some degree—more established and we have examined UK experience of such initiatives in previous research work (Walker et al., 2007; Walker & Devine-Wright, 2008). Instead our focus is on private developer-led projects that—evidence suggests— are being increasingly modulated to include forms of benefit-sharing with local communities. Industry practices in providing community benefits have developed rapidly and somewhat haphazardly in the UK, and despite some attempts at formalization through the production of guidance documents from government (CSE, 2005; DTI, 2007a, 2007b), little is currently known about the practices of

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provision and, in particular, about the consequences which then follow for local communities. In this paper, we therefore first explore industry understandings of the community benefits linked to renewable energy projects and the rationales for providing them. We then compare these understandings and rationales with public understandings and reactions encountered in the localities of a range of RET development proposals. Our empirical work is limited to the UK, but at the end of the paper, as in the introductory section, we make connections again to practices elsewhere in Europe.


Methods The multidisciplinary research project from which this paper emerges has addressed many aspects of the engagement between the technologies, actors and publics involved with the deployments of RETs. In this paper, we draw both from an interview study (n ¼ 42) of RET actors and from work undertaken on 10 case studies, including wind (on- and off-shore), biomass and marine (wave and tidal stream) projects (Table 1). We used a case study methodology involving qualitative and quantitative methods: semi-structured interviews with

Table 1. Projects, development stage and summary of community benefits on offer Case study code

Project technology type, location and generating capacity

Planning status at the time of research

TSN

Tidal Stream (Northern Ireland) 2 MW

Approved and operating

TSW

Tidal Stream (Wales) 16–20 MW

Pre-application

WW

Wave (Wales) 7 MW

Pre-application

OFWW

Offshore Wind Farm (Wales) 750 MW

Approved, yet to construct

OFWE

Offshore Wind Farm (England) 250 MW

Approved, yet to construct

OWS

Onshore Wind Farm (Scotland) 48 MW Onshore Wind Turbine (Scotland) 2 MW Onshore Wind Turbine (England) 2 MW Biomass (large) (Wales) 350 MW Biomass (small) (England) 2.1 MW

Refused

OWTS OWTE BW BE

Approved Refused Approved Refused

Community benefits identified Local contracting use of facilities, research base, local employment and manufacturing None explicitly offered, principle brought up at engagement activity and agreed Local contracting– local construction and employment if move beyond demonstration phase Community fund and in-kind tourism support, based on previous experience of developer In kind and contracting. Sponsorship of festivals, wildlife visitor centre environmental education in schools. Local contracting possible In kind—access road, habitat management scheme Community benefit fund, administered by intermediary Community benefit fund and local signposting Local contracting probable, possible community fund None explicitly offered, landscaping on local site for previous developments



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developers and key local stakeholders, focus groups and questionnaire surveys with local people. Across the case studies, a total of 49 interviews were conducted and 34 focus groups (consisting of 249 individuals) were held, including a mix of gender, age, and social class in each area. Although the issue of community benefits was not the focus of the project as whole, different key stakeholders associated with the case study projects were asked about ‘community benefits’ during the semi-structured interviews. The item relating to community benefits in the interview schedule was as follows: ‘Have there been any financial incentives/incentives in kind provided by the developer? If so, how have these been presented to/received by the local community?’ In the focus group schedule, one of the ‘mopping up’ questions was phrased as follows: ‘People often talk about the way that people view projects like this in terms of weighing up the benefits against the drawbacks. Have we covered all of the benefits and drawbacks? And how do you think people weigh them up against each other, if they do?’ A standardized questionnaire survey was also administered in all but one of the case study localities (sample size reflecting the extent and proximity of the local population) with responses received in total from 2911 people. The survey covered a range of topics related to local perceptions of RET projects and engagement processes, but could not ask consistently about the provision of specific community benefits because of their great variability across the case study projects (Table 1). However, questions were included as part of the standardized survey asking about the extent to which people felt that the specific local project would bring benefits or drawbacks to themselves or the local area. In one case study area, public perceptions of a specific community benefit proposal were also able to be tested and the results from this are reported in later discussion. For more information on the survey and findings, see Devine-Wright and Howes (2010), Devine-Wright (2009). This paper thus draws on the findings of interrogating the cross-cutting theme of ‘community benefits’ from the interview and case study data, to present a snapshot picture of contemporary practice across the industry, an account of the reasons provided by different actors for their provision (or non-provision) of community benefits, and the understandings, reception and evaluation of all these factors by the publics that were researched in the localities of the case study deployments. We begin the discussion with an analysis of practices of community benefit provision as discussed in the interviews and implemented by developers in the case study contexts.

The Provision of Community Benefits In a ‘toolkit’ guide on the delivery of community benefits from wind farms produced for the government department responsible for national energy strategy (DTI, 2007b, p. 5), four different types of community benefits are identified: Category 1: Community funds where the developer delivers a lump sum or regular payment into some sort of fund for the benefit of local residents. Category 2: Benefits in kind where the developer directly provides or pays for local community facility improvements, environmental improvements, visitor facilities, school and educational support, etc.

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Category 3: Local ownership of shares in the energy project by local people, either through their own investment or through a profit-sharing or part-ownership scheme designed to tie community benefits directly to the project performance.


Category 4: Local contracting and associated local employment during construction and operation. In Table 1, we use this categorization to identify and summarize the types of community benefits identified in discussion and analysis of our 10 case study projects. This shows an uneven pattern. ‘Community Funds’ have been set up or proposed in four of the projects, three of which are wind projects and one, biomass. ‘Benefits in Kind’ feature in three projects, all wind. ‘Local Contracting’ was present in four of the projects across different technologies, but often in a rather minor fashion, almost an incidental spin-off of the project’s presence. ‘Local ownership’ as a specific form of community benefit was entirely absent as we were examining private developerled schemes, and not community-led and owned projects (some innovative part ownership arrangements between private developers and local communities have been used in the UK but not in the projects we examined). In the following, we consider the provision of each of these forms of benefit in some more detail. The provision of a local ‘community fund’ (category 1 above) has emerged as a relatively new but increasingly recurrent and familiar part of, in particular, wind farm project development in the UK. A planner involved with our on-shore multiturbine wind farm case study saw it as: something that seems to be quite common in the industry, they’re wanting to pay money to the community that they’re supposedly affecting . . . they were paying £1000 per megawatt capacity. (OWS, Planner) One of our offshore wind farm developers also talked generally about experiences of developing community benefits packages for wind farms of varying scales (from 2 MW to over 90 MW capacity). These typically took the form of: a certain amount of money per annum for the life of the wind farm, which is usually administered by a local group, a local trust of some sort, which represents the local community . . . That’s the most conventional way, but we do do things like schools, education programmes, energy efficiency work, that kind of thing as well. (OFWW, Developer) Significantly this developer had begun to routinize their own negotiation and provision of community benefits through the employment of a dedicated community benefits officer. Despite this routinization, their approach was not to have a standard package rolled out for each and every project, but to develop an adaptive evolving response to the context of individual projects and the needs of their communities, sometimes mediated by (PR) consultants, and influenced by suggestions and requests from ‘key stakeholders’, the public and their representatives in formal and informal engagement activities: we’re tying to speak to sort of key stakeholders like high level politicians and chief executives of, by the county councils and things, . . . can you give us some help about what we can do? One of the things we quite often ask people to feed back on at exhibitions is . . . how you think a community benefits package could work . . . what kind of things would be good to do in this area? (OFWW, Developer)



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This developer also decided to ‘employ a consultant to look at some options for, perhaps, a sort of strategic pot of money and some ideas. We were just trying to think about how, how could we offer something on a very regional basis that would be, useful’ (OFWW, Developer). The regional aspect is mentioned here because the ‘community’ that might be perceived as bearing the dis-benefits of the offshore wind farm project is spread over a wide stretch of coast in a number of coastal settlements. As a response to this unusually spatially distributed community of locality (Bolinger et al., 2004; DTI, 2007b; Mitchell, 1994), the common factor of a high level of dependence on tourism was identified (along with the fact that the perceived negative impacts of the wind farm upon tourist visitors was a key aspect of the debate). A tourism package (sponsorship, a tourism officer and advertising) was therefore suggested as a potential focus of community benefit. This targeting shifted the developer more towards the provision of ‘benefits in kind’ (category 2 above). This is a strategy that others also talked about in terms of Section 106 agreements and planning gain, the most mainstreamed and commonly understood forms of providing benefits in kind across all forms of developments in the UK. Under Section 106 agreements, certain improvements (e.g. landscaping, road access, environmental renovation) to the locality of the development are agreed between the developer and the planners. Such improvements are deemed to be necessary to mitigate for any negative impacts of the development and are formally conditional for gaining planning permission, rather than a voluntary act of developer largesse. Despite its formal status, this form of ensuring local benefits from development is often seen as problematic in the UK (see Nolan (1997) and Crow (1998) for a critical assessment of this area). The line between different categories of benefit proved a little fuzzy in our data. For example, the developer of an urban single turbine project in England described their community benefits as a form of community fund including funding for renewable energy initiatives or education, bound up with standard planning gain measures: we confirmed that we would provide £100,000 to secure the promotion, installation and education of renewable energy for energy saving measures within the local community, contribute to the conservation of biodiversity in the area as well as the landscape management plan which would contribute to the strategic planting in the area. We also offered improvements to local footpaths. (OWTE, Developer) Our on-shore wind farm project also contained straightforward planning gain benefits, most clearly the upgrading of an access road and sign-boarding to improve public access, but also involving a habitat management scheme, cited by a statutory consultee as: absolutely the norm now for wind farm developments . . . it’s what we would like to see all enlightened landowners doing for the benefit of biodiversity. (OWS, Statutory Consultee). In addition, local contracting (category 4 above) and the provision of local jobs were mentioned by several developers as a general policy: there are benefits in terms of when we build . . . we try and use local workers and materials from local areas so there are benefits in that way as well. (OWTS, Developer)


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As a specific example, in the case of the operational tidal stream project, the majority of the community benefits were seen as taking the form of local contracting, in the sense of bookings for local hotels, and employment for local people. The hardware of the project was built in the region, and the knowledge arising from the Environmental Impact Assessment and ongoing surveys was viewed by the developer as a benefit in itself. A number of specialist local environmental research organizations were also seen to have benefited from the associated contracts. Across the case study interviews with developers, there was only one example of an active argument against the provision of community benefits and this was in the context of one of the wave power projects (at the pre-application stage). Here the developer stressed that the project was dependent on finance being raised, including from the private sector, and it was felt that it was not right to distribute profits from a project which already contained an unusual amount of risk as a demonstration project: we’ve examined things like that, but we haven’t gone ahead with it . . . it won’t be our money . . . It would be wrong of us to tell an investor that we’re going to put X amounts of money into a public fund. It’s their money. It’s their decision. (WW, Developer) Overall, our evidence confirms that community benefits are being conceived and provided in various ways, and shows that in the wind sector, in particular, developing a ‘community benefits package’ is becoming an established and routinized part of project development. We now turn to the more political questions of why these different forms of community benefits are being provided alongside RET developments and to the tensions and complexities involved in implementing them. Motives, Tensions and Complexities What then are the commonly understood motives or rationales for providing community benefits? The UK governmental toolkit for ‘Delivering Community Benefits from Wind Energy Developments’ suggests three motives: ‘Being a good neighbour’, a gesture that fits with commitments to corporate social responsibility (Roberts, 2003); ‘Paying compensation’ for the impact of the wind farm on the landscape and local amenity and the inconvenience caused by the construction process; and ‘Sharing the rewards’, a view that, since the wind is a ‘common’ which no one owns, local communities should share in the rewards reaped from farming the wind blowing across their locality (DTI, 2007b, p. 7). In our interviews, developers in particular were very concerned to be seen to have ‘good motives’ for providing community benefits and talked in particular about the ‘being a good neighbour’ and ‘sharing the rewards’ rationales—paying compensation being from their perspective more problematic (see below). For example, the developer of an off-shore wind farm specifically defined the motive of providing benefits in terms of local return compared with wider societal benefits: ‘the whole reason for doing the benefits are . . . to think about that, how can we give something back on a very local level’ (OFWW, Developer). One of the biomass developers particularly represented themselves as being driven by the ‘being a good neighbour’ motive and caring about the local community:


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we have provided an awful lot of benefit and it is pretty much unheard of for developers to provide the planning gain before they have their development but we’ve done it . . . we do care, actually, as to what we do locally. (BE, Developer)


While motives could be stated in this way, many interviewees were very conscious of politics involved in local debates and of the potential for other interpretations of motive being made. The need to try and protect the ‘purity of motive’ was very explicitly recognized by the following developer in the interview study who in his case saw the provision of benefits as part of a corporate social responsibility rather than a public relations agenda: Unless somebody asks us directly we don’t talk about it because . . . you know it’s not a PR thing, it’s a corporate social responsibility thing. Because . . . however much it is if somebody can use that and say oh you’re bribing the local community, which is not what you’re trying to do. (Interview 7: 79) This concern about ‘bribery’ permeated much of the discussion of community benefits and appeared as a constant tension in how their provision should be implemented. While supporting local jobs and contracting was seen as relatively unproblematic and uncontroversial way of providing community benefits (although there can be dispute over the scale of job opportunities to be provided, see below), the provision of a community fund or benefits in kind could introduce tensions and complexities related to how the motives of developers are viewed by others. Frey and Oberholzer-Gee (1997) explore this apparently counter-intuitive phenomenon in terms of social psychology, the ‘crowding out’ of altruistic motivations in the public’s mind with reference to NIMBYism around LULUs. Hence, there could be much strategizing not only about the details of benefits package to be provided, but also how and when to negotiate and communicate this. The timing of an approach to a community with a benefits package is particularly fraught because raising the issue too early might imply conferring decision rights (under a property rule) to a community, rights that do not exist in practice in the consultation mode of planning decisions (Cowell et al., in press). The planning authority, as decision-maker, is the only strictly legitimate representative of the community at large with such decision rights. However, this means that an early approach may also appear as a bribe, as tying the decision to the offer is strictly ultra vires—the provision of a community fund in particular is not legally allowed to be a ‘material consideration’ in the planning decision process. There was a tension revealed here with professional planning officers clear about the nature of benefits as not being material planning considerations, while elected councillors in planning committees were much more likely to reflect concerns about ‘bribery’ perceptions of motivations (CSE, 2005; DTI, 2007b). In this sense, it is important for developers that offers of community funds are understood as the gesture of a ‘good neighbour’ and part of the CSR and/or PR policies of a responsible organization, rather than as an intervention directly trying to influence the planning committee decision. On the other hand, raising or detailing the offer of benefits or a fund after planning consent has been granted may be the most correct procedure in planning terms, but this then colours the provision of community benefits as a post hoc ‘compensation’ under a liability rule, implicitly defining the development as imposing


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impacts, dis-benefits or ‘injuries’ (Cowell et al., in press). This understanding, even though it may be in the background of developers’ minds, can appear to be distasteful, linking RETs to other LULUs whose developments have historically been linked to environmental justice discourses and the languages of damage and reparation. If opposition has arisen by this time, the presentation of a benefit package post consent can also be more easily seen as a reaction to this opposition, or an attempt to silence or lessen it. These perceptions are well known to developers. There were various examples of the complexities of questions of timing and how these were then linked to perceived motives in our case studies. In the case of one of our urban turbine projects, a planning gain agreement is discussed, the details of which were absent from the first planning application for the turbines, but negotiated in conjunction with a second application. After the first application was refused, the local authority suggested ways in which the impacts of the project could be mitigated, a fairly standard approach which nevertheless has the opportunity to be misconstrued. Here a consultee outlined how the addition of mitigating planning measures in the second (re)application might be viewed as a post hoc attempt to adjust the benefits on offer: It was offered . . . the second time it went to the [local planning] committee . . . I don’t know how it was received; I think the cynicism had set in by the time they were offered. It came across as though they’d been forced into it by [local planning authority]. Or it was a last minute attempt, there . . . were no incentives put up front. (OWTE, Statutory Consultee) Here we can see that the timing issue reappears in the sense of leading to a particular understanding of the motives behind the offer. A developer of one of our off-shore wind farm case study projects discussed in detail the tensions between the desire to raise the issue early in engagement processes and the potential for accusations of influence and/or bribery, especially among opponents: we tend not to go that heavy on talking about it during the development phase, . . . it’s tricky . . . partly because we don’t want it to be seen as being some kind of bribe or something . . . we want to be positive that we’re offering them something locally but we don’t want it to be misconstrued as bribery . . . no doubt people who are very staunchly against the projects . . . just see it as, oh, you’re just bribing us and they won’t like it . . . It tends to be coloured by whatever view people have of the project itself. (OFWW, Developer) In our small-scale biomass case study project, local councillors considered that it was difficult for the developer (who is also a landowner) to provide planning gain, and that any attempt to do so would probably be viewed as bribery if viewed as a response to public opposition: some people see this as . . . a developer trying to bribe the local council . . . once a degree of public opposition has occurred it would be very difficult to say, right well we’ll give you a free village hall if you all write in and support the application now . . . I don’t think that would have gone down very well. (BE, Councilors)


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In the case of another project, a local councillor similarly saw that even if community benefits packages were standard for wind farm development, the timing of when this was to be revealed was important—note the ‘now’ in the quote below: particularly in wind farms, because it was just common practice, that, the applicants may offer community benefits, which, to me, is like, you’ve got to try and bribe the people . . . I discussed it with [Developer] and I said, well . . . if you came out with it now, it would look as if you’re trying to buy off the system. (BW, Councilor)


The developer in this case confirmed that there was sensitivity on their part to not to be seen as offering any sort of bribe: Um, [long pause] we are very keen not to be seen to be buying people off . . . you don’t just turn up in a community and say, don’t worry, we’ll buy you a new rugby pitch, or we’ll put in a new hospital wing, or whatever, because it really does look like you’re trying to buy them off. (BW, Developer) A related issue discussed in our case studies was the question of who would administer a community fund. To confer legitimacy on a community benefits package implemented through a community fund—and again to avoid accusations of bribery—it was generally expected that trusted local representative groups are approached to administer and disburse the funds, for example, through grants to local initiatives. For developers this was a way of taking the decisions on disbursement ‘out of our hands’ (OWTS, Developer) and putting responsibility into the locality. However, some interviewees in our scoping study were concerned that the legitimacy and trust put in such groups might be damaged by involvement with developers: the obvious suspects for managing a fund . . . is the parish council [but] the parish council didn’t want to go through the whole process because they saw themselves as getting in bed with the developer too early and it would prejudice their position. (Interview 1: 226 – 8) Another large scale developer outlined that such groups should be involved, especially to avoid local authorities (who are also the planning authorities) from gaining control over funds, in an explanation that mirrors the advice from central government (DTI, 2007a, 2007b): the funds tend to be managed . . . by local groups, whether that’s parish community councillors or area partnerships . . . rather than getting it squirreled away for costs of running a council, that’s not appropriate. (Interview 40: 589– 93) It is clear then that in the UK, developers and other actors involved in the decision processes linked to RET developments are well aware that the motives behind their raising, offering, negotiating and agreeing community benefits can be (mis)interpreted by other actors, whether in interest groups or in the wider public. It is to this public response that we now turn. Local Publics: Responses to and Evaluation of Community Benefits Our data on the evaluation of community benefits come from interviews with local stakeholders in each case study area (including opposition groups where

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these existed) and extensively from the focus group material. We will first address the stakeholder and public’s knowledge or awareness of the provision or suggestion of community benefits, and their evaluation of them, before moving on to address these actors’ understandings and evaluations of the motivations behind such benefits. This section concludes with some exploration of what the public or stakeholders would like to see in terms of community benefit.


Responses to Provision An indication of the importance of issues relating to benefits and locality arises from focus group work at our case study locations. The first 5 – 10 min of each focus group was set aside for participants to individually, in silence, fill out cards raising one thought, feeling, concern or issue relating to the project under discussion. These cards were then clustered into thematic groups with the groups given names generated by the participants themselves. Across the case studies, local benefits figured strongly in the thematic groupings. For example, in the marine RET case studies, issue groups relating to locality and benefits to the community generated the largest numbers of issue cards in five out of the eight focus groups (Table 2). As outlined earlier, the questionnaire surveys that were undertaken in each area could not ask consistently about the provision of specific community benefits in each case because of their great variability across the case study projects. However, a broader question was asked in the survey about the extent to Table 2. Most populous issue group names and the number of cards within them for the Marine RET case study focus groups Tidal stream project (NI) Focus group 1

Focus group 2

Focus group 3

Information (8)

Who benefits? To the area? (6)

Tourism (5) Infrastructure (5)

Village (7)

Energy/economics (5)

Tidal stream project (Wales)

Future developments (6) Environmentally friendly (6) Prospects (4) Positive (4) Benefits (Who? How?) (4) Costings (4) Wildlife concerns (4) Wave project (Wales)

Focus group 1

Focus group 2

Turbine/alternative energy (6)

Local benefit/impact (5) Effect on tourism/local economy (6)

Local benefits (6) Wildlife concerns (5)

Positive (4)

Local tourism, boats and livelihood (5) Viability versus other conventional energy (5)

Focus group 4

Focus group 1

Focus group 2

Climate change, renewables and politics (6) Marine wildlife (6) Technological risk (5) Why here? (5) Navigation (5) Energy, economics and efficiency (5) Onshore impact— Impact—beaches connection (to grid) (5) and tourism (5) Impact on marine environment (5) Renewable positive (5)



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which people felt that the project would bring benefits or drawbacks to the local area. Responses to this question varied from project to project, but overall there were clear and strong correlations between people believing that local benefits would arise (to themselves or to the local area) and them also expressing support for the project. There was a Pearson r bivariation correlation of +0.681 (n ¼ 2695) p , 0.000 between (a) project support and (b) perceived benefits or drawbacks to them personally, and of +0.674 (p , 0.000, n ¼ 2660) between (a) project support and (b) perceived benefits or drawbacks of the project for the ‘local area’. In both cases, the more a person perceived more benefits than drawbacks arising from the project, the more they gave it their support, with a high correlation (r ¼ +0.85) between perceived personal and local impacts/benefits. Realising that this correlation does not reveal how important perceived benefits are in comparison with other important constructs (attitudes to the technology, perceptions of trust) that might shape project support, we ran a linear multiple regression for the entire sample with ‘project support’ as the key dependent variable and a range of other variables as independent variables. It was found that the perception of personal impacts/benefits of the project was the most significant factor explaining overall project support—more important than: general beliefs about technology sector; beliefs about the developer’s engagement practices; trust in the developer or beliefs about the fairness of planning procedures. The detail of the analysis is that the beta coefficient for perceived personal benefits/drawbacks ¼ 0.281; t ¼ 10.283; p , 0.000 (F ¼ 240.073; df 13; p , 0.000). For one case study, a specific question on the community benefit package that had been proposed by the developer could be included, asking how strongly the respondents agreed with two different statements. Analysis showed that 49.5% of respondents in one town agreed or strongly agreed with the statement: ‘The offer is a bribe to silence local opposition’. In addition, we found a significant negative correlation between perceived bribery and project support (r ¼ 20.631 (n ¼ 399), p , 0.000). In other words, in this specific case, the more a member of the public thinks the offer of community benefits is a bribe, the less he/she supports the project. Conversely, there was a significant positive correlation between the perception that the offer is a ‘fair way to share the benefits of the project with local people’ and project support (r ¼ +0.608 (n ¼ 393) p , 0.000). While these are specific results relating to one project context, this again indicates the relevance of local benefits to how people think about renewable energy development proposals and the different interpretations that can be made. More detail and depth could be explored in the qualitative material and we rely on this for the rest of the analysis. In the focus groups in only a few cases were members of the public able to give correct details of specific community benefits that were associated with the local project of concern. For example, the provision of an access road to our onshore wind farm project was correctly identified on a few occasions, but the offer of financial help to a local school was known about in only one of the four focus groups, and not discussed further. Typically, though these examples of benefits were immediately associated with sceptical or negative evaluations. For example and relating again to the onshore wind farm ‘But it’s a nonsense that road . . . It’s an awful small benefit for [number of] turbines up the national park’ (OWS focus group). Associated with the same project were views that the principle of extracting benefits from a project that was deeply unpopular was itself unpopular, and in one case, that there might be impacts on wider views of RETs:

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N. Cass et al. a councillor actually said . . . if it goes ahead we will have to see what we can get out of it . . . He was bombed out completely. People are not interested. (OWS, Community Group Representative)


The benefits to the population at best are dubious to say the least . . . I think actually the thing has been so badly handled that it’s actually turned a lot of people, it’s actually switched them off to renewable energy. (OWS Focus Group) Many of the initial and direct responses to questions about community benefits from our case study projects took the form of denials of their existence, due to lack of awareness or flat denial that there could be any local benefits. In focus groups, across the case studies, this issue was often addressed as a question of ‘who benefits?’: who benefits, [company name] or [area name]? That’s what I’ve put: what would [city name] gain from this?. (TSW Focus Group) The idea of projects carrying ‘local contracting’ benefits, specifically of employment, were rejected as of being of any serious significance, even in the cases where specific numbers were known to respondents: They say 60 temporary jobs with the construction side of things . . . in another paragraph, 20 . . . So many developments they say they will create so many jobs, and the reality is nothing like that. (OWS Community Group) Any jobs that were expected to be created by the projects were generally considered to be of low value, certainly those that were likely to be given to local people: it was a handful of jobs, basically watchmen . . . skilled operatives would be brought in from outside the area, but they will be menial tasks . . . jobs for local people. (BE Focus Group) Everybody in the area knows there’s not going to be any jobs involving local people . . . If there’s any jobs involved, it’s going to be very, very menial, cleaners or security guards, . . . The man who wins that contract is going to have his men to build those turbines. (OWS Focus Group) The idea of tourists being attracted to a project location was considered in the case of our on-shore wind-farm, but again dismissed as a minor and/or temporary benefit, and in the case of an urban single-turbine installation, the concept was treated as a joke. Evaluations of Motivations The discussion so far therefore shows how we found considerable scepticism and dismissal of the benefits from RET projects. Some more positive evaluations did exist, but were comparatively rare across the group discussions. For example, members of a focus group with previous experience of one of our off-shore developers (who have constructed an existing off-shore wind farm nearby, and provided community benefits associated with this) viewed benefits in kind and community engagement very positively:


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[The developers are] good to the community. They put a lot of money into [town]. They’ve bought a nice Land Rover for the lifeboat station; they’ve given lots of money to the schools . . . We’ve got [developers] executives who are now governors of schools. (OFWW Focus Group) In other discussions, the corporate social responsibility and public relations motivations for such actions were identified, and evaluated in both negative and positive ways:


But how much also is it going to be that [developers] will have telly adverts with a windmill spinning round? . . . Is it for the right reasons? . . . I’m just thinking about the PR side of things They do a lot with schools and it’s my daughter’s school. I mean they are good—they have actually got that—what is it?—reduce, reuse, recycle . . . You do see them now obviously what they are getting is green, green, green. (OWTS Focus Group) In the case of an off-shore wind-farm, the normative and PR motivations were combined in the public’s mind: ‘they should [provide benefits] and it’s PR’. However, in the view of others, the motivation was more transparently instrumental, as the provision of community benefits ‘would appease all the people who don’t like it’ (both quotes OFWW Focus Group). The provision of in-kind benefits through planning gain was also seen as tainted with a suspicion of impropriety. Parallels are drawn in the following extract with other more familiar planning developments: What do they do? Come along, we’ll put you a nice new road in and all that—supermarket; green belt’s gone. And I think if they start doing that as well, no, not just to get their own way, no, I don’t think it’s right, I don’t . . . if they say, well, we’ll do this if you allow us to do that, no. (OFWW Focus Group) The same view was expressed by opponents of our on-shore wind farm regarding the offer of a community fund to a local (non-governmental) community council: Oh, they were certainly offered . . . They had both been approached by [the developer] unbeknownst to us and offered, sweeteners, to use a politer word, and had got quite excited about it . . . They reckoned it was going to be enough to be pretty useful for the communities and, in a way, you can’t blame them for being interested. (OWS Opponent Group) An ambivalent public response was anticipated by a planner linked to our smallscale biomass case study proposal ‘It cuts both ways with local residents because some people see this as a valuable way to improve local services and others see it as a, a developer trying to bribe the local council’ (BE, Local Planning Authority), and was borne out in the focus groups: Maybe what he could have done, sort of as a sweetener, is said . . . I will actually put that back . . . forest it or whatever. [Agreement] . . . there hasn’t been any sweetener how do you know that their intentions are good? How do you know that? And [it] certainly won’t be for the benefit of the community. (BE Focus Groups)

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So while we see a mix of views across the focus group discussion, there is much questioning, much scepticism and a significant degree of dismissal of the significance of any local benefits that are being offered or claimed. The group participants are acutely aware of the politics involved and not generally taking claims or offers at face value, but are rather interpreting them in the context of preformed expectations of the motives and interests of both the private developers and local decision-makers. The sensitivity of developers, as to how and when benefits are made part of local debates and how their motives are understood, therefore appears both necessary and well founded.


Desired Benefits In this final empirical section, we examine whether the public themselves have any clear idea of what community benefits should be provided by developers. One thing stands out across the cases, that there is a back-grounded assumption, based perhaps in confusion over the reality of electricity infrastructure, that the energy produced by a RET installation will directly supply or benefit the local population as consumers. Such expectations, and their denials, were found in focus groups and stakeholder interviews across the technologies, related to single turbines and wind farms, both biomass cases and the marine projects, and are reflected in this quote: Cheaper electricity . . . That’s what you want . . . That’s what you’re looking for . . . But if it’s a big multinational company involved in developing this, ah, you can bet your bottom dollar that the benefits aren’t going to come to [town or area] They’re going to go elsewhere and our, our energy bills are going to be the same. (TSW Focus Group) A stakeholder local to one of our marine RET projects suggests that this confusion has been exploited by developers: they have tended to give the impression that people in [town] or [village] or both, will, in fact, be powered by this turbine and it’s going to give them cheap or free electricity. (TSN Marine Expert) And a focus group suggested that such benefits could be viewed as a potential bribe, or as obscuring other concerns: If somebody said to me right, you know, your electricity bill is going to drop 20%, would I be so concerned about shipping, wildlife, the impact? So you can be bought off, you mean [laughter]. (WW Focus Group) Other proposed positive benefits from projects were also suggested, including planning gain in the form of land restitution in the case of biomass, and benefits in kind characterized (by participants) as a ‘Scandinavian’ model of community benefits by members of our focus groups: [In] Scandinavia, Finland, they had a similar company and they put so much into the schools . . . and a swimming pool, you know, things that all children could benefit from . . . I think they also gave, um, cheap energy, you know, things like that. That the town actually benefited . . . we could all have a better life and a more pleasant town if we, if we just . . .. (BW Focus Group)


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The Norwegians, they, where they do. . .well, I know one case where they’ve done hydroelectric; the local communities benefited no end from it. You know, part of the deal was they had a whole range of social amenities put in. And I think, you know, it should be a spin off. (TSW Focus Group)


A more concrete proposal for localizing benefits was made with reference to perceived benefits from the presence of the oil industry in a locality, with exemption from local amenity taxes for local residents offered as a possibility: if the public at large . . . could see some benefit as far as they personally are concerned . . . that there is a direct benefit to us vis-a`-vis . . . Shetlands, no community charge, refinery pays for it, the oil pays for it, if something similar could come of this . . . then we are a long way towards settling the NIMBY argument. (WW Focus Group) This call would appear to be mirrored by the recommendations of the BWEA for ‘ring-fenced business taxes’ (BWEA, 2009, p. 11), although such payments would accrue to the local authority rather than directly to residents.

Conclusion Our research has filled out understanding of the ways in which real-world implementation of the provision of community benefits with RET proposals has been experienced for different types of renewable energy projects across the UK. The wind industry (both onshore and offshore) seems to have rationalized and, to some degree, standardized modes of benefit provision through community funds and benefits in-kind, and their explanation of their rationales for doing so are fairly consistent and understandable as an attempt to re-localise benefits in line with the localization of impacts. However, within the interviews, we found developers actively deflecting the language of impacts, which can imply either compensation or the expectation of decision rights over proposals, through stressing ‘good neighbour’ motivations, sometimes linked to the discourse of corporate social responsibility. The other technology sectors in the RET industry appear to be taking a less consistent or distinctive approach to providing local benefits, with biomass particularly acting more in the tradition of established developers of roughly comparable facilities (those that often contend with a reputation as LULUs). Marine technologies are still struggling with their financial viability to the extent that the possibility of offering significant shares in the benefits seems to be a form of altruism to be deferred to a later date, although the need to keep local publics on-side is acutely recognized (Walker et al., 2010). Governmental advice that the issue of community benefits should be raised early on in the project approval process appears to be partly accepted, but—in practice—is problematic. The industry appears to believe that whichever approach to the timing of revealing community benefits they take, the public are still able to interpret such benefits as ‘bribery’. Indeed this is an enduring tension for developers in knowing how best to organize and present the provision of benefits to local communities and careful strategic judgements are having to be made as to the timing of negotiation and communication of benefits packages and how community funds are going to be managed. Such complexities one interviewee argued


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are very real but distinctly British; ‘in Spain it will be completely normal . . . in the UK it’s considered to be you’re verging on bribery’ (Interview 16: 75– ). That local publics can be sceptical and questioning and readily interpret community benefits as forms of bribery is evidenced by our case study research among local people and stakeholders. For those who decide to actively oppose developments, this is an obvious and easy argument to make, but this interpretation also extended to people who were less directly engaged with local debate. On the other hand, there was also a strong feeling among local people that they should get a share of benefits from such project and that these should not all be distributed further afield to private corporations and their distant shareholders. While benefits are always going to be evaluated in the context of the politics of project development, some forms of benefit provision may be more welcome by local people than others. In this respect, discussion in focus groups often centred on the provision of cheaper electricity to local people as a direct form of connection between production and consumption. If this was possible, it could be an important development. However, utilities and developers have already explored its feasibility in the UK but run into regulatory obstacles linked to the energy market. A ‘Scandinavian’ model (the public’s impression) of significant formalized benefits in-kind appears more straightforwardly acceptable if it can be more of an established right, rather than a voluntary offer. Official guidance (DTI, 2007a, 2007b) suggests that at least another motivation for providing benefits is purely instrumental, rather than the more normative rationale suggested by the ‘neighbour’, and ‘sharing’ discourses, namely that: ‘The routine provision of meaningful benefits to communities hosting wind power projects is likely to be a significant factor in sustaining public support and delivering significant rates of wind power development’ (CSE, 2005). Certainly some of the data above support this sentiment, of the public accepting benefits as rightfully being taken into consideration in planning decisions. The report quoted above outlines that there is potential latitude for the UK to take up the lead of other countries in formalizing community benefits as a legitimate material consideration in decisions. Our analysis suggests that this would increase transparency and clarify the political nature of such planning committee decisions, but it might still lead councillors to bow to the questioning of motivations that circulate in their constituents’ discourse. Ring-fenced business rates and ‘community tariffs’ are potential measures to resolve these issues, but may not resolve this fundamental tension that has been entrenched in debates about planning gain since the 1960s (Nolan, 1997). In the end, it may be never be possible to change the nature of planning decisions that are linked to localized benefits as intrinsically sensitive and political. Acknowledgements This paper arises from research carried out for the ‘Beyond Nimbyism’ project funded by the UK Research Councils energy programme (Grant: RES-152-251008, end of grant report: http://geography.exeter.ac.uk/beyond_nimbyism/ deliverables/grant_report.shtml). We thank all of those interviewed and surveyed for their participation, and to thank other members of the research team involved in interviewing, focus group facilitation, coding and analysis—particularly, Diana Thrush, Gerda Speller, Patrick Devine-Wright, Yuko Howes and Judith Parks. Thanks are also due to


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Richard Cowell and two anonymous reviewers whose comments and suggestions on an earlier draft helped shape the final version. Any errors and omissions remain our own. Notes


1. See Table 1 for case study codes. Quotations references follow these formats: for interview data (interview number: transcript paragraph number), and for case study data (case study code, focus group /interviewee category). 2. See Toynbee (2007), Guardian (2009), BWEA (2009) for examples of comment on planning as the major impediment to wind farm permissions at the time of research.

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