MISTRAL Work Package 3

Community Dimensions to Social Acceptance

The University of Exeter will lead Work Package 3. Work will focus on developing original scientific insights into social acceptance, primarily from the perspective of host communities of energy projects

Conventionally, the focus of work like this has been focused on responses of host communities to specific projects and emphasized the impact of variables such as proximity, project attributes, and community characteristics.

While this has delivered a range of insights, we aim to broaden what we know about how communities frame their understanding of energy projects and what guides their response to them. This will be examined at a range of scales and seek to make links with both market and socio-political dimensions by, for example, examining the role of specific institutional and cultural conditions on community responses.

Five linked ESR projects will look at the the different scales (micro to macro) that govern the relationships that mediate social acceptance by host communities.

Training related to this work package will include the engagement of representatives from different sectors (business, regulatory, policy makers, communities) to consider specific real-life challenges for community engagement around proposed renewable energy projects.

The objectives of this work package will be to:

Develop a robust inter-disciplinary understanding of the drivers and responses to declining social acceptance of renewable energy infrastructure from the specific perspective of host communities
Establish common frameworks and research protocols for approaching community based research on the social acceptance of renewable energy infrastructure
Provide ESRs 1-5 with a range of research and experiential learning experiences
Seek synergies with research emerging from WP4 and 5 to provide a more holistic means of addressing concerns over renewable energy infrastructure and to disseminate this to wider academic and non-academic audiences

ESR Projects in this Work Package

Irmak Naz Karakislak
Justice Perceptions in Intercultural Comparisons
Institute for Future Energy and Material Flow Systems (IZES)
Germany

Nina Schneider
Dynamics of Community Acceptance
University of St.Gallen
Switzerland

Mariangela Vespa
Cumulative Impacts on People-Place Relations
Institute for Future Energy and Material Flow Systems (IZES)
Germany

Ross Wallace
Socio-technical Imaginaries of Future Energy Landscapes: How, when and where are renewable energy infrastructures acceptable?
University Institute of Lisbon
Portugal

Zoe Chateau
Social Equity and Distributive Justice in Renewable Energy Deployment
University of Exeter
United Kingdom