Missing the mark: Avoiding community misengagement in large-scale solar development

Abstract

Scholars have long argued the need for increased community engagement around large-scale solar (LSS) development in the United States (US). Despite this call, meaningful engagement processes remain rare, both because they are often not statutorily required and because a range of actors, including state and federal policy-makers, renewable energy developers, local officials, landowners, and nearby residents disagree about the need for as well as the intended goal of such processes. This disagreement has led to dramatic policy shifts around engagement and fostered processes that are insular, instrumental, abbreviated, and often focused on achieving a single objective: either the termination or approval of a LSS project. Here we work to distinguish this form of engagement, which we define as misengagement, from a more meaningful form of engagement, which has as its goals transparency, accessibility, and fairness as well as expanding the number and specificity of the perspectives, interests and impacts considered. We describe the development of a more structured and deliberative engagement process that was deployed by University Extension personnel in 5 US states with over 300 participants, resulting in a guidebook that provides step-by-step instructions for individuals interested in pursuing more community-centered solar development. We also propose five questions that surfaced over the course of this work and that organizers of meaningful engagement processes should consider in order to avoid misengagement: how, when, where, who (for and by) and why should such a process occur. Finally, we discuss tensions and tradeoffs associated with and between each question.