Research carried out by the MaREI Centre at UCC’s Sustainability Institute has found that EirGrid is a leader internationally in community engagement efforts in support of transmission-grid infrastructure projects.
MaREI is the Research Ireland Research Centre for Energy, Climate and Marine; a three-year collaboration between the centre and EirGrid – the Steps for Public Engagement with Energy Transitions in an era of Climate Crisis (Steps) research project – assessed how EirGrid has embedded public engagement in its strategic approach to infrastructure delivery.
The researchers explored how placing public engagement at the heart of projects helped to achieve the societal shift required for the energy transition, EirGrid head of public engagement Sinead Dooley says.
“It was very in-depth research,” she explains. “It wasn’t a box-ticking exercise. It was a proper, under-the-bonnet review. The researchers examined all of our public engagement activities; they attended community forum meetings, interviewed stakeholders and shadowed us in all of our activities. They also benchmarked us against international examples, which turned out to be quite limited. That was one of the reasons for carrying out the research – we wanted to be able to share the findings with stakeholders here in Ireland and with other transmission service operators across Europe.”
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There were five research briefs, which covered a range of topics and activities relevant to the public-engagement work being carried out by EirGrid. These included the role of community benefit funding in enabling public participation in the energy transition, the Celtic Interconnector – one of our largest infrastructure projects currently under construction – and an analysis of public engagement in action in the form of EirGrid’s six-step strategy.
The research highlighted the importance of early engagement, as well as the value of community benefit funds for supporting affected communities and promoting grassroots climate action.
Dooley says EirGrid’s approach to the establishment and distribution of community benefit funds is fundamental to their success.
“Every large piece of new electricity infrastructure has a fund,” she says. “With every new project, we put out a call for expressions of interest to join a community forum. The funds are co-designed with the communities through the forums. What we are trying to do is promote grassroots action aligned with national energy transition strategy and the UN Sustainable Development Goals. Part of that involves forging links with communities and citizens. We need to decarbonise the grid if we want to move away from fossil fuels and we need to bring people with us to do that. Early engagement is very important for that.”
EirGrid is very fortunate in having a dedicated public engagement unit, she adds.
“We have experts in communities in every region of the country. Not every organisation has that. We also do a lot of capacity building, which is hugely important. We recognise that communities often don’t have the capacity to get involved in designing and distributing funds.
“It’s not just a question of EirGrid opening up a fund and deciding how it’s spent. It’s not a diktat from EirGrid. What works in one community may not work in another. The communities have to be directly involved in designing the funds to meet their particular needs. We have independent facilitators in communities to help them decide what happens with the funds. They also help them to develop ideas and to structure applications for funding. The facilitators come from a community development background and ensure people’s voices are heard.”
The community forums also play a valuable role in project planning.
“They debate, discuss, look at the plans, and give us local intel on things like ground conditions that we might not have been aware of when choosing routes,” says Dooley. “The engagement is very honest, open and transparent. There might be technical reasons why we can’t go on a particular route and we bring in experts to explain why that is the case, for example.”
The €1.6 billion Celtic Interconnector project will bring multiple benefits, including enhanced energy security, but the research team looked at other less obvious gains in areas such as culture and heritage, Dooley adds.
“We have invited mayors from Britanny to visit Ireland, for example. They met with community forums and shared experiences. We are now looking at opportunities for twinning and cultural exchanges and so on.”
Looking ahead, she says the research findings will help EirGrid to refine its public engagement approach.
“We set up the team almost five years ago so it’s still early days really. We are doing things differently and it’s really good to see from the research that we are on the right track. The public acceptance piece will be absolutely critical to achieving our energy transition goals. The only way is a bottom-up approach, the meitheal approach, sitting down with people and having open and honest discussions with them.”
