The Host Community Case for Renewables AT PACE

Broken trust kills communities. Responsible projects help them thrive.

Across Ireland and beyond, communities are being asked to host the infrastructure that powers national targets – yet too often, they are excluded from shaping the decisions that affect their homes and livelihoods. The result? Trust erodes, neighbours divide, and valuable local knowledge goes untapped. This isn’t opposition to renewables – it’s frustration with a process that bypasses local realities and weakens shared purpose.

The issue isn’t renewable energy itself. It’s how projects are designed – without the developer’s fourth essential pillar: genuine host-community partnership alongside the financial, technical, and legal.

Key takeaways

The reality: Communities don’t oppose renewable energy; they fear irresponsible projects – imposed without fair process, respect, or accountability.
The expectation: Most communities support the energy transition, but they expect genuine partnership in shaping the decisions that matter most for their homes, livelihoods, and shared spaces.
Protection & value-added: Renewables AT PACE ensures projects are shaped with communities – protecting what they value and identifying synergies that can enhance that value. It screens out irresponsible projects.
The outcome: Collaborative design that builds trust, reduces conflict, and strengthens local social cohesion and wellbeing, while delivering on national and developer targets more reliably.

1) Communities are not anti-renewable

Across Ireland and internationally, research shows that communities broadly support renewable energy. What they oppose are projects that arrive as “done deals,” ignore local realities, or divide neighbours into winners and losers.

Communities do not fear turbines, solar panels, or grids. What they fear are irresponsible projects: developments imposed without fair process, without respect for what the community has already achieved, without attention to concerns and aspirations, and without accountability when things go wrong.

Many communities are already leading their own renewable initiatives – retrofitting community halls, installing solar on churches and shops, even exploring local power plants. Their message is clear: they are not against renewables, but they expect fairness and respect when large-scale projects enter their neighbourhood. When that expectation is ignored, resistance becomes almost inevitable.

A critical caveat: community members – like developers – already carry heavy loads in their daily lives: work, family, and community responsibilities. Until engagement genuinely feels like collaboration, any new large-scale project in their neighbourhood will feel like an imposition. Developers use paid time to build a project, while communities are expected to give theirs for free – whether in opposition to what they see as irresponsible projects, or in partnership to shape a supported one. A fair process must recognise this imbalance and include support to enable genuine participation.

2) The risks of “business as usual” (DAD: Decide–Announce–Defend)

Under the traditional DAD model, project development follows a failing process:

Plans drawn before community consultation.
Engagement is treated as a tick-box exercise, not a partnership-building process.
Communities feel sidelined, mistrust grows, and valuable local knowledge is wasted.

The result is predictable:

People feel that their concerns about noise, health risks, and local value reduction go unheard.
Safety issues such as traffic disruption, landslide risk, or water pollution remain unexamined in a transparent and credible manner.
Neighbours are set against each other, with offers of selective benefits before externalities are addressed deepening local division.
Families feel they are left with homes they cannot sell, livelihoods under threat, and years of stress and uncertainty about the future.
Legal challenges multiply, draining the energy of communities, the resources of developers, and the patience of planning authorities.

Instead of being a catalyst for local pride and development, projects become a source of fracture and fatigue.

Status Quo Reality vs. AT PACE

The lived experiences of communities facing large-scale developments show just how damaging “business as usual” can be. Here’s how AT PACE changes the picture:

Today (business as usual): Decide–Announce–Defend (DAD): Developers arrive with plans already drawn. Communities see them as “done deals.”
With AT PACE: Anchor & Transition: Developers prepare internally to engage respectfully; communities prepare their priorities so they are ready to co-shape projects from the start.
Today: Scale & proximity ignored: Turbines or infrastructure - scaled up using outdated wind energy development guidelines - are placed close to homes without updated protections.
With AT PACE: Partner & Acknowledge: Guidelines and ground rules co-agreed; impacts assessed credibly; siting and scale decisions informed by community realities.
Today: Communities sidelined: Engagement is a tick-box exercise, not real involvement.
With AT PACE: Collaborate: Communities sit at the table, co-assess risks, shape solutions, and co-design mutual gains.
Today: Health, safety & environment at risk: Communities have considerable concerns about noise, shadow flicker, infrasound, bogslides, truck traffic, water disruption, and property price impact.
With AT PACE: Collaborate: Communities are involved in the open assessment of these risks; mitigations co-designed; safety, environmental, and value-protection standards built into agreements.
Today: Communities carry externality risks: Of house value collapse, neighbours divide, independent studies, many legal costs.
With AT PACE: Empower: Risks shared fairly; benefits secured locally through ownership, income, or amenities. Communities stay co-steward through project life.
Today: Exhaustion & division: Communities fractured; endless court battles drain energy, trust, and finances.
With AT PACE: Empower: Projects strengthen cohesion, build local development, and leave communities better off.
Today: Disempowered: Communities often feel the downsides while perceiving that the upsides are all felt elsewhere.
With AT PACE: Empower: Collaborative models secure local benefits, resilience, and shared pride. Outside involvement is seen as valuable direct investment.

Across hundreds of real-world project experiences, these small structural changes – when done early – completely change outcomes.

3) What collaboration offers communities

When projects are developed collaboratively, communities:

Get a genuine chance to know the developer and what they stand for, and vice versa.
Have a seat at the table from the start.
See their local expertise and insights valued as part of design.
Clarify impacts and how they will be managed fairly.
Shape mutual gains by ensuring projects synergetically support their development vision and stewardship of the local environment.
Ensure ongoing transparency and accountability through construction and operations.

Collaboration doesn’t mean giving anyone a veto or slowing things down. It means creating a fair, efficient partnership – with timely conversations that balance local needs with business and national goals – so that projects succeed on all fronts.

4) How AT PACE protects community interests

The Renewables AT PACE framework makes collaboration systematic and credible. Each step strengthens community confidence:

Anchor & Transition → Developers arrive prepared to listen and respect; communities have the time and support to set out their priorities.
Partner & Acknowledge → Ground rules co-created, tough issues faced honestly, concerns openly respected.
Collaborate & Empower → Solutions shaped together, impacts co-assessed, mutual benefits designed into the project. Communities stay engaged through the full life cycle to ensure delivery.

Through AT PACE, communities move from passive recipients of an imposed project to equal partners in shaping the aspects of the project that affect them most.

5) The community case: concrete benefits

Collaborative design does not just avoid conflict – it creates positive outcomes that:

Fosters synergies through integrated design → Synergistically supporting community’s long-term development vision, infrastructure, and livelihoods.
Protects wellbeing → Health and safety risks openly assessed, understood, mitigated, and monitored. Property devaluation transparently accounted for and addressed.
Avoids hidden costs → Saving countless months or years of sleepless nights and energy spent building the case against imposed projects, or hiring independent consultants, lawyers, etc.
Secures local value → Through benefit structures that provide reliable upsides.

Put simply: collaborative projects strengthen communities, while imposed projects divide and weaken them.

6) Closing: A fairer energy transition

Renewable energy will reshape many communities. The question is simple: will projects divide and weaken them, or strengthen their ability to thrive?

With AT PACE, communities are not bystanders – they are partners in answering the tough questions about what responsible progress really looks like. Projects built in partnership deliver not only clean power, but stronger, fairer, more resilient communities.

Caveat: Effective collaboration doesn’t mean any side gets everything it asks for – it means outcomes are understood, justified, and seen to be fair, so that progress genuinely feels like progress for everyone involved.