ELSA

The business case for collaborative renewable energy projects: understanding and addressing the community-related root cause for project failures

ELSA's Co-Design revolutionises renewable energy projects by enhancing community-developer relations, ensuring project acceptance through stakeholder collaboration and empathetic strategies.

Developers and governments fear community empowerment in renewable energy co-design due to risks of lost control, higher costs, and project delays. Effective, transparent engagement strategies are essential to bridge these divides.

ELSA is the Earning Local Support Academy, a project by AstonECO Management. The transition towards renewable energy is a pressing agenda globally and nationally, and Ireland stands at a pivotal juncture in its journey towards energy security and decarbonization. Despite the positive strides, communities at the grassroots level often find themselves at odds with developers, feeling that their concerns and aspirations are being sidelined. The ELSA project is working to address this.

At the core of the Earning Local Support Academy (ELSA) is a new mindset, a powerful set of skills and the opportunity to create a successful, inclusive and sustainable future for everybody. ELSA does that through a process called Smart Engagement which delivers Smart Projects: projects that are financially successful, technically sound, environmentally compatible and socially supported. Projects that are wanted by all stakeholders.

Renewable energy is quickly becoming part of our lives and the landscape we live in. This means many lives are directly being impacted by renewable energy developments and more and more will be in the future. In a growing number of cases these developments get rejected by the host communities, by the people who will have to live with the development. The reason for this is often miscommunication and a lack of proper engagement. ELSA will provide the tools and support to build a bridge between the developer and the members of the host community.

Many developers see early community engagement as a risk mitigation tool to prevent opposition later, so as to protect their larger investment. However, the process required to earn local support, when conducted properly, offers much more than just ‘pain management’. It offers a range of benefits for both the community and the developer.