Research Scientist Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory Berkeley, California
Presentation Description: In 2023 & 2024, Berkeley Lab, together with various research partners, conducted three new surveys to capture the perspectives of different interests on large-scale solar and wind energy planning and development in the U.S. One effort gathered insights from 123 industry professionals with direct experience working in community engagement and permitting of land-based wind and solar facilities. A second survey collected a nationally representative sample of 984 residents living within 3 miles of existing large-scale solar projects. The third focused on 262 local officials involved in wind planning and permitting in 8 states with significant wind development. In this poster, we bring together insights from each of these three survey efforts to compare and contrast the perspectives and experiences, focusing on three main themes: how these groups understand the dominant or root causes of community opposition to development, perspectives on how the public should be involved in decision-making, and experiences and preferences with the locus of permitting authority (e.g. state, local, hybrid models). We find important differences in perspectives, including for example, many local residents and officials express less positive attitudes towards increasing state-level decision-making than developers. However, these trends vary by the political context of the community and state. Additionally most developers characterize the dominant root causes of opposition to be based on visual impacts, while the data from residents and local officials points to concerns with a wider variety of potential impacts. This cross-cutting presentation of findings implies several areas for future research to better understand and propose solutions to the critical challenges of planning and permitting large-scale renewables.
.jpg "Robi Nilson, PhD (she/her/hers) photo")