Just Say NIMBY
Windmills blighting the landscape… CO2 storage under your house… shale gas drilling near your country home…?
Enough of “just do it.” When it comes to dealing with energy projects in their back yard, who doesn’t say no?
“Not in my back yard” sentiments were the energy sector’s biggest headache, according to Beate Raabe, Secretary General of EUROGAS, an association of the European gas wholesale and retail sector.
“Gas-fired power stations are the most accepted,” she explained, saying they fit into the landscape, because there were no issues with fueling turbines with gas.
“The production of gas is a different story,” commented Ms. Raabe, who proceeded to outline what people protested against, like CO2 storage.
“People are quite happy to live on gas storage, but in the same area not CO2, like in my home country of Germany,” she noted.
According to her, it was all about the public’s fear of the unknown.
“We are talking about technical issues,” she explained. “People have the feeling that what is happening could be very dangerous, that it could have a vast effect on the environment and they don’t want to be exposed to it.”
There were discrepancies towards natural gas, she pointed out, like from Greenpeace, which Raabe explained saw gas as the only fossil fuel that would be necessary on the way to a zero carbon system.
“They don’t want to see it going forever, but think gas is fine.”
But then along came shale gas, she said. “NGOs say there will be too much gas in the market, prices will be too low and people will revert to too much gas at the cost of renewables.
“There’s also a wider context to this. People don’t want to have windmills in their backyards,” she continued. “People want power, want to get around, want all the advantages, but are afraid of the danger associated with that.”
Ms. Raabe gave the example of noise issues: one might not want a high-speed train in their backyard, or a motorway.
But she gave the counter example of Hammerfest, an LNG plant built by Statoil in Norway.
“You can feel the presence when you are there,” she said. “Mountains, pristine maritime scenery, the hills - it works, there have not been local protests.”
She admitted there had been in Oslo.
Raabe explained: “Oil & gas exploration in the Barents Sea is a major source of employment and wealth in the area - one of the only things that exists apart from fishing. Fifty percent of the Statoil plant staff has a regional affiliation and 390 jobs were created.”
In terms of socio-economic development, she listed the benefits like supplier development, an increase in population and increases in tax receipts, not to mention an upgrade in a transmission line and a prototype tidal energy turbine in the Kval Sound near Hammerfest.
A second example she provided was an iron ore plant in Sweden, where a community had to be moved to make space for the facility, but were informed at a very early stage. “There was benefit sharing for the whole community,” she said.
“Public acceptance can be gained,” explained Ms. Raabe. “Every case is a little bit different, has different issues, but it can work.”
“We need to speak to people and find out what they are actually afraid of,” she said of shale gas in Europe. “We need to take them seriously. People need to be educated in an understandable manner in a way that is not condescending.
“If there is a local impact, explain how this will be mitigated. If there is noise, pollution, an eyesore, how will you reduce that?”
She suggested that the industry seek allies: “There are groups of the population that may support you, employees, people who live with similar projects, scientists and politicians.
“Whatever you do, don’t 'just do it,'” Raabe said of the commencement of shale gas exploration and production. “Speak to the people, find out what their concerns are and address them in an appropriate way.”