In renewable energy and infrastructure development, “community engagement” is now widely accepted as necessary. Few serious project proponents would argue otherwise.
And yet, many projects still run into mistrust, organised opposition, reputational damage, planning delays and costly redesigns.
So the question is no longer simply:
Did the project engage?
The better question is:
When did the project start listening – and were the issues of most importance to the host community still open to influence when it did?
This distinction is often one of the key differentiators between projects that become locked into opposition and projects that have a realistic chance of earning broad support.
Many engagement frameworks and standards – including AA1000SES and IAP2 – help project teams think through participation, stakeholder engagement, accountability, and the level of influence available for a given decision. Will the public be informed, consulted, involved, collaborated with, or empowered? These distinctions can be useful. They can help clarify expectations and avoid pretending that a process gives people more influence than it really does.
But there are also a number of dangers here.
When used poorly, an engagement spectrum can empower the project proponent to select a level, tick a box, and say that engagement has happened. The project is largely defined. The preferred option is emerging. The timetable is set. The conceptual design and sometimes even the technical work is well underway. The community has been invited into a conversation whose boundaries had already been drawn.
At that point, even a well-intentioned engagement process may feel to the host community like being asked to react to someone else’s project, rather than being invited into a meaningful conversation about what is entering their shared space.
That is where many projects begin to lose local legitimacy.
Communication vs meaningful engagement
Good communication is essential. People need balanced, accessible and timely information. Without it, they cannot participate meaningfully. (And indeed, this goes both ways: project proponents need clear information about how they, and their potential project, are perceived locally in order to listen well enough.)
But communication alone is not engagement.
A government-driven planning process, a project newsletter, an information evening, a website, a map, a visualisation, or a public notice can all be useful. They can help people understand what is being proposed. They can reduce confusion. They can prevent rumours. They can create a basic platform for dialogue.
But they do not, by themselves, create meaningful influence for decisions that could impact shared space – a fundamental building block of local legitimacy and support.
This is especially important for projects that enter shared space: wind farms, solar farms, substations, grid routes, offshore infrastructure, biogas plants, ports, roads, water projects, mineral projects and other developments that affect people’s place, landscape, routines, economy, identity or sense of fairness.
In these situations, the issue is not simply whether people have been given information.
The issue is whether people have been listened to early enough for their knowledge, concerns, and aspirations to shape the project in ways that matter to them.
The problem with starting too late
When engagement starts after the project has already been substantially designed, the process often becomes defensive.
-> The proponent explains.
-> The community reacts.
-> The proponent responds.
-> The community asks whether anything can really change.
-> The proponent points to constraints.
-> The community begins to suspect that the engagement is about managing opposition rather than shaping a better project.
This is the familiar pattern behind many contested projects. It is not deliberately caused. Often, it is caused inadvertently by a development system that treats technical feasibility, financial viability, and legal compliance as the main pillars of project development, while local legitimacy and support are treated as something to be managed later - around the project, not within it.
But by the time a project reaches “later,” the trust window is often already closing.
The community may feel that the most important decisions have been made without them. The proponent may feel frustrated that people are objecting after “so much work” has already been done. Both sides can then become locked into a cycle of claim, counterclaim, suspicion, and defence.
This is not a foundation for a timely and meaningful conversation.
Listening is not a soft extra
Listening is often treated as a communication skill. In project development, it needs to be internalised and treated strategically. Project proponents know how to do it for the financial, technical, and legal pillars. This discipline needs to be extended to where the project interests with its host communities.
Listening is project intelligence: it's about getting all the pertinent information on the table in time.
It helps a proponent understand the place before designing too much in it. It reveals local history and context, relationships, fears, previous harms, trusted voices, sensitive locations and issues, practical constraints, community aspirations, and opportunities for shared value.
Listening is also risk management.
It identifies issues that may not appear in a technical study but can later become central to local opposition, political pressure, planning objections, or judicial review risk.
And listening is legitimacy-building.
It shows affected people that the project team understands that it is entering a lived-in place, not an empty zone that they can develop provided they simply get financial, technical, and legal approval..
This does not mean that every concern can be resolved. It does not mean that every person will support the project. It does not mean that national energy goals disappear. But it does mean that the proponent has taken the host community seriously before asking the community to take the project seriously.
Before choosing an engagement level, ask a readiness question
The deeper issue is not whether a project should inform, consult, involve, collaborate or empower.
The deeper issue is whether the project proponent is ready to make and keep a credible participation promise so that the host community and the project proponent can partner in the design and construction of the project’s fourth pillar.
Before selecting any engagement method, a project team should be able to answer questions such as:
-> Who is affected, and how?
-> Who has not yet been heard?
-> What information must be shared for people to participate meaningfully?
-> What are the project proponent’s and host community’s non-negotiables, serious concerns, and areas of flexibility?
-> What is genuinely open to influence?
-> What local knowledge could improve the project?
-> What project knowledge could support the local community?
-> What concerns might be design signals rather than obstacles?
-> What commitments can genuinely be made?
-> How will people be told what changed because of their input?
And perhaps most importantly:
-> Are we using engagement to learn and adapt, or to legitimise a project that is already effectively decided?
These questions should come before the project’s engagement plan, not after it. Within the Earning Local Support Architecture (ELSA) they should come during the first step of the 2-step AT PACE process within Designing Projects that Succeed.
From project promotion to shared problem definition
A meaningful conversation starts differently.
It does not begin with:
“Here is our project. What do you think?”
It begins closer to:
“We are exploring whether and how a project could fit here. Before we go too far, we need to understand this place, who may be affected, what matters locally, what concerns already exist, what opportunities may be possible, and what a fair process would need to look like.”
That shift – once fully internalised within a project proponent’s culture and governance – is profound.
It changes the role of the community from audience to knowledge-holder.
It changes the role of the proponent from promoter to listener and potential partner.
It changes the purpose of early engagement from explaining a proposal to understanding the conditions under which a legitimate proposal could be developed.
This is where local support is either made possible or made much harder.
The ELSA starting point
The Earning Local Support Architecture starts from a simple premise:
Projects in shared space need more than technical feasibility, financial viability and legal compliance. They also need local legitimacy and sufficient local support.
That fourth pillar cannot be built through communications alone. It cannot be built by labelling a process “consultation” if there is no meaningful influence on core local questions. It cannot be built by asking communities to respond late to decisions they had no role in shaping.
It starts with listening.
-> Listening before defending.
-> Listening before designing too much.
-> Listening before deciding what kind of engagement is appropriate.
-> Listening before assuming that opposition is irrational, selfish, or misinformed.
-> Listening because host communities often understand things that the project team does not yet know.
-> Listening because better projects are possible when local knowledge, national need, developer capability, and community priorities are brought into conversation early enough.
The real test
The real test of engagement is not whether a project can point to a meeting, a website, a consultation report, or a recognised framework (though there is room for a meaningful ‘community report’ – but more on that later).
The real test is whether the process helped create a better, fairer, more place-sensitive, and more legitimate project.
Did people understand – and respect the reasoning for – what was fixed and what was open?
Were all potentially affected people involved early enough?
Were concerns acknowledged and addressed?
Did the project change where it should – or reasonably could?
Were benefits, burdens, and safeguards discussed honestly?
Were commitments kept?
Could people see how their input influenced the outcome?
If the answer to any of these questions is no, then the engagement may have been visible, but it was not necessarily meaningful.
Engagement starts earlier than we think
For energy and infrastructure projects, the next stage of practice is not just better consultation. It is early-enough listening, clearer decision boundaries, more honest promises, and a willingness to design projects with communities rather than around them.
Engagement does not start when the project is explained.
It starts when the proponent listens before the project is fixed.
That is where trust begins.
That is where legitimacy begins.
And that is where better projects – robust enough to proceed, legitimate enough to last, and strong enough to come to fruition – become possible.
