The renewables build-out and the entire energy transition is at risk because of the general public, a conference in Brussels heard this week.

This is not because of any opposition to wind and solar projects, but because nobody wants overhead transmission lines built near their communities.

Without new high-voltage transmission lines, there will not be an energy transition — you simply cannot build wind or solar projects without transferring their electricity to where it is needed. According to Entso-E, the European Network Of Transmission System Operators For Electricity, more than 46,000km of new high-voltage power lines are needed in Europe by 2030.

But that is all a tall order when few transmission projects are built without strong local opposition.

At the Grids Meet Renewables conference on Tuesday, which was jointly organised by WindEurope and the Renewables Grid Initiative (RGI), the problem came up at every session and in almost every speech.

Timm Krägenow, head of Dutch transmission system operator (TSO) TenneT’s Brussels office, talked about “the extreme challenges to get new lines built because of public acceptance”, which he said was the only bottleneck when it comes to transmission development.

RGI chief executive Antonella Battaglini told Recharge: “I would say public opposition is one of the main causes today for delayed deployment [of new transmission lines]. It is also an excuse for reducing renewables ambition — people saying ‘renewables are okay, but we cannot build the grids’.”

And Raul Gil, chairman of European cable association Europacable, pointed out that grid congestion was already costing the industry a small fortune — and increasing people’s electricity bills.

“European consumers are also paying for the cost of the lines that have not been built,” he said. “You can always think of scandals of the politicians, but we are having losses of €3m a day for lack of [transmission] lines.

“I’m not sure that we have the sense of urgency of the situation we are now in.”

Changing public perception of power lines will not be easy, but the biggest mistake the industry has made has been treating the public like the enemy, the conference heard.

As Eva Schmid, a policy advisor at Bonn-based NGO Germanwatch, explained, the general approach till now has been that “technocrats” decide where power lines and pylons should go, then the public has to accept their decision.

“And if they don’t like it, TSOs are, like, ‘oh, what are we going to do now?’ This kind of world view is a bit strange,” she said.

As she pointed out, this top-down approach is often perceived by local people as an injustice, and immediately causes anger and confrontation. And it is much harder to win an argument when you have made people angry before you have even attempted to talk to them.

Forward-thinking TSOs such as Belgium’s Elia and Germany’s 50Hertz have realised that this approach is counterproductive, so they have begun engaging communities much earlier — well before any preferred routes have been mapped out.

Igor Lefebvre, Elia’s head of environment and corporate social responsibility, told the conference that the TSO now starts consultation at the development stage, engaging local communities through announcements in newspapers and on its website, and through road trips to meet those that might be affected.

50Hertz does the same with its “mobile citizen office” — a van that converts into a kind of showroom.

“Our aim is to transport electricity from one point to another,” said Axel Happe, senior manager for public participation at 50Hertz. “How we do this in detail, at a very local level [is not so important].” He explained that local communities are given the ability to influence a transmission line’s final route, with popular requested changes including installing pylons alongside motorways or planting trees beside them to reduce their visual impact.

It also helps if TSOs can get support for new projects from local governments and environmental non-governmental groups. Support from NGOs such as WWF — which want a 100% renewables world — can reduce the perception that transmission lines “ruin” the countryside. RGI’s members are a mix of TSOs and environmental NGOs.

Public acceptance can also be increased if affected communities are compensated through regular financial payments or other means.

Happe cited three examples of non-monetary compensation that 50Hertz has carried out that have helped to win over sceptical communities — tearing down a “ruined hotel complex” in the countryside that was seen as an eyesore; building nesting boxes at a local school, and a “recultivation project with a local environmental organisation caring for monkeys”.

“These are the chances that you can only find when you get into dialogue with people,” he said.

Lessons can also be learned from the wind industry. Carl Zichella, director of Western Transmission at the US Natural Resources Defense Council, pointed out that “giving folks a stake in the project” has been very successful in the US in getting Native American tribes and private landowners to accept wind farms on their land. “Giving a landowner a stream of revenue over time gives them a much different outlook,” he said.

Another delegate suggested that TSOs should make their case by arguing that transmission lines benefit society — that electricity helps, for instance, babies to be born safely and planes to be landed.

And, of course, another strong argument is that electricity is vital for the fight against climate change. Not only can we decarbonise the power sector through renewables, but we can also decarbonise the transport, heat and cooling sectors through increased electrification and clean energy.

If increased public consultation, compensation and persuasion doesn’t work, there is a last-resort alternative to building overhead power lines — burying them underground.

Ferocious opposition from citizens and politicians in Bavaria against the important 4GW SüdLink power line, which will connect Germany’s windy north to its power-hungry south, resulted in the German government deciding that sections of the line would be buried. This will triple the cost of the project to €10bn and delay its completion by around three years.

With the costs of new transmission ultimately ending up as increased surcharges on consumers’ electricity bills, this is probably not the best method for winning over the public.

The problem of public acceptance isn’t going to go away any time soon, but the more actors working on the issue, the better. As Battaglini told Recharge, the reason she wanted to set up the conference was because “we realised it cannot be the grid operators alone defending grid infrastructure”.

“RGI already puts together grid operators and NGOs, but the entire renewables sector [has to join them] and go [forward] together with a commonality, with common messages. We are all together in this journey, so why don’t we play together?”

Transition

Public opposition to power lines threatens the energy transition