Introduction

Cultural influences on Renewable Energy Acceptance and Tools for the development of communication strategies to promote ACCEPTANCE among key actor groups.
The current understanding of social processes affecting the (non-) acceptance of renewable energy and rational use of energy technologies is limited. Project managers often assume that stakeholders will adopt and adapt to their innovation without resistance. In practice, however, stakeholders such as users, NGO’s, neighbours or local public authorities often have different (and possibly conflicting) visions about the innovation and the future world in which the innovation should fit. If these diverging views are neglected, the project might face severe social resistance in the implementation phase. There is a need for empirically based research to understand the complex interactions between stakeholders, the ways these stakeholders block or facilitate the adoption of alternative technologies, and the (institutional) contexts favourable to the acceptance of technological
innovation.

Objectives and target audience

The objective of this project is to develop a tool that can measure and promote social acceptance of technologies for Renewable Energy Sources (RES) and Rational Use of Energy (RUE) by means of:

• Assessing the previously developed Socrobust tool for suitability by mapping its potential and limitations to contribute to social acceptance of RES and RUE technologies.
• Determining the key elements of social acceptance of RES and RUE technologies by assessing the (recent and past) social acceptance of technologies such as hydrogen, biomass, CO2 capture and sequestration (CSS), solar thermodynamics, and wind in several European regions.
• Enhancement of the Socrobust tool platform into a multi-stakeholder tool by integrating knowledge gained in objectives (i.), and (ii.), and by designing the necessary instruments and procedures.
• Validation and deployment of the multi-stakeholder tool in five selected demonstration projects, covering a wide range of RES and RUE technologies as well as various regions in Europe. The preliminarily selected demonstration projects are a hydrogen project in the Nordic countries, a biomass project in the East-European region, Carbon Capture and Sequestration (CCS) in the West-European region, a wind project in Hungary and a solar thermodynamics project in the Mediterranean region.
• Dissemination of the multi-stakeholder tool to key stakeholders involved in implementation of new RES and RUE technologies. The objective of Create Acceptance is developing a new multi stakeholder tool to measure, promote and influence social acceptance.
• The project Create Acceptance started February 1st 2006 and runs until March 2008. The project aims to improve the social acceptance of renewable energy and rational use of energy technologies. It aims at improving this social acceptance through the development of a tool that not only can measure societal acceptance, but can also be used to promote and improve societal acceptance by creating communication, participation and bridging mechanisms for key stakeholders. It builds upon a previous developed tool called Socrobust. The new multi-stakeholder tool will become publicly available to energy managers, policy makers, technology developers, intermediary energy service providers, and other possible users after conclusion of the project. This will occur by providing the tool and information about the tool on the projects.

Financial Resources and Partners involved

Project Cost: 1.98 million euro.
Project Funding: 1.35 million euro.
Create Acceptance is sponsored by the European Commission within the Sixth Framework Programme Priority. All project partners are highly qualified European member states research institutes with backgrounds in energy and/or social studies of science and technology.

• Energy research Centre of the Netherlands ECN, Petten, The Netherlands
• Consiglio Nazionale delle Ricerche, National research council on firms and development CERIS/CNR, Italia
• Ecoinstitut Barcelona, Barcelona, Spain
• IAE Toulouse, Toulouse, France
• Icelandic New Energy INE, Reykjavík, Iceland
• Institute for Renewable Energy Ltd. IEO, Warszawa, Poland
• Hungarian Environmental Economics Centre MAKK, Budapest, Hungary
• National Consumer Research Center NCRC, Helsinki, Finland
• OEKO-Institut E.V., Institute for Applied Ecology, Darmstadt, Germany
• University of Salford, SURF, Manchester, United Kingdom
• Energy Research Centre, ERC, University of Cape Town, South Africa

Process

WP1 : February 2006 – July 2006
Work package 1 takes Socrobust as a starting point. In this work package Socrobust will critically be reviewed to identify which aspects need improvement and adjustment. This work package builds upon scientific debates on large socio-technical systems, transition management, niche management, system innovations and participatory methods. The work delivers conclusions on how to further modify the Socrobust tool.

WP2 : February 2006 – December 2006
Work package 2 aims to do empirical research to provide a better understanding of how social acceptance is managed in various European regions.
Experiences gained from past participation and communication efforts are analysed in detail to deliver a compendium of best practices for managing social acceptance of renewable energy and rational use of energy technologies. The results enable the development of a regional sensitive multi stakeholder tool in work package 3.
The best practices:

• Case 1: Hannover social marketing for energy efficiency (Germany)
• Case 2: Low energy housing (LEH) (Finland)
• Case 3: Trintat Nova Ecocity energy efficiency project (Spain)
• Case 4+5: Crickdale Bioenergy Power Station & Bracknell Biomass CHP Energy Centre (United Kingdom)
• Case 6: Bioenergy Village Jühnde (Germany)
• Case 7+8: Västerås Biogas Plant & Lund Biogas Plant (Sweden)
• Case 9: Pannon Power biomass conversion (Hungary)
• Case 10: Umbria local bio energy projects (Italy)
• Case 11: EOLE 2005 wind energy programme (France)
• Case 12: Cap Eole wind project (France)
• Case 13: Suwalki region wind project (Poland)
• Case 14: Szelero Vep wind project (Poland)
• Case 15: Pommerania region solar energy project (Poland)
• Case 16: Barcelona Solar Ordinance (Spain)
• Case 17: PV Accept solar project (Italy)
• Case 18: Solar home systems (SHS) (South Africa)
• Case 19: Solar water heaters (SWH) (South Africa)
• Case 20: London CUTE hydrogen fueling station (United Kingdom)
• Case 21: Berlin H2Accept hydrogen bus trials (Germany)
• Case 22: ECTOS hydrogen project (Iceland)
• Case 23: CRUST CO2 capture and storage project (the Netherlands)
• Case 24: Snohvit CO2 capture and storage project (Norway)
• Case 25: Schwarze Pumpe CO2 capture and storage project (Germany)
• Case 26: Podhale region geothermal project (Poland)
• Case 27: Blue Energy (salinity power) (the Netherlands)

The analysis of case studies in WP 2 resulted in a set of characteristics and success factors which were helpful to derive the core set of selection criteria.
The multi-stakeholder tool will be conducted in five demonstration projects:

• hydrogen project SMART-H in Iceland;
• carbon sequestration and storage project in the Netherlands;
• biomass project in Germany;
• wind project in Hungary;
• solar thermal power project in Italy.

A multi-stakeholder process should be initiated for each of these projects. This process includes the following issues:

• Identify and select relevant stakeholders and map their attitudes in the view of the demonstration projects;
• Organisation and structuring of communication processes between the stakeholders and avoid or resolve conflicts.

The results of the case studies in WP 2 raised several key factors influencing the success of RES and RUE projects.
The demonstration projects are seen as opportunities to consider further and more detailed which of those factors – and which additional ones – can increase the social acceptance in the context of new and renewable energies.
The demo projects are meant to extend the scope of the WP2 case studies with respect to more (and new) project initiators and a variety of stakeholders.
Therefore, the inclusion of stakeholders and their participation are relevant additional criteria for the demo selection.

WP3: July 2006 – January 2007
Work package 3 integrates the results from work package 1 and 2. The result of work package 3 will be a new multi-stakeholder tool. The focus is on developed specific methods and instruments. This includes interview protocols, methods for mapping stakeholder expectations, workshop designs and the design of action plans.

WP4: January 2007 – December 2007
In work package 4 the multi-stakeholder tool developed in work package 3 will be validated and deployed in five selected demonstration projects, covering a wide range of renewable energy and rational use of energy technologies as well as various regions in Europe. The demonstration projects are further introduced in the following pages. The project partners organise a multi-stakeholder process for each of these projects, based on the multi stakeholder tool developed in work package 3. Finally, this work package will evaluate and refine the multi-stakeholders tool after its application in the demonstration projects.

WP5: February 2006 – January 2008
Work package 5 contains the project management and aims at ensuring the adequate achievement of project objectives, on time and within the estimated costs. The project manager ECN also secures adequate levels of communication and promotion of scientific discussion among partners in order to achieve expected levels of scientific and technical outputs.

Results

The result of this project will be a publicly available tool that can measure, promote and improve social acceptance of new sustainable technologies.

Critical Success Factors / Challenges

What makes this project a rather radical innovation is that it uses and creates sound theoretical social science knowledge to develop a tool. The tool will be used by practitioners dealing with the implementation of (radically) innovative renewable energy and rational energy use technologies. This aim is rather innovative, since intervention in society by (means of) social scientists is a highly debated (and not yet highly praised) issue in social science research.