By Neil Jacques

Even in Europe, where offshore wind energy is old hat, turbines are inherently divisive - either majestic harbingers of the low-carbon energy era or obtrusive, unconscionable eyesores.

On the shores of the Great Lakes, this ideological dichotomy plays out as an emotional minefield that only developers at the very top of their stakeholder engagement game can hope to negotiate with any kind of success.

NRG Bluewater Wind, which is developing offshore wind projects in Delaware, Maryland, New Jersey, New York, New England, and the Great Lakes, knows all this and is confident its tried and tested method of winning hearts and minds will stand it in good stead.

Walking the talk

“It is about openness, transparency, shoeleather and sweat,” says NRG Bluewater Wind president Peter Mandelstam.

“It is about going to all the community meetings. It is time-consuming, it is expensive but at the end of the day it is invaluable because the public sector gets to see the project in many different venues, in many different ways.”

“We’ll talk to 500 people and we’ll talk to 5 people – I have never left a room where people continue to have questions.”

David Gaier, spokesperson for NRG Bluewater Wind’s parent company, NRG Energy, believes that the sheer emotive dimension of offshore wind development means any kind of brusque, top-down approach is doomed to failure.

“We don’t go in saying ‘here are all the answers you need to know, this is a great thing and you should embrace it’,” he explains.

“We let people come to their own conclusions because we explain it painstakingly, patiently, over time with a huge variety of constituent groups.”

Gaier is also keen to point out that in NRG Bluewater Wind’s experience the interest of many stakeholders often goes beyond the scope of environmental and aesthetic mitigation measures to the embrace the nitty gritty sphere of nuts and bolts.

“People become more engaged and more fascinated when they can understand the building process and some of the physical characteristics of the project,” he notes.

Trillium Power is another proud proponent of the ‘go the extra mile’ school. For a proposed 420 MW project located 17 to 28 km off the shores of northeastern Lake Ontario, the developer duly undertook the two public consultations required by Canadian law but also endeavoured to step over the border to gauge the mindset of its American cousins.

The reasoning is simple. “If you were on the other side, wouldn’t you want to be consulted?” asks Trillium Power CEO John Kourtoff.

“Most people just go by the legalities, we’ve tried to do better. We also did it for a moral imperative, which is now Ontario communities have the moral authority to ask to be consulted by US developers. We’ve empowered communities on both sides to request information. It is building bridges rather than walls.”

Down to the point of view

But no matter how assiduously you engage your stakeholders – the quality of the information conveyed, your receptive empathy and adaptability– there will always be those that seek to vitiate wind power’s prospects.

Generally speaking, public opinion on offshore wind in the Great Lakes (though evidence suggests the trend is replicated throughout the US) is split into three camps: those that cheerlead its environmental mojo and fossil-fuel supplanting credentials, the undecided who need more information to make up their minds, and a hardcore minority of vehement anti-wind campaigners.

The latter trumpets a litany of reasons for their hardcore stance, but opposition generally boils down to one thing: the view.

“90-95% it is down to some form of visual aesthetic issue, sometimes gussed up as environmental issues, trying to not say it is ‘nimby’,” Kourtoff confirms.

A good developer of course has to listen and engage in rational dialogue with all sides, but sometimes that is easier said than done.

“It is really hard to have meaningful engagement when you’re being told something that is nonsense,” says Ian Baines, president of Windstream Energy, which is developing a 300 MW project in Lake Ontario that in April became the first offshore wind farm in North America to get an power purchase agreement.

“You owe it to yourself and them to have multiple chances to engage and try very hard to hear what they are saying and answer factually, but the problem we have is opponents often don’t use facts. In fact they rarely do. [But] you don’t drive a project by listening only to those small number of people that don’t like something. You have to look at the big picture and ask ‘is this fundamentally good?’.”

Vested interests

Unfortunately, these vociferous guardians of aesthetic mores, who are often buoyed by well-funded, slick PR strategising, are well adept at hogging column inches and airtime.

Kourtoff bemoans that while wind energy developers get put under intense media scrutiny, their opponents often go unchallenged.

“Developers need to follow the money,” he advises, citing an example of an email he received after Trillium Power’s public meeting in the US revealed that an attending 8-strong group of placard wielding protestors were helmed by a managing director of an engineering firm that provides brick tiles for nuclear, mining and fossil fuel smokestacks

“They should hold everyone around them to a high standard and not just say ‘well, that’s just the way it is’ and they get a pass. The media should also be investigating and finding out these things.”

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