Place relationships in geothermal project developer approaches to engagement

Due to the ongoing climate crisis, the rollout of renewable energy technologies (RETs) will increase in the coming decades to achieve an energy transition. RET Project developers will need to conduct engagement which, if undertaken to empower publics with high levels of public inclusion, can facilitate wider societal change through the energy transition. Considering how place relationships can successfully expand engagement for renewable energy technologies (RETs) is an emergent theme in the literature; however research using the community perspective dominates, with the project developer perspective under-researched. I address this research gap by investigating how theoretical understandings of place relationships are practically experienced and subsequently interpreted by project developers.

Using a constructivist approach to place-based research, I used a multi-case qualitative research design to explore three UK based case studies: two United Kingdom Geoenergy Observatories in Cheshire and Glasgow and the United Downs Deep Geothermal Power Project in Cornwall. Findings presented from deductive and inductive thematic analyses of data collected from three methods of 1) publicly available documents, 2) semi-structured interviews and 3) deliberative workshops are as follows.

I designed a deductive codebook to explore project developer Place Constructions through Boundary Making Processes, Emplacement, and Place Framings used, and found that project developers longitudinally framed predominantly objective place characteristics to suggest Place-Technology Fit, established project boundaries through proximity to the drilling location, and held the predominant view that publics surrounding the drilling location are homogenous.

I then show that project developers interpreted place relationships at developer-led exercises as ‘concerns’ around the project, a negative implication that I recontextualised as publics assessing potential threat to place, and whether the project represents Place-Technology Fit. Subsequently, I illustrate that project developers experienced publics with levels of knowledge of, and relationships with the subsurface that contrasted project developer framings, and underreported place relationships not threatened by the project. Additionally, I found that public place relationships resulted in engagement exercises being organised in collaboration with publics, and inferred that at such collaboratively organised exercises, project developers experienced collectively held place relationships more readily.

Further analysis highlighted the dynamic project boundaries which expanded as a result project developers being introduced to Communities of Interest and refining their understandings of the stakeholder landscape, and contracted due to interpretations of place relationships as ‘contentiousness’. Similarly, interpretations of place relationships as ‘concerns’ resulted in resource imbalances within UKGEOS and modified project details. Finally, I show that the process through which project developers constructed Place Framings and experienced and interpreted place relationships is relational.

Finally, four practical recommendations for future engagement were drawn from project developer reflections: 1) Clarify and Consider Engagement Early, 2) Scope the Surface as well as the Subsurface, 3) Take Publics Seriously to Mitigate Place-Washing in Top-Down Engagement, and 4) Create an Organisation Trained to Engage. These recommendations centre on how project developers can move beyond the dominant instrumental paradigm of engaging to foster social acceptance to best include publics and their place relationships into engagement.