Canadians overwhelmingly say they support wind, solar and clean energy in principle. Both projects were exactly the kind of thing needed to get off fossil fuels and onto clean electricity. The wind farm proposals seemed to have everything sorted. They were deemed the cheapest option and the engineers, bankers, regulators, everyone was ready to go — everyone except the local communities.
What Louise found is that the failures had little to do with climate change or the merits of clean electrification. The projects foundered over fairness.
Louise is particularly well-positioned to get to the bottom of things. She lives in New Brunswick and spent many years in Ottawa working on climate change during the Chrétien and Martin years. But when Stephen Harper came to power, Louise and her work came under fire.
“In a way, I owe Stephen Harper everything,” Louise told me from her home half an hour outside Fredericton where she splits her time between canning tomatoes, researching public attitudes and organizing with the Conservation Council of New Brunswick.
Louise realized public values and acceptance were more fundamental than any energy or policy analysis. And so, on the far side of 50 years old, she went back to school. First a master’s degree at Royal Roads in British Columbia and then a PhD in the social science of climate change at the University of New Brunswick.
Now Dr. Louise Comeau, she combined her training in public research with a lot of old-fashioned “hanging around and listening” in the community of Anse-Bleue to find out why some clean energy projects succeed while others fail.
“People felt run over,” she says. “They felt there was nothing in it for them, and they felt abused by the whole process.” In fact, at the same time the projects at Anse-Bleue and Pokeshaw failed, two other nearby projects succeeded. Both First Nations partnerships with broad participation from the get-go and clear community benefit agreements.
Louise expanded the work, organizing a series of focus groups in key regions across Canada and a large national public opinion survey. Over and again, “fairness” rose to the top of the list of factors affecting social acceptance of renewable energy and transmission projects.
And her findings line up with work around the world. This spring, a big “meta-analysis” was published in Nature looking at 51 studies from 33 countries.
“Perceived fairness was the strongest determinant for public opinions about climate change taxes and laws,” the authors concluded. Second on the list is whether people are convinced something will actually be effective at mitigating climate change.
Graphic from Bergquist, M., Nilsson, A., Harring, N. et al. Meta-analyses of 15 determinants of public opinion about climate change taxes and laws. Nat. Clim. Change
Fairness comes in several different flavours, Louise explains. “Environmentalists and academics talk about ‘justice’ but normal people think in terms of ‘fairness.’”
And all types of fairness are critical to winning public acceptance for climate laws or clean energy projects and transmission lines.
To be seen as fair, the people who are impacted have to see real benefits — for themselves and their community as well as future generations and nature.
And people want fairness in decision-making. They expect opportunities to influence the process and participate in choosing the what and where. Successful proposals tell a story of fairness for those unable to afford change and towards those who contribute most to the problem.
Louise is already embarking on her next research projects but she’s gleaned crucial insights from her time listening so far.
One I’m certainly guilty of violating is “avoid using absolute language.” Instead of “the only solution,” use comparatives like “wind and solar are cheaper than coal, oil, gas and nuclear.”
And she recommends communicating momentum using tangible examples, ideally local ones. Both tips have the added benefit of helping people grasp the effectiveness of solutions.
Ultimately, Louise says you can take it all back to Aristotle. “We protect what we love and find beautiful. And beauty emerges from justice.”
This summer, Louise is helping to put on an art show. From Harm to Harmony showcases artists focused on inspiring hope, love and action.
One local utility, Saint John Energy wants to install the artworks along its proposed transmission route connecting the city to a new wind farm.
The Roundup
Just mandate it
Both of Canada’s official advisory outfits called on Ottawa to adopt a Zero-Emissions Vehicle Mandate this week. A ZEV mandate requires companies to sell a specified amount of electric vehicles by set dates (other zero-emissions vehicles like hydrogen can qualify as well).
Quebec and British Columbia already have mandates and lead the country in EV adoption. The Canadian Climate Institute and Canada’s Net-Zero Advisory Body both urged the feds to implement a national mandate. The Trudeau government has promised one but is facing intense opposition from car and truck companies through their lobby group, the Canadian Vehicle Manufacturers Association.
California pioneered the policy way back in 1990 (probably the biggest reason Tesla was able to upend the industry). China now has a ZEV mandate and 11 other U.S. states have already followed California’s lead. Europe has a more complicated set of policies, where meeting voluntary ZEV targets works in concert with a mandatory system requiring cuts in climate pollution from vehicles.
How to move your money
“Since launching our Financing Disaster series, we’ve heard from readers who want to know more about switching banks. How do you get your money out? What should you do first? What things are important to consider when you’re making a move?”
Cloe Logan has you covered in How to move your money — for the good of the planet.
And what to do about money you can’t move? Retirement savings are often under the control of pension firms so then you’ve got to push the fund managers into action. Public sector workers are doing just that: ramping up pressure on investment managers to exit fossil fuels.
Oil wells into solar farms
I’m sure you’ve heard about abandoned and “orphan wells” across oil and gas regions. Dani Penaloza reports on a project training fossil fuel workers to repurpose them into solar energy sites: Solar project repurposing abandoned oil and gas wells launches pilot in sunny Alberta town.
“The training program is a rapid course that teaches industry professionals about the basics of solar and translates existing knowledge and skill sets so they can be used for clean energy,” said Iron & Earth executive director Luisa Da Silva.”
Europe bakes, Australia floods
Australia’s largest city has been hit by torrential rain and flooding for the fourth time in 16 months. Fifty thousand people around Sydney are under evacuation warnings, some still living in tents since the last inundation.
Drought in Europe has forced Italy to declare a state of emergency in five regions as the Po river dries up. The drought is widespread across southern Europe and around the Mediterranean. Spain and Portugal are suffering the driest climate in 1,200 years and firefighters are bracing for the worst reports Euronews:
“The Copernicus emergency management service indicates the present drought in Europe could become the worst ever," says the European Commission’s Maroš Šefčovič.
"Since 2017, we have witnessed the most intense forest fires ever seen in Europe and we, unfortunately, expect the 2022 forest fire season could follow this trend."
Oh no, not hummus
This one hit me right in the fridge. “Weather and war” are hammering chickpea crops — one of the world’s most climate-friendly protein sources. Turkey has already banned exports. Euronews reports: Hummus shortages likely as climate change causes 20 per cent drop in global chickpea supplies.
“And it's not just hummus that will be hard to find. Chickpeas are made into hummus, flour, soups, stews and curries… They have long been key to the diets of people in India and the Middle East — places that are already struggling to cover rising costs of food imports.”
Wet'suwet'en leader charged with criminal contempt
Sleydo', also known as Molly Wickham, has been charged with criminal contempt along with three other land defenders. Sleydo' is one of the main organizers of the movement to stop Coastal GasLink’s pipeline through Wet'suwet'en territory in northern British Columbia.
B.C.’s Crown prosecutors have now decided to prosecute a total of 19 people following an RCMP raid that took down blockades last November.
Dutch ads
Shell’s advertisements are misleading and must stop, says the Netherlands’ advertising watchdog. It’s the fourth time the regulator has ruled against Shell in the past year. Previous ads claimed customers could “drive CO2 neutral.” The most recent campaign said customers could “compensate” for climate pollution by paying for offsets.
KLM is also under fire in Holland. The law firm ClientEarth is suing the Dutch airline for greenwashing under Europe’s consumer protection laws. KLM advertises a CO2Zero program that also features carbon offsets. "We're going to court to demand KLM tells the truth about its fossil-fuel dependent product,” Hiske Arts, a campaigner for Fossielvrij NL (Fossil-free Netherlands) told the BBC.
Gas industry targets BIPOC voters
American gas and pipeline companies have launched a $10-million PR campaign targeting people of colour and young people in the Democratic Party’s base. The campaign is an expansion of campaigns in battleground states in 2020 after states and cities began phasing out gas hookups to new homes.
The campaign is led by an consortium called Natural Allies and aims to “protect the social licence to operate” by “messaging to the left and the Democratic base of Black and Latino and age 18-34 voters as effectively as we have messaged to the right.” According to documents obtained by Floodlight and The Guardian, there are at least six fossil fuel companies involved, including TC Energy (the company formerly known as TransCanada).
Faith in divestment
“Thirty-five institutions from six countries and with combined total assets of more than S1.25 billion have announced a multimillion-dollar divestment from fossil fuel companies,” announced the Vatican. It includes “the participation of some Catholic organizations, including five dioceses in Ireland, the Archdiocese of Armagh, and two in Canada.”
The last supper
Climate activists have been interrupting sports events — attaching themselves to goal posts at soccer games and protesting outside tournaments like the RBC Canadian Open. Supporters of Just Stop Oil took civil disobedience to one of the world’s most famous paintings this week.
Crickets, lots of crickets
London, Ont. is now home to the biggest cricket-processing factory in the world. When it’s fully up and running, Aspire Food Group will house four billion crickets and produce 13 million kilograms of insect protein. Probably wisely, the company is targeting the pet food market first.
It’s the brainchild of Mohammed Ashour, whose team won the $1-million Hult Prize while he was a medical student at McGill. "We're simply reconnecting one of the most ancient food sources in the world to people around the world today, but in a way that is produced at scale and at a cost and at a quality that is a lot more amenable to our current food production system," Ashour told CBC London.
Hot sand
A town in Finland is kicking sand in Vladimir Putin’s face. While the Russian dictator is cutting off gas supplies used for winter heating, a group of Finns have built the world’s first commercial “sand battery” that can store energy for months at a time.
Polar Night Energy’s project is brilliantly simple: 100 tonnes of builder’s sand inside a silo. The sand is heated up to 500 C, which it can maintain for months. The sand battery then discharges heat for the local district heating system, which gets pumped around buildings and the local swimming pool.
"It's really simple, but we liked the idea of trying something new, to be the first in the world to do something like this," Pekka Passi, managing director of the Vatajankoski power plant, told the BBC.
The U.S. Renewable Energy Labs are also using sand and bricks for energy storage but the Finns are first to large-scale commercial deployment.
The swerve
I’ll leave you with an odd but compelling piece by the odd but compelling Cory Doctorow, sci-fi writer, and co-owner of Boing Boing, among his many other eclectic pursuits. “We’re all trapped on a bus,” Cory writes. And “all we’ve got left is the swerve:
“We’ve got to plunge past the first-class passengers in the front rows of the bus, and we have to yank the wheel. We have to swerve…
“The swerve is our hopeful future. Our happy ending isn’t averting the disaster. Our happy ending is surviving the disaster.”
And on that happy note, thank you for reading Zero Carbon. Please forward it along and always feel free to write with feedback or suggestions at [email protected].
Support for this issue of Zero Carbon came from The McConnell and Trottier foundations and I-SEA.