What I Learned At American Clean Power

Then the fossil fuel industry ratcheted up the misinformation campaigns online, and Fox News made the Solyndra bankruptcy as famous as the Lehman Brothers’ demise.

A sector of the public that was already feeling marginalized amidst a rapidly changing economic landscape had become radicalized, a trend that social media algorithms were all too eager to exploit for profit.

Public hearings for clean energy projects, which had always been dicey because of NIMBY concerns, became lightning rods for America’s urban-rural cultural divide. When well-meaning local politicians and planning boards became the focal point of small-town ire, they punted. 

Welcome to siting and permitting a solar, wind, battery storage, or transmission line project in America in 2026.

Speaker after speaker bore out the statistics: fewer than 10% of the projects on paper ever produce a kilowatt of energy, and the hill gets steeper every year, sometimes for valid reasons like a previous developer didn’t follow through on promises, or because neighbors were concerned about the effect a renewable energy project might have on the value of their nearby home.

More often, though, the reason has more to do with rural communities feeling like they are bearing the burden of an urbanist green agenda.

The good news that came out of ACP is that every developer I spoke to understands they need to double down on community outreach if they want to get permits approved for their projects, and some of the development companies are already making strides by showing up early and often in a community, remaining a positive presence after the project is completed, and generating electrons.

The proof is clear when you look at LinkedIn at the number of community outreach, external affairs, and stakeholder relations employees you can find at many of the more prominent energy development companies. More time and money are being spent to assuage community concerns that they are more than just another extractive industry looking to make a quick buck.

If only it were that easy…

One of the panel speakers was asked whether a project developer should remain silent about their project until they had acquired the land and were ready to announce.

The speaker wryly pointed out that in a rural community, as soon as you knock on the first door to inquire about their property, the entire town knows.

That’s how rural communication networks operate.

Had I been asked that question, I would’ve answered, “In the internet age, there is no such thing as ‘under the radar’ anymore.”

That question revealed a disquieting lack of understanding of how quickly opponents can mobilize and define a project even before it gets off the ground. And because we live in such distinct information ecosystems, a developer from outside the community is unlikely to know that opposition is building until it spreads like a cancer.

“Keeping up with the Joneses” is an indictment of America’s consumer culture. In project development, once the opponents are ahead of you in defining the merits, it’s nearly impossible to keep up. 

To increase the likelihood that an energy project is completed, you have to be ahead of the Joneses from the outset…and stay ahead.

Several tactics can help:

• Public opinion research can capture the pulse of a community, and it’s now more affordable because online surveys don’t require live callers. 
  
• Consumer data, combined with digital tools, can target potential supporters and opponents with incredible accuracy, allowing a developer to build trust and educate those who are open to the project BEFORE the public hearings without stirring up a hornet’s nest of anger.
  
• Text and email databases of supporters can give you unfiltered access to real people in the community, not just stakeholders, building trust over time, which is especially critical when fending off fossil fuel front groups that are adept at spreading misinformation.
  

Project development needs to be treated like a political campaign because, like Election Day, there’s a winner and a loser, and the winner is usually the side that defined the debate.

It’s no secret that rural Americans are less likely to believe outsiders. They love where they live; they like it the way it is; and they want to keep it that way. Trust is acquired in inches over long periods of time. This was a leitmotif throughout the ACP conference.

The obvious conclusion is that a developer or a development company isn’t necessarily the best person to speak on behalf of the project, especially when opposition arises.

In a disaggregated media landscape, there is no such thing as a sole source messenger. Trying to control everything shared about a clean energy project is like being stuck in a rush hour traffic jam when you need to get to the hospital for urgent care.

Allow community supporters to create Facebook pages, moderate the content, and produce their own shareable content. An energy development company’s communications shop that’s a thousand miles away from your project and is overseeing multiple projects at the same time can’t possibly keep up with events on the ground. 

And if you’re creating a website for the project, feature the locals prominently on the homepage so it doesn’t appear to be a solely for-profit endeavor. 

The words from the stage were clear: if you want to win over rural communities, you need third-party advocates who are willing to vouch for your integrity and commitment to their way of life. And those people can’t just be the stakeholders you check off on a list, like the Chamber CEO, the environmental group, or the elected official. You also need regular people who attend high school football games on a Friday night and church on Sundays. They have credibility with their neighbors you can’t buy.

One of our most successful clean energy campaigns enlisted pastors, whose congregants suffered disproportionately from pollution-related asthma and cardiopulmonary disease, to attend hearings and speak to elected officials about the benefits of low-emission fuels. They offset scare tactics from the oil industry about rising gas prices.

Your messengers are what give your message credibility.

 Digital Grassroots and Community Outreach Are Pennies On The Dollar Compared To Failure

If the people on the stage at ACP know what needs to be done, and the developers in the audience agree with them, why are so many projects still failing the urban-rural divide? 

It has to do with who wasn’t in attendance at ACP: the C-Suite.

Several attendees from different companies spoke about a common obstacle: the people who make the budget decisions, whether in the U.S., Canada, or Europe, see community outreach as a liability on the spreadsheet in an industry where margins are thin. 

Fair enough, but the retort is that even if a CEO sees community relations as a largely wasted cost of doing business, it’s still far cheaper than the sunk costs in time, staff, and budget when the majority of your projects never net a single dollar.

It reminds me of a famous commercial where a grizzled garage mechanic underneath a car speaks about changing your car’s oil filter as a cheap alternative to major engine repair. The ad concludes with the mechanic pulling himself out from under the car, grabbing the four-dollar oil filter, and saying, “You can pay me now…or pay me later."

We all know someone who never changed their engine oil, and then expressed surprise when the inevitable happens, or worse, says they didn’t know you needed to change the oil. The next time your CEO questions your budget request, ask them why they take their car in for a regular service.

Like it or not, if we want more clean energy projects to move forward, we have to accept that clean energy isn’t a bug of America’s culture wars, it’s a feature. 

And the places we want to develop projects on large tracts of land require those who’ve been inundated with messages that climate change isn’t real and that green energy is a government-subsidized scam to overcome that cognitive dissonance.

Developers can’t overcome that with the old playbook of showing up when the project is announced, getting a few prominent citizens to endorse the project, writing a few checks for goodwill, and promoting community benefits as the only tools in the toolbox to get permit approvals.

The successful equation is embedding in a community early, taking their pulse before a project submits plans, finding community supporters who can drive your message across their networks with a looser grip from company headquarters, producing shareable digital content regularly to stay ahead of the Joneses (the organized opposition and front groups), build your email list so you can have direct access to your audience both to educate and respond, and keep the focus on how your project helps protect the community they love rather than focuses on the benefits the project provides.