Community Engagement with Utility-Scale Solar Projects: A Representative Survey of U.S. Communities

• In Event: How Policy Design and Social Context Shape Energy Behavior and Outcomes

Abstract

Community opposition to (and support for) energy infrastructure has emerged as a critical determinant of the clean energy transition. Early work on these dynamics often framed opposition to energy infrastructure through the lens of NIMBYism (Not in My Backyard).Recognizing the need to mitigate local opposition, policymakers and developers are exploring what types of compensation and community engagement will increase community buy-in for local developments. However, the specific communities where utility-scale energy infrastructure is being built have only rarely been studied, and always at late-stages of project development. Here, we report the results from a representative survey of US communities with planned and prospective utility-scale solar projects.  

We developed a custom sampling frame to identify all residential buildings located near planned or prospective utility-scale solar plants across the continental United States. To identify residential clusters within high-probability solar development zones, we first generated a national probability surface based on existing development patterns. We applied a focal neighborhood kernel analysis to” smooth these raw scores, which allowed us to identify cohesive residential neighborhoods rather than isolated cells. These smoothed probability scores were then spatially joined to individual residential building locations from CoreLogic property data. By assigning these scores to specific homes, we were able to conduct a weighted random sampling process, ensuring that households in areas with higher predictive surface scores had a proportionally greater chance of being selected.  

Beyond compensation mechanisms, our study investigates the importance of social norms and perception gaps: individuals may misperceive the level of support or opposition within their communities. We also examine the roles that project attributes, such as scale, location, land-use trade-offs, and end-use of generated electricity, play in the perception of such projects. We find only mild opposition to clean energy developments across target communities, but reduced support among communities with previous exposure to solar developments. Importantly, we find that respondents substantially overestimate the level of opposition to clean energy among their neighbors. In a series of choice experiments, we find that project attributes can substantially shift community support for local development, with strong disapproval of development that will be used to power data centers and/or AI needs.

Overall, our results provide a holistic understanding of energy transition attitudes among the communities most impacted by large-scale infrastructure build-out. This research’s significance lies in its provision of rare, systematic evidence on the attitudes of communities that are actually targeted for utility-scale solar-development; despite its central importance to the clean energy transition, this area has been understudied. By showing that opposition is often overestimated and that perceptions of neighbors’ views diverge from reality, the study identifies a key social barrier that may unnecessarily hinder project development. The finding regarding the disapproval of development that will be used to power AI needs highlights how the technological revolution is complicating the landscape of energy transition.

Author

• Sara Constantino, Stanford University
  Presenting Author