IEEE Technology and Society Magazine - December 2017 - 20

"Beyond Nimbyism" project reflect
the particular RE policy climate in
the authors' countries of origin, as

often considered the main obstacle
to RE growth, does not capture the
emotion, site-specific concerns,
or mu lt id i mensiona lit y
of RE project opposition
and social acceptance. c)
Trust between the commu-
nity and the RE project's
Trust between the community and
developer(s) - often asso-
ciated by scholars with
the RE project's developer(s) is
perceived fairness - is fun-
fundamentally important.
damentally important. d)
The vision of RE community
ownership is shown to have
well as a constellation of policy and
diverse social and economic poten-
NGO-related initiatives taking place
tial in wind but also in solar energy.
in the U.K. and Australia since the
Businesses and communities could
late nineteen-nineties.
benefit from project ownership and
The recent literature's premises
become energy producers; they
can be summarized as follows: a)
could also become consumers in-
Community opposition to the con-
volved in defining the trajectory of
struction of RE facilities has been
the post-carbon energy system. The
proportional to the size of solar and
distribution of economic and social
wind projects and inversely propor-
benefits would mirror the distribu-
tional to the degree of community
tion of project ownership.
involvement in planning, permitting,
For international RE industry
and planning the facilities; b) Most RE
trade organizations, planning agen-
developers believe that project oppo-
cies, government entities, academic
nents are NIMBYs, and that the ideal
researchers, and rural communities,
decision-making process should
the notion of community engage-
be kept unemotional and objec-
ment has been a platform for explor-
tive. NIMBYism, however, which is
ing - but also challenging - the

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IEEE TECHNOLOGY AND SOCIETY MAGAZINE

social acceptance dimensions of RE
permitting and siting procedures.
Primarily, an organic framework
of community engagement presup-
poses the ability of localities affect-
ed by technology decision-making to
engage in defining such decisions.
Secondly, it conceptualizes fairness
in cognitive terms. Therefore a fifth
premise may be considered that e)
Community participation dictates
that - besides ensuring fair participa-
tion in project dispute settlement -
uncertain data quantity and quality
must be considered proactively. To
that effect, a potential design frame-
work that integrates social accep-
tance in RE projects may advance
the role of engineering experts in
accessing knowledge by means of
community-based methodologies.

Author Information
Nicholas Sakellariou is with the
Department of Computer Science,
Science, Technology and Society
(STS) Affiliate Faculty, California
Polytechnic State University, San
Luis Obispo, CA 93407-0350. Email:
nsakella@calpoly.edu.

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DECEMBER 2017
Table of Contents for the Digital Edition of IEEE Technology and Society Magazine - December 2017
