What rural people actually think about clean energy

Rural community pushback to new wind and solar farms has the
potential to slow the US clean-energy transition, but very little
research has been done on what rural Americans actually think
about renewable energy. A recent survey of thousands of rural
residents about their opinions on climate change and clean energy
development sheds some light; in this episode, Robin Pressman of
Embold Research and Mike Casey of clean-energy PR firm Tigercomm
discuss the results.


(PDF
transcript)


(Active
transcript)


Text transcript:


David Roberts


Of the handful of forces that have the potential to stymie the
clean-energy transition in the US, perhaps the most immediate and
dangerous is rural NIMBYism. Rural communities will, by
necessity, host most of the wind and solar farms the US needs to
decarbonize, but rural resistance is already responsible for
dozens of canceled projects and growing delays.


What do rural Americans think about renewable energy? Where are
they getting their information and what sorts of arguments are
getting through? There’s been weirdly little research on this
question, despite the growing severity of the problem.


Into that breach comes a new poll done by Embold Research, which
surveyed thousands of rural residents to uncover their opinions
on climate change, wind and solar power, and the promises of
energy developers. The poll was commissioned by the clean-energy
PR firm Tigercomm, which also interviewed community engagement
staff at energy developers to find out what they’ve been hearing
in the field.


I contacted Mike Casey, the president of Tigercomm, and Robin
Pressman, the head of Embold Research, to discuss what the poll
found and what it means for clean energy developers engaging
these communities.


All right then, with no further ado, Mike Casey of Tigercomm and
Robin Pressman of Embold Research. Welcome to Volts. Thank you
both so much for coming.


Robin Pressman


Thanks for having us.


Mike Casey


Thank you, Mr. Roberts.


David Roberts


Mike, let's start with you. Let's just talk a little bit about
the background here. There are kind of two bits of research here
that we're going to discuss today. On the one hand, Robin's firm
has done this polling of rural Americans. I hate that I'm going
to have to say the word rural over and over again in this
podcast. It's my least favorite word to say. But also, your firm
has done a bunch of interviews with developers, renewable energy
developers, specifically the people at the renewable energy
developers who are responsible for going into these communities
and developing these projects.


It's sort of the advanced people who are going out to talk with
the rural people and live in that world. And I'm interested in
both those perspectives. But maybe actually, Robin, let's start
with you. So, tell us a little bit about what this poll did, who
it polled, and what kinds of things you were asking about.


Robin Pressman


So, we wanted to take a look at your favorite word, "rural,"
Americans and understand perspectives on renewable energy. We've
seen a lot of polls lately that look at the country as a whole,
that look at specific communities where projects are being built.
We're certainly polling for people in those local communities and
areas. But what we really wanted to do was to get sort of a
30,000-foot view across the country of what perspectives rural
Americans have, where they are at this point in time, and how
they're feeling about the renewable energy transition that is
happening. And so we surveyed 2,645 rural Americans across the
country, and we were able to have conversations with them, both
the quantitative survey and then also the qualitative, get
information from them that they could fill in so we could learn a
little bit more about their perspective.


So, sort of virtual conversations, not actual conversations. And
we were able to really get a look and understand where they are
and go beyond just sort of the loudest voices in the room, which
has really been a big stumbling block in these communities, to
getting these projects built.


David Roberts


In the small handful of items that I would list as threats to the
success of the clean energy transition, threats to the success of
IRA and all the rest of the bills, NIMBYism and permitting is
probably the biggest and most threatening one. And so everybody's
thinking about this right now. Everybody in the energy world is
thinking about this right now. And one of the big questions I
think that's on everybody's mind is this resistance that we're
seeing, is it a small handful of people that are being paid by
right-wing groups stirring up this trouble, or are they speaking
in some sense on behalf of a broader sentiment?


In other words, are they articulating the true sentiments of
people in those areas? So maybe the place to start is just what
did you find out, that they think about renewable energy?


Robin Pressman


So, to start with, there is support for these projects, both
solar and wind in rural communities. And support does outweigh
the opposition as a whole. When we ask people, do you support or
oppose solar energy and wind energy projects separately being
built in the following areas, communities across your state, in
your local community, or on a property near yours, we could see
that support does outweigh opposition across the board. As you
get a little closer to on properties near yours, you would expect
to see some of the support drop off —


David Roberts


Your backyard.


Robin Pressman


Right, and the opposition increase, but not nearly as
significantly as we thought it would.


And so there is sort of a core group of people that are opposed,
certainly, but it's not as strong as one might think. It tends to
hover between 10% and 25%, depending on how proximate the project
is to you. And we can see that, for example, when we ask in your
local community, we can see strong support, 37% strongly support
solar and 32% somewhat support it. And for wind, similarly, 30%
strongly supporting, 26% somewhat supporting. So, there's real
opportunities here for having the conversations. But when we dug
in underneath the top line data, what we can see is some real
differences.


And interestingly enough, while, as you might expect, Republicans
tend to be more opposed to these projects than Democrats, we see
a real difference between MAGA Republicans and non-MAGA
Republicans.


David Roberts


Are those self-designations? Like, these are people who
self-identify as MAGA Republicans?


Robin Pressman


Yes. We ask them their party identification. And for those people
who self-identified as a Republican, we then ask them if they
identify as a MAGA Republican. And about 28% of the entire sample
identified as MAGA Republican. And so what we see with those
non-MAGA Republicans, we see real opportunity for growth. And we
already have pretty strong support with independents as well. So,
there are some groups there that we can talk to that are either
already supportive or maybe sort of soft supporters who, when
given and educated a little bit more information about
understanding the impact on the community, are going to become
stronger supporters.


We also similarly saw interesting difference between people who
self-identified living in a small town or a rural area.


David Roberts


Wait, those are two distinct things.


Mike Casey


Yes, and an important distinction actually.


David Roberts


Spell that out a little bit. When people choose between those,
what are they saying?


Robin Pressman


So, this is a self-determination. So, when we created this
survey, we looked at a number of things. We looked at the rural
areas based on subcounty designations and then ZIP codes based on
population density, to be sure that we really were talking to
people in rural areas, and we are overwhelmingly so. But there
are small towns, right? Within these communities, there are
one-stoplight towns. There's a main street, there are shops,
there's a coffee shop where people are coming. And the people who
are living more closer into the small towns tend to be stronger
supporters than the people who are further out, right where these
projects are more likely to be built.


David Roberts


That's funny. One of the things that we keep finding is that more
density equals bluer, and that seems to hold at every level. Even
out here in the rural areas, these smaller distinctions in
density seem to matter.


Robin Pressman


Yes, but they're not entirely blue. These are areas still, that
even in the small towns, these are areas that voted, still voted
for Trump overwhelmingly. Right. So, these are definitely red;
they're just not as strong. But what we see is people who help
build the fabric of our communities, who maybe run the small
shops in town, or you know, work at the local buildings, are
going to see some opportunities for growth and benefit overall.
And we sort of started in the middle of this conversation and I
should have premised this with this is, it's really important,
the context for understanding where rural Americans are right
now.


And that is that they're decidedly downbeat. I mean, half think
that the country is off on the wrong track, and we can dig into
this further in a little bit. But their perspectives on their
communities, in terms of economic opportunities, job
opportunities are really, really downbeat. And so people are
seeing a need for something that's going to be beneficial for
their communities, but they're not necessarily believing yet that
renewable energy is going to be that solution for them.


David Roberts


Interesting. Well, the big question to me, I mean, politically
speaking, the big question here is about intensity. Like anyone
who follows politics, I think, knows that wide, broad, shallow
majority support cannot stand up to narrower, smaller, but more
intense opposition. Right? Because intensity is what brings
people out to meetings. Intensity is what makes them speak up.
And if you're just sort of like mildly in favor when you're
asked, that's not going to get you out to the meetings. So, do
you have any way of measuring or judging the intensity of this
sort of majority support versus the kind of concentrated MAGA
opposition?


Robin Pressman


Yeah, well, we can see is, like I said, when we look at some of
these questions and we look at strong supporters versus those
that may somewhat oppose, we can see that there is opportunity
for growth. And when we look at those who just identify that
they're not sure on a series of measures there is real
opportunity for education and growth there, we can see that maybe
when we start talking about specific aspects of what these
projects are going to bring to their communities, you get about
20-25%, about a quarter saying that they're not sure what the
implications are going to be for their communities as it relates
to, say, tax benefits, for example. So this really opens up
opportunities for conversations.


And here's the important point: It's conversations with
culturally credible messengers. Having companies come from
outside is not necessarily welcomed or appreciated in a lot of
these communities. Identifying folks that are from those
communities, specifically farmers and ranchers, small business
owners who can have these conversations with their friends, with
their neighbors, really carry significantly more weight. There's
some perspectives that we were able to uncover in the survey that
really just look at how rural Americans perceive themselves as it
relates to the country, and they perceive that they're looked
down upon. They think that elites, liberal elites from the coasts
are looking down upon them.


They think that the politicians aren't paying attention to them
and their needs, and they're not feeling understood in that. And
so those are really important points. And so when you have
outsiders coming in and making promises of tax benefits, and
here's all this opportunity we're going to bring, they're
decidedly suspect of that, as you might imagine, rightfully so,
given their experiences and where they're coming at it from. But
importantly, as we begin to share more of that education, of the
information, of the opportunities that it can bring, we are able
to build a coalition of supporters in these communities.


Mike Casey


So, there's actually some good news here. The good news is that
the poll that Robin's firm ran, that we were part of in terms of
commissioning it and socializing it, mirrors what the Berkeley
National Lab study in 2019 found as well. So, they looked at
people who were neighbors of existing wind farms. Three miles,
one mile, half mile radius. Half mile is less than most of your
dog owning listeners walk their dogs at night. And among people
who lived within a half mile of a wind turbine, 51% had a very
positive or positive experience. 24% had a very negative or
negative experience.


That's actually worth taking into account. Wind is typically
viewed as triggering greater opposition than solar. That was
found in our poll. But yet among those who live next to it, they
don't mind.


David Roberts


I mean, 51% is — I guess that's good news. Half and half. It's
not great news.


Mike Casey


Well, actually, no, check that out, though. So, 51% very positive
or positive, 24% very negative or negative.


David Roberts


Right?


Mike Casey


So it's a two to one ratio. That's actually a significant gap.
And the point here is that you are right: Of the nine barriers to
the clean energy transition, critical minerals, grid stability,
physical infrastructure, transmission, workforce development,
supply chains, government, storage, permitting is the most likely
transition killer. No question. Yet people who live next to it,
once it gets built, it is readily accepted. All the data show
that. And the even better news is that what renewable energy can
offer rural communities is an almost exact match with what rural
Americans say they want for themselves and their neighbors.


They want lower energy prices, they want jobs so their young
people can stay in the community, and they want tax revenue to
address aging infrastructure. That's exactly what renewable
energy offers.


David Roberts


That's what they say on the poll that they want. That's where
you're getting up.


Mike Casey


Correct.


David Roberts


I think this is a pattern of NIMBY opposition, not just to wind
and solar, but to urbanist projects. And I mean, name it. It's
almost always the case that afterward, everyone's fine.
Everyone's fine with the thing. It's the same with, like, a bike
lane. Like, after the bike lane's built, everybody loves the bike
lane. It's always that way. But that never seems to translate
into making it any easier to build the next bike lane. Do you
know what I mean and like so the fact that people are happy with
wind farms once they're next to them, how do you translate that
into making it easier to sell the next wind farm?


That's the magic here. Mike, I have a bunch of questions for you
about engaging with this, but just a couple more for Robin. Did
you, on your poll run by these rural people, specific arguments
for and against renewable energy? And if so, I'm just curious
what arguments against it are catching on and grabbing people's
minds? And conversely, what are the arguments for it that
actually sway them?


Robin Pressman


Absolutely. So, starting with what people are really for, some of
the messages that really resonated focus on the fact that we're
going to move away from dependence on foreign sources for energy.
The increase in renewable energy decreases our energy dependence
on other countries, which resonates, as well as the
diversification of the grid. Renewable energy helps diversify our
sources of energy, ensuring that the lights stay on even if one
energy source fails. So, those really rise to the top. Some of
the economic arguments that we tested in this poll didn't work
quite as well. And I think that partly there's a "not sure"
component here.


As I mentioned earlier, about a quarter identified some of the
tax benefits.


David Roberts


You mean in terms of local economic benefits that these things
bring?


Robin Pressman


Yeah, exactly. And so there's some education and because it's
generic. So, we've seen in other polls where we've gone into very
local communities and asked the question related to specific
projects that we could name that are nearby and received greater
support. So, to some extent, by asking it in a generic sense,
they're not sure. They're wanting to get more information.


David Roberts


Right.


Robin Pressman


And so the opportunities will increase as we go into these
communities and we can serve up these messages again, relying on
people from within the community, people who have gone ahead and
had projects built in their backyard or on their land and are
benefiting from it, to be able to share some of that experience
with their neighbors.


David Roberts


Right. Speaking of trusted messengers, people from those
communities.


Robin Pressman


Yes, absolutely.


David Roberts


Because it seems to me like a general rule that these sort of
abstract principles that you kind of will say you're in favor of
in a poll like energy independence and things like that, those
things, in my experience, tend to crumble pretty quickly in the
face of, "But this will hurt you specifically." And so I'm
curious, what are the — you know, if I'm a right-wing group and
I'm going into one of these communities to try to stir up
opposition — what are arguments am I using that are working? What
triggers people?


Robin Pressman


Yeah. So, one of the greatest concerns people have is that
renewable energy cannot currently meet our energy needs. And that
really rises to the top of concerns. You also see some people
have concerns about the use of farmland and that the benefits and
energy are actually going to go elsewhere, that their community
is not going to be the one to really benefit to the extent as
other communities will. There is definitely skepticism at this
point about renewable energy fully meeting those needs. But
again, opportunities exist for education where we can see that
people are identifying as either somewhat disagreeing or not
sure, and we can go in and educate folks on those benefits.


David Roberts


Well, it seems to me that rural communities in the US have good,
historically grounded reasons to think that energy companies
might come in and treat them like a resource colony, mess up
their land, and extract all the benefits, because that's
basically what fossil fuels have done everywhere they've gone in
rural US. You know, why wouldn't you think that seems quite
sensible to me. So, Mike, you and your colleagues are out talking
to people at renewable energy developers who are now having to
deal with this. And this, I think, is not totally new, but
there's certainly a rising level of opposition and just the
significance and the importance of the whole thing, it's just
rising.


And when I think about the renewable energy developers that I've
spoken to and that I know, they just do not, I say this with all
love and respect, do not strike me as the kind of people who are
going to be particularly adept at navigating these highly
charged, fraught, very culturally specific circumstances into
which they're being thrown. Like, it just seems like they're
going to get chewed up. Are the people you're talking to, do they
feel prepared? Are any of them actually prepared? Do they have a
good sense of what they need to be doing? Do they have the same
view of themselves that the rural residents have of them?


Sort of like, what are you finding when you talk to these people?


Mike Casey


Yeah, it's a good question. So, I should just give credit where
credit's due. Our Director of Community Engagement, Ayelet Hines,
also teaches influence mapping at Johns Hopkins. So, this is her
jam and she ran most of these interviews. But from the meta
perspective, community engagement professionals have a very good
sense of the dynamics in the community. They also volunteer. They
feel very undertrained for the increasing political campaign
aspects of their job. That's really what we found, is that if you
look at the punch list of tactics that community engagement teams
are facing in these communities, it reads like a political
campaign.


So, political campaigning is being done to them and these
companies are not responding in kind. And fundamentally that's
because the leadership teams of the companies who have never
really had a reason to be in the room and get yelled at, so to
speak, until you're there, and I have been there, you don't
really get the sense of how visceral the concerns are in these
communities. They really are proud of their communities. They
value their way of life. And what we find in talking to
developers is that MAGA voters, they're usually leading the
opposition. And we suspect that's because of the following
reasons: One, these voters see the culture in the country going
in a direction they don't like. Now anybody can have opinions
about their opinions. That's irrelevant. These are people who
have the right to vote. They have the right to their opinions.
They have very strong opinions. And their opinions —


David Roberts


Well, Mike, you say they see it. Let me just clarify: They are
hooked up, trapped by, entirely captured by a gigantic propaganda
machine that is pumping their heads full of the most paranoid
stuff you could. I mean, they're not just seeing this happen,
this story is being shaped and fed to them everywhere they look.


Mike Casey


Yes, I'm taking a more clinical view of it, David, I think
because —


David Roberts


Sorry, it works me up.


Mike Casey


No, totally understood. But I think that's actually a useful
thing you just said. Let me take it as a microcosm. This industry
is going to have to build things in rural America, and rural
Americans are not going to change their existing baseline
worldviews and opinions to accommodate clean energy. The only
route to building in their midst is to respect their views as
their views. You don't have to agree with them, but you have to
respect they hold the views they have and you have to address
them on their terms.


It's the ultimate sign of respect. And what rural communities
demand above all else is that you respect them. You come in the
door respecting their way of life, their quality of life, and
their values. And that really is the challenge I think the
industry faces. I think in retrospect it's pretty clear that this
industry committed an original sin, unknowingly. It assumed low
friction permitting, and it's not what it's encountering right
now. So, the people that we talk to are squeezed between an
emerging reality on the ground and leadership teams who don't
have a reason to fully appreciate it and the budgets are sized
accordingly, and therein lies the problem.


David Roberts


Well, it seems to me it ought to be showing up in the numbers by
now. Like, there's a lot of projects getting shot down and
killed. There's a lot of projects waiting in queues. There's just
a lot. I mean, at this point, it's hard to avoid the permitting
problem. It ought to be, seems like it.


Mike Casey


Yes, you know I'm most of the way through a book called "The
Polluters." It's a history of the chemical lobby. And if you read
that book, if you read Robert Caro's book about LBJ, particularly
"Master of the Senate", what you see is that industries mature in
the way they organize and deploy their public affairs, their
lobbying, around decade six or seven. Clean energy is most
generously credited with being in its third decade. And here's
the challenge most clean energy companies do not understand: They
are not creating a new industry as Google did. They are creating
a new sector within an industry dominated by powerful incumbents
with decades of experience weaponizing government influence
peddling and disinformation.


And because of that, there is this residual amount of magical
thinking, and it affects the way this industry makes its case.
And the challenge and the task here for those of us working in
the industry is to accelerate, unnaturally accelerate the
maturation of the way this industry scales up its public case
making at whatever level of government decision. And this is just
one of those.


David Roberts


So then, I guess, as someone who has studied and thought about
and talked about and written about for a long time, the power of,
the increasing power of right-wing media, the increasingly
concentrated power of it, the increasing domination of rural
America by it. I get your point about you have to respect their
identity and their worldview. But it seems like it would be
pretty easy for right-wing media to come along and tell these
people, "hey, guess what part of your worldview is that
renewables are bad." And if right-wing media decides to do that
and has their eyeballs and their ears locked up, what power does
a company, does a single company wandering into town with a
project in their back pocket, what power does a single company
have against that?


In some sense, they just seem, even if they were well funded, it
seems like they're outmatched here.


Robin Pressman


We did ask some questions about understanding what news
consumption people —


David Roberts


Oh, yeah, yeah, I meant to ask about that.


Robin Pressman


Yeah. So, about 40% identify online news sites, which can mean a
wide variety of things.


David Roberts


I'll say.


Robin Pressman


But 37% local news, you see about 21% identifying Fox News
specifically the more right-wing sites, 17% identifying things
like Newsmax, Breitbart, and the Blaze. What's interesting to me
though is we asked a question earlier on about what are some of
your concerns about renewable energy? And one of the options that
was offered was sort of taken straight from the disinformation
playbook, and that was that wind and solar can harm your health.
And we only saw about 5% of people identifying that as a concern.


And when we asked the open-ended question, just what are your
concerns? It didn't come up at all. And it may be that other
pieces of disinformation are sticking more than the one we asked
about, but in that sense, it didn't rise to the top. And so I
think people are able to sort out, of course, you'll always have
a core percent of people that are going to be sort of stuck in
their own perspectives and in their own loop of information. But
generally speaking, their concerns seem to be grounded in some of
the areas we talked about, which is reliability, use of farmland,
that sort of thing.


Mike Casey


David, to answer your question, it is the disruptor's sentence to
have a disruptor's needs: large, with disruptors budgets: small.
And yet that doesn't get us off the hook. It is a fundamental
reality that clean energy is doing the equivalent of walking into
a party, going up to the biggest guy in the party who's sitting
on the couch and going, "dude, you're in my seat, move." That's
what we're doing. That's what we're doing. And we have to get
over ourselves that incumbents with trillions of dollars in
physical infrastructure, sunk costs, are not going to just say,
"You know what? You guys are right. The planet's on fire. I'll
listen to the IPCC. I'm going to just convert our vast
infrastructure into a home energy management company, no
problem."


It just is not going to happen, you know. One of my favorite
sayings was Confucius: "Those who say something is impossible
should not interrupt those who are doing it." And I really think
that our task here is to stop whining about resource disparity
and suck it up and start pooling our resources to at least do the
basics better. Allow me to give you a contrast.


David Roberts


Yeah, please tell me about the basics, because I have no, like,
if you told me to go into a small town and work up support for a
renewable energy installation, I would not have the slightest
clue where to begin. So, what are the basics?


Mike Casey


Well, I'll give you an example. So, I gathered some of this
information in the research I did for a piece I wrote last year
called "We're the People We're Waiting For." And it was
essentially a study about how do we prevent the next Joe Manchin
holdout on a critical climate solution step we've got to take.
And if you're Joe Manchin, you are well aware that the oil and
gas industry, really, the fracking industry in West Virginia, has
a statewide annual festival. You can go to Parkersburg and go to
the Early Oil and Gas Museum. Your graduating high school senior
can apply to West Virginia Wesleyan for a full ride to become a
fracking tech.


Right. Now, what they've done, and I say this because I actually
cited something you wrote a long time ago where you talked about
a country western song that lionized a coal miner.


David Roberts


Yeah, I remember that.


Mike Casey


This is 100% what we're talking about. There has been great
effort, very culturally astute by incumbent polluting sectors, to
put biceps and belt buckles onto the digging out of our energy
supply. And the whole meme of —


David Roberts


And trucks, too.


Mike Casey


Right? The whole meme of Solyndra was that if you don't dig or
mine for your energy, it's beneath your dignity. Now, there are
four wind farms in West Virginia. One of them, what was built,
was the largest one east of the Mississippi River. And if you go
on Tripadvisor right now and you search their names, you're going
to see people expressing frustration. They couldn't find the
things. Well, why do they want to go there? Because they want to
look at it. And the crazy thing is that our industry is ghosting
its host communities, places where the wind and solar farms are
already built, make almost zero effort to grow, curate, and
demonstrate support.


Now, why is that important? Because I'll point you to research by
the Republican Accountability Project. These are never-Trumper
national Republicans, George Conway, et cetera. They have tracked
attitudes and worldviews of Trump voters from '16 to '20 to '22
and beyond. What they've noticed is that the more legal trouble
Trump gets into, the tighter the screens on information sources
and validation that these voters will have, and that 100% applies
to the Americans we're talking about. So, if we are ghosting,
like communities. For example, two counties in Michigan, one is
called Isabella County, and the county to the south of it,
Montcalm County.


Isabella has a huge amount of renewable energy development.
Montcalm, there's a great deal of contention around renewable
energy development. The best validators for Montcalm County
undecided residents are Isabella County residents, because they
know some of them and they look like them, and they are like
them, and yet we're neglecting that. So, can we put on a
festival, statewide festival with a beauty pageant? No. Can we
have a museum yet? No. But for goodness sakes, we have basic
block and tackle, making the most of our built infrastructure,
communicating through social media. Really, Facebook, because
that's the new newspaper in rural America.


Proactively engaging rather than just responding with fact
sheets. These are some campaigning basics that don't cost much in
the way of money. You just have to work them harder. And will we
close the gap entirely? No, but we can close the gap a lot.


David Roberts


So, a big piece of this, then, is this going somewhere where you
already won a battle, where there are happy residents next to
these things and simply trying to sort of formalize and amplify
that positive feeling? Get some of those people to testify on
your behalf or write op-eds for you or talk to their neighbors on
Facebook. What's that look like?


Mike Casey


Video testimonials. I'll give you an example. Robin and I, we did
a precursor survey in the very tip of the thumb of Michigan, a
county called Huron County, 33,000 residents. Ruby red, voted for
Trump, 69% over Biden, and it has the highest density of wind
turbines in the state of Michigan. Michigan has a very strong
township structure, so it's kind of like many counties within
counties. And as the years have gone by and renewable energy has
been developed, moratoria have been passed in various townships.
So, Robin's firm did a poll. It's brilliant. And they asked, do
you want more renewable energy development or not?


Negative 9%: No, we don't. By nine points: No, we do not. Now, we
ask, in one question, naming three specific pieces of
infrastructure, a school lab, a parking lot, and something else.
And we explained to Huron County residents, this is what
renewable energy has paid for. Now, how do you feel? David,
opinion moved 14 points. I have read thousands of polls. I've
participated in the construction of, I don't know, 100 or so. And
you have to usually ask batteries of questions to get opinion to
move 14 points. One question, 14 points. And what that tells us
is people are open to this if you talk to them with local
reference points, respecting their culture through people they're
willing to listen to.


Does that beat propaganda from Robert Bryce on Breitbart? I don't
know. I think it remains to be seen. But we don't get to declare
that it can't unless we've tried, right?


David Roberts


I bet there's enough for a museum. It occurs to me now, like, why
isn't there a museum of renewable energy? It's been around for at
least a few decades, like get some old NASA solar panels. Someone
should do that. Is there a success story here, Mike? A company
that's done well, or a company that is not ghosting its
communities, that is staying in its communities and working up
support and trying to expand support and use that to leverage
more? Is there anyone who's doing this well?


Mike Casey


Yes, there is a high degree of variability in the sophistication
of the programs. One public example is AES has the largest wind
farm under construction. They just completed a second phase in
Winslow, Arizona, and the community support is very strong. This
is a sprawling pair of counties. One of them is quite Trumpy. I
think the other one's a little bit more even, but in terms of
presidential preferences, but they have really strong support.
Their phase completion event was extremely well attended by the
local community. And the details on how they got there, I think
I'll let them share.


But there are companies, an increasing number of companies that
are seeing: We've got a $10 to $20 billion problem unfolding here
and we're underinvested and we want to change that. I can 100%
tell you that awareness is growing. I think the important thing
is that the industry overall, most of the developers came out of
a European utility background. EDP, Avangrid, EDF, EON/RWE. These
are all companies that started as European utilities, and then
they started building renewable energy overseas in their home
countries, and they came over here and built renewable energy.
And for brand considerations, they've had very tight controls on
how they allow their staff to use Facebook.


But you can't have handcuffs on your staff when you're using
Facebook, because it's the conduit where community decisions are
framed and the decision making gets going. And if you tie your
shoes together, you can't win a race.


David Roberts


Yes, although releasing your employees to freestyle on Facebook
also carries its own risks.


Mike Casey


I didn't say freestyle, and I would just assert there's a whole
lot of room between "don't do anything unless we approve it at
headquarters" and "do anything you want." There's a whole lot of
room. So, I'm arguing for a firm midway point in that.


David Roberts


A lot of these companies are relatively small and I would imagine
don't necessarily have the funds to staff up like whatever ten
person community engagement squadron. Is this the kind of thing
where there can be shared resources? I mean, a) shared resources
among and between developers, but also b), it seems like this is
something that they ought to be getting help with from the
broader community of people who are concerned about seeing
renewable energy get built, you know what I mean? Like, it'd be
nice if they had a gigantic propaganda machine on their side, but
at least something. So, how could we move beyond these sort of
one by one battles, one by one companies and pool resources?


Does that spark anything?


Mike Casey


Well, I know that those are active, ongoing conversations right
now. I'm a part of some of them, and I know those are taking
place. And I will say that it remains to be seen how much of the
traditional development processes that originated with oil and
gas and real estate that are now being used for renewable energy,
how much of those can and should be changed to accommodate newly
emerging political campaign demands, so to speak. And our
conclusion, having talked to the companies, is that
fundamentally, the companies are going to have to experiment on a
per company basis, how to advance and update the way they're
solving for these emerging realities.


I don't think there's a right way. There's a body of best
practices, generic best practices for public case making, and
then there's a set list of tried and true development steps. The
former have to be experimentally incorporated into the latter,
and the latter varies by company. So, there are some things that
multi-company platforms can do. Further research from Robin's
shop sharing results of pre-designed experimentation. These are
things that can be done. And yet, fundamentally, the companies
need to seize their own destiny and understand that even if it's
a significant expenditure, it beats bankruptcy, it beats lost
projects.


David Roberts


My gut says that part of their reservations have to do with
resources having to do with needing to spend a bunch more money
on this. But I'm just guessing, based on what I know about the
type of people who are in this business, that if you come to them
and say: "You are now mired in politics, you are in a political
campaign. There's a political campaign being run against you. And
if you want to build your project, you have to run a political
campaign on your own behalf." That just horrifies people. These
are generally technocrats, I think, who want good information and
fact sheets to carry the day and loathe partisan politics and are
horrified by the thought of getting hoovered into it.


How big of a factor is that?


Mike Casey


It's massive, in short. Because your descriptions are fairly on
point. And I think Robin and I have seen that reaction unfold for
the last two months, I think since we spoke at the trade show,
and we use that term political campaigning with intention. It
does push up fears and concerns, because when non-politically
experienced people hear that, they think about attack ads,
hyper-partisanship, bribes, like first energy cuts.


David Roberts


Well, politics is ugly these days. I mean, it's just ugly. That's
what comes to mind is ugliness.


Mike Casey


Right? And so we have to explain to them, this is the basic block
and tackle. It's communicating within emotional frames. It's
winning the race to define. It's using social media as an
engagement tool, not a cheap form of news release distribution.
And when you help people understand that their assumptions aren't
matching what's needed, their concerns ease and they're just —
cod liver oil is good for you to have, but it tastes like crap.
And there's no getting around that it tastes like crap. So, if
you want the benefits, you have to drink it. And so we just don't
have enough time in the planetary hour to be hung up on ourselves
and our squeamishness about the messiness of public case making.


As Gandalf said in Lord of the Rings "War is upon you". You know,
Gondoer. I'm sorry you don't like that, but that's just the way
it is. So the orcs can pillage your castle or you can actually
defend it. And that's really what we have. We are telling that
big guy at the party, get off the couch, that's my seat. That's
what we're doing and we have to do that. So, if we accept that
and then we get over ourselves, let go of our concerns and fears,
invest at scale to the best we can, I think we're going to see a
lot of this difficulty be reduced. Not eliminated, but reduced.


David Roberts


Robin, I'm curious. My priors, my instincts are to think that
rural people's opinions about renewable energy as such are
relatively shallow and easily shiftable and that the deep
currents here are more of what you referenced earlier. Just
about: "We don't want to be disrespected. We don't want outsiders
coming in and plundering our resources." Did you poll about other
kinds of development? Like, did you poll about how do you feel
about how would you feel about a fracker coming in and fracking?
Or how would you feel about new oil wells or new oil drills? Is
there anything specific to renewable energy here?


Or is this mostly just sort of general feelings about culture and
the culture of being rural and the culture of outsiders, that
kind of thing? You know what I mean?


Robin Pressman


Yeah, I do. It's a good question. And in short answer, no, we did
not find it beneficial to do. But in every poll, you have to make
decisions about what you're going to include. And what we decided
to really focus in here on is attitudes and perspectives of rural
Americans. We wanted to sort of dig in and really understand
where they're coming from and what opportunities and concerns
they see. And while 70% think that rural communities offer a
better quality of life than other types of communities, around
three in five identify rural America as, quote, "the true
America" and think that rural Americans work harder than others.


But yet 60% strongly agree that the national media and elites
don't understand what life is like in rural America. And
similarly, a majority strongly agree that people living in cities
don't understand the problems that rural Americans face. So,
beyond sort of looking at renewable energy specifically, we
wanted to understand what are the concerns of rural Americans?
What are the challenges they're facing? They're facing tough
economic times. They're facing a situation where they don't feel
like there are enough jobs moving forward for them, availability
of good jobs for themselves and opportunities for young people.
Significant concerns. And interestingly, also availability of
low-cost energy is a concern.


So, we see these economic concerns, but they're not yet hearing
the solutions that they feel are going to bring them out of this
difficult situation. And so that's where we chose to really
explore here, is to understand what are some of the messages,
what are some of the messengers? And as I mentioned earlier,
through some of the open ends, just sort of try and hear directly
from people talking about their struggling. They're struggling
with bills, they're struggling with groceries. They really are
facing these challenges. But there's an openness with some,
certainly to going forward to new technologies for renewables and
the jobs and the opportunities that they'll bring.


So, there is some of that there, and more conversation is really
going to open up more opportunities, I believe.


David Roberts


Yeah, one of the things that occurs to me is, and this is
something that whenever I talk to sort of like marketers or
people like that, they always cite as one of the strongest sort
of psychological forces in messaging, which is just, I think what
people want to hear or are looking for is something along the
lines of "people like us do things like this." That's what moves
people. And so this brings back to the messenger thing. This
brings back to the success story thing. This brings back to sort
of know, they just need to make that mental shift where this is
not something people want to do to us, this is something people
like us do to better ourselves.


It's like moving the locus of agency from outside to inside
somehow. So, along those lines, Mike, final question for you,
which, know, you said a couple of times that obviously every
situation is different, every community is different. In some
way, every project is different in some way, and there's not
going to be an obvious kind of like mechanical algorithm to
follow here. But on the other hand, as you say, there are some
basic common-sense things. So, maybe just by way of concluding,
you just say, if I'm a renewable energy developer and I've got my
eye on a community there in rural, whatever, Pennsylvania, and
I've watched your slideshow and I've read your poll, and I'm
ready to do these things.


What is my sort of checklist of basics? What are my block and
tackle basics, like the obvious things that I need to do? I'm
guessing that one of them is that I think one of the worst sins
of these things that people don't do is engage early. So, the
residents of these communities end up being sort of confronted,
like, "here's a thing on your doorstep, yes or no," and
naturally, it gets their hackles up. I'm guessing engaging early
is part of it. But if you just had to give a list of like four or
five, "no duh", at least do this type of things for that
developer, what would those be?


Mike Casey


Engage early. Start by talking to the business community. Use
culturally credible messengers, gather validation from built
project neighbors, and do not be afraid of a mess and cacophony
that comes on Facebook. Embrace it, because that's the way
community conversations are had. And David, I'll tell you an
anecdote that I source as the genesis of this, the whole arc of
what at least my firm is doing on this. 14 years ago, I took my
then six-year-old daughter to a wedding in Idaho Falls. And so we
flew to Denver and we puddle jumped to Idaho Falls.


And as the plane came into Idaho Falls, it banked over a mountain
range, and there was a wind farm wind project that dotted some of
the peaks. At least half the people in the plane were locals. And
as the plane banked and the wind farm came into view, there was
an audible gasp like, "whoa, that's cool," from the locals. And
out came the phones and people were taking pictures. The thing is
that rural communities have a lot of really great qualities. And
one of them is people aren't afraid to work. They work with their
hands. They like to understand how things work and renewable
energy, mechanically, it's really interesting, it's cool.


And we are not making the most of that. We're instead just
expecting people who don't see the problem that we solve as
nearly as serious a crisis as people who listen to this show.
We're expecting them to see the world our way and to accept what
we're doing on our terms. If we change that, if we open our minds
to how they see the world and communicate to them where they are,
this is going to go significantly better and significantly more
successfully.


David Roberts


I come back over and over again to the appropriate messengers
thing because — nothing's worse, and I'm familiar with a lot of
this kind of talk in the politics world, and what I've found is
nothing's worse than someone trying to mimic a different culture.
Do you know what I mean? A different culture, like reading off a
list of things and trying to sort of sound, "hey, I'm an
authentic rural guy." There's nothing cringier and there's
nothing rural people spot faster than that. Right? So, it just
brings me back again and again to find the people who speak the
language natively and then train them like that just seems to me
like it ought to be such a huge part of this.


Mike Casey


It is.


David Roberts


It's a little wild to me that this is such a huge problem that
we're running into. And I've been thinking about this a lot
lately, Mike, I've been thinking about your nine possible
blockers. And I've been thinking a lot lately about what a huge
piece of the puzzle social license is to all this, just getting
people to agree to let you do it and how comparatively little
compared to the amount of energy system modeling and price
comparisons. And just like all this technocratic quantifying and
modeling and how comparatively little real tangible research and
work is being done on the kind of sociological and psychological
and cultural aspects of making this work.


And that's like where the rubber is meeting the road now. That's
where everything is happening now. And it's so weirdly,
everybody's hand waving, everybody's trading priors and trading
intuitions. So, it's just nice to finally see some meat on the
bone here, some people actually going and researching this
problem directly.


Robin Pressman


Thank you for that. One of the benefits of our approach with
polling is it allows us to be able to get into these rural
communities where it's difficult sometimes with other types of
polling to do with significant samples. So, it allows us to be
able to launch these surveys and be able to have the information
from the respondents.


David Roberts


Yeah, it's great to hear directly from them. So, yeah, thanks for
doing the research and thank you both for coming on and walking
through it with us.


Mike Casey


David, I'll throw in a final point. You can throw it on the tape
or if you want, but I sound like Elrond of Lord of the Rings, "I
was there 3000 years ago." But the climate community, the NGO
climate community, it seems very safe to say now that we made a
terrible decision 30 years ago to let the inmates run the asylum.
We let wonks and lawyers do our messaging. That's why we're stuck
with these terribly uncommunicative terms that ExxonMobil loves
us using. Emissions, greenhouse gases, climate change. No, it's
pollution. It's climate disruption.


David Roberts


Net metering.


Mike Casey


Right. And that came because there was this technocrat's
proclivity to be exact, to have the world comport with the way we
are certain it is. We need not, we cannot afford to make that
mistake now. We cannot let engineers run our public
communications campaigns.


David Roberts


Your lips to God's ears. I'll just say that's not just the
renewable energy community that needs to hear that.


Mike Casey


I mean, obviously I say this with love and I make my living as a
fan of this industry. And Robin and I funded this poll even
though we got turned down. We pitched this poll to the industry
to pay for. It declined and we paid for it.


David Roberts


That's crazy. That's crazy.


Mike Casey


That's how strongly we feel about it. But it needed to be done.
And that's okay, because if it slingshots a better approach
across this industry, we're going to stand a much better chance
of realizing that 40% carbon pollution footprint reduction
potential in the IRA. And if we don't, we don't.


David Roberts


Right. Well said. All right. We'll call that the final word.
Thanks, Mike. Thanks Robin. Thanks for coming on.


Mike Casey


Thank you, my friend.


Robin Pressman


Thanks for having us.


David Roberts


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