Aims and Approach
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Considering ‘publics’ rather than ‘public’, and engagement as the interaction between two processes:
- how developers and other key actors engage with publics about renewable energy technologies (including the assumptions held and specific methods used to communicate such as awareness-raising campaigns, media advertising, public meetings, discussion groups, questionnaire surveys etc.) and
- how individuals and groups engage with renewable energy technologies (including indirectly through the media or social networks, and directly through personal responses to specific renewable energy technologies or micro-generation).
Our research aimed to better understand the conditions under which these processes of public engagement lead to consensus or conflict, so as to inform policy making and lessen uncertainties in the implementation of renewable energy technologies.
Whilst recognising the potential benefits for developers and institutions of using more deliberative and interactive methods of communication to engage with the public about renewable energy technologies, we do not take the view that deliberation will necessarily lead either to social consensus or social acceptance of a proposed technological development, nor do we consider it the primary goal of our project to ‘enable public acceptance’.
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