BESTGRID Process: Going Beyond Existing Practices of Stakeholders’ Participation in Electricity Transmission Projects

The goals of climate change mitigation and energy security policies are key drivers for the EU energy transition towards low-carbon energy generation. Even though alternative technologies, including renewable energy, are well advanced, the current state of electricity grids is one of the bottlenecks for its further deployment. Inhabitants of communities affected by planned infrastructure are protesting against further projects to deploy electricity grids in many European countries. The innovative BESTGRID process brings together organized stakeholders from civil society, academia and the energy sector to understand the nature of concerns about these projects and to test various actions to address the concerns. The major research questions addressed by this work are: What are the main stakeholder concerns about the deployment of electricity transmission grids in Europe? What are successful actions to address these concerns? Which level of participation can be achieved in electricity transmission infrastructure project siting in Europe? We address these research questions through a variety of methods, which allow us to gain a systemic look and the holistic understanding of the problem. We analyse five real-world pilot projects which are under planning or construction in Germany (SuedLink and Bertikow-Pasewalk connections), UK (NEMO Link connection) and Belgium (Stevin and Waterloo-Braine l’Alleud connections). We collect empirical data through extensive dialogue with stakeholders, by observation of public and stakeholders information events on-site, by conducting interviews with key stakeholders, and by conducting an on-site survey of all communities where public information events were organized. We mapped participation in each project according to the methodology developed by Arnstein and finally analyzed how concerns about the planned power lines changed before and after actions and policy interventions, which were developed and tested in BESTGRID