Shawn Shaw is CEO of Boston-based engineering consultancy firm Camelot Energy Group, which helped deliver Canada’s largest battery energy storage (BESS) project to date. In this feature interview with Senior Reporter Gaye Taylor, Shaw talks about what developers can do to build trust and prevent their projects running aground on community opposition.

The Energy Mix: Where and why is local opposition hardening against BESS projects in the U.S.?

Shawn Shaw: Camelot recently started quantitative tracking of BESS-specific moratoriums across the country and that number seems to be growing fast. By our accounting, there are currently around 200 BESS moratoriums, meaning that the number of counties with BESS restrictions on the books has increased 73% in the last 24 months.

Nearly half of these moratoriums are in New York, which is pushing hard to develop more energy storage and solar energy capacity.

As for the “why”: it comes down to trust. If the community does not trust the developer, then no amount of data will convince them that battery storage systems are not dangerous.

Sadly, in our experience, if the community is already on edge, it is very hard to bring them back around to supporting, or even tolerating, a project.

The Mix: Fear of fire is a common thread in community resistance to BESS. Thoughts?

Shaw: For concerned citizens, the risk of fire or explosion is real and visceral. Contrasting that with amorphous promises of tax payments is not a compelling argument, and we have seen that fall flat on projects. Developers need to be honest about risk.

Suggesting a BESS “can never catch fire” to a concerned community may be a great sound bite, but folks are savvy enough to do basic online research and make a credible argument against such an oversimplified claim.

Based on our research in the U.S. market, BESS fires only occur in 0.3% of projects annually, about the same rate at which households experience fires. This is not to minimize risk at all, but we need to understand BESS fire risk in context with the infrastructure we live and work around every day. When you think about BESS as the utility infrastructure it is, you can quickly find that many of the risks are comparable.

Just as importantly, BESS manufactured today are orders of magnitude safer than those from just a few years ago. The rapid evolution of codes and standards has made BESS safer today than they have ever been, though proper technical due diligence is always necessary.

But if the developer does not present credible information, the community will consult the Internet to “do their own research”, which almost always pulls in significant amounts of misinformation that complicates decision-making.

The Mix: So misinformation is playing a role in the surge in moratoria in the U.S.?

Shaw: Yes. Misinformation, enabled by online content/organizing and the demonizing of clean energy by politicians, is playing a big role in driving public opposition. There is a growing volume of online information that sensationalizes BESS risks and can galvanize communities before the developer can dig in and provide additional information.

People also tend to misunderstand the impacts of their energy use. For most people, their baseline is that they turn on a light and—aside from paying an electric bill—suffer no other cost from doing so.

That person will feel that even the minor inconvenience of having a BESS in their town is a sharp increase in their cost for a modern electricity system. Sometimes it is easy to forget that our energy system already carries a cost, largely borne by low-income and BIPOC communities, where most peaking power plants are located. Energy storage can help shut these plants down, sharing the burden more equitably, but only if communities are willing to shoulder some of the impacts.

The Mix: You’ve had direct experience with developers losing community trust.

Shaw: Sure! I was involved in a recent project in a small town where the local homeowners’ association (HOA) caught wind early of the project and mobilized heavily, seemingly outflanking the developer. They showed up at every planning board meeting, even if the project was not on the formal agenda.

As a result, by the time we reached the town-wide public hearing, the HOA packed the room with their members, had visuals prepared, and they submitted lengthy written comments ahead of time. All told, they had laid substantial groundwork against the project before anyone in the town, aside from a handful of folks on the planning board, had met the developers.

So by the time the developer could share their information, the HOA had crafted a narrative about the project that persisted. The relatively few neutral townsfolk who attended would have heard their neighbours speaking with great authority, backed by online research, against an unfamiliar developer.

Ultimately, the developer was not able to sway public opinion, though the planning board did approve the project. It continues to face opposition as the HOA seeks other ways to stall things.

Had the developer built a local alliance early on, it would have provided at least a balancing “voice in the room” which was, unfortunately, absent.

The Mix: Is a perception of government overreach fuelling the resistance in New York or elsewhere? And, if so, how should developers respond?

Yes, several U.S. states have adopted statewide permitting boards to oversee larger infrastructure projects, ostensibly to keep a community from blocking an infrastructure project that is needed for the greater public good.

This isn’t a popular move in rural communities. It plays into a city vs.  country kind of mindset that a developer can easily get caught up in. Unfortunately, there is no silver bullet to solve this issue and its impacts stretch far beyond energy infrastructure projects.

The best way that a developer can tackle this is to take the time to build community consensus and ownership early on. Developers need to move at a community’s pace in the key early stages.

I’ve heard this as well from First Nations who want a chance to get to know the developer and understand their values before they are asked to endorse a project.

There is no shortcut for developing with diligence, empathy, and transparency. It may be just another project to the developer, but to the person living next to the site, they will be dealing with that project for decades to come—and that impact needs to be recognized early and directly.

The Mix: You’re a strong supporter of BESS developer and utility partnerships.

Shaw: Existing developer-utility partnerships have successfully reinforced the correct notion that BESS are truly utility infrastructure, just like switchyards and substations.

Communities already trust utilities to manage a lot of dangerous—and often mysterious—equipment around their homes and businesses, so this can add a layer of credibility that a more commercial BESS developer will not have.

Involving utilities in ownership of BESS, especially municipal light plants, can be a powerful way to secure a local, trusted advocate for a project.

The Mix: Does securing a BESS permit mean a developer can stop worrying about community trust?

Shaw: No. We have seen plenty of times that a project makes it through a community permitting process, only to sour the community on ever allowing a subsequent project. Developers need to remember that our goal as an industry is not to build just one project and then go elsewhere; we want to deploy a lot of clean energy quickly and at scale.

This means the first developer to come into a community has a moral, and a long-term economic, obligation to develop their project in a community-minded way that does not poison the well for future projects.

If nothing else, town councils and officials talk to one another, and a bad project in one town can easily mean the next town over puts restrictive permitting in place before they ever see a project proposed, after hearing what happened in their neighbouring community. The grapevine is alive and well in the world of municipal officials and must be respected.

The Mix: What else do you recommend for BESS developers looking to establish community trust?

Shaw: Best practice should be for developers to engage local landowners—not only to lease their land, but to act as local champions and experts on their communities. This means landowners attending public meetings, speaking to their neighbours. The voice of a local citizen will carry more weight than that of an out-of-town developer, who will always bear a measure of distrust.

In addition, the developer should be forthright about their plans and spend the time to inform and answer questions, perhaps before a specific project has been identified. Community engagement specialists can also help. Many developers try to DIY their municipal relationships when this is, in fact, a specialized field.

Treating communities and local government as project partners also works much better than treating them as a checkbox on a development checklist.

Building relationships and offering real benefits to the community are important steps and can be codified in a Community Benefits Agreement. These Agreements can include everything from outlining tax or PILOT [payment in lieu of tax] payments, allocating funding to local community priorities like renovating a school, job training, and equity sharing. All are options to help a community weigh a real benefit against the all-too-real project risks they anticipate.

Another point: many developers don’t start from scratch but, instead, purchase projects from other developers to finish developing and build—maybe even selling them again.

In these cases, we always make community engagement part of the diligence process. In years past, I have been involved in deals where the seller glossed over tough community feedback and permitting challenges and left the buyer to contend with an angry community, which made everything much harder.

This is why we always counsel our clients to investigate the timeline and outcomes of all outreach before acquiring a new development-stage project.

The Mix: You’ve recently put down stakes in Canada. What’s your advice for the BESS sector here?

Shaw: I have been deeply impressed by the way Canada approaches energy storage development. The involvement of Indigenous peoples directly in project development and ownership is a hallmark. Compared to the U.S., for example, Canadian projects have far more collaboration and consultation with key stakeholders.

So long as Canada continues down the path of true collaboration and shared project benefits, I believe we can avoid at least the worst of community pushback.

The Mix: Camelot runs a Clean Energy Help Desk, an online system that offers local governments, communities, and non-profits up to eight hours of free consulting on BESS. Is this offer open to Canadians?

Shaw: It certainly is! In fact, we’ll be launching some additional “office hours” for non-profits and communities to dial in and ask whatever questions they might have of our technical folks. I’ve been staffing those myself over recent months because it’s something I personally feel is important for us to do.

But in the meantime, Canadian non-profits, communities, and similar entities are more than welcome to send questions to our help desk.

The Mix: Your company name is Camelot. How does the myth of King Arthur connect to the work you do?

Shaw: Yes, that’s the reference! I’ve had a passion for the King Arthur legends and real-world history since I was about four years old, and I’ve always been drawn to the concept of fighting against injustice, even if the outcome is likely to fall short of perfection. In the stories, Arthur tries to build a society that foregoes a “might makes right” mindset and is, instead, meant to be fair and just to all.

He ultimately fails at that aim, but his story still brings hope and reminds us that, sometimes, the struggle IS the point. I feel this keenly in fighting for a transition to a just and sustainable society powered by clean energy.

I don’t know if we will succeed in shifting away from energy systems that exploit people and the environment, but I know we will never give up trying.