Community Engagement
Engagement is an essential and important aspect of heat network projects, particularly those that require local heating customers willing to engage in and purchase low-carbon heating for the long term.
Engagement should take place throughout each project stage, to ensure that local people are informed and have the opportunity to be involved in the project’s design and development. On-going engagement is important since heat networks can take many years between initial inception and final delivery. Stakeholders may change during this time, and the information to share will change.
The Engagement Process
While every heat energy project is different, applying key principles to stakeholder engagement can help define an appropriate and inclusive type and scale of development. Securing the support of key stakeholders can be essential to ensure the viability and ultimate success of a project.
1. Stakeholder Mapping
The Stakeholder mapping process involves identifying stakeholder types appropriate to the stage of the development process, including:
Project partners (internal and external);
Asset owners (landowners, infrastructure providers, potential heat suppliers);
Potential heat customers;
Regulators;
Parties with relevant interests, but not direct involvement;
Public.
Developing a stakeholder map will help you identify key groups or individuals who are able to influence or are influenced by the proposed heat project. This will help you define your target audience for opening communication channels and planning an onward engagement strategy.
2. Engagement Strategy
Achieving a relevant stakeholder engagement strategy requires defining the respective stakeholders in terms of who they are, what their level of authority is, and their relationship to other stakeholders. You’ll need to understand their likely interests in the project, and the best routes to the most effective communication.
Figure 1 identifies and positions typical stakeholders in a heat pump project, with respect to their influence and likely level of involvement. Depending on where stakeholders are located, different levels and types of communication and engagement are recommended.
Figure 1.
* Anchor customers are those whose energy demand is central to the overall heat supply strategy and business case.
3. Communications Strategy
Developing a tailored communications strategy, appropriate to stakeholder type and development phase, is central to an effective park heat project
Taking stakeholders’ views into account at the inception stage can ensure the frequency, method and content of communication not only meets people’s needs and priorities, but also takes account of their capacity and appetite to engage.
Figure 2 sets out a recommended approach to defining a communications strategy and the underpinning values.
| Define the strategy |
|---|
| Be clear why you are involving people at each stage and how you are going to do it: Informing people is the starting point and important throughout (e.g. newsletters, website, press articles). Consultation should take place when there are options to define or decisions to be taken and community views will help reach the best decision (e.g. questionnaires, public meetings, interviews with key stakeholders). Engagement should take place when there is clear support and commitment to the project and people want to get involved (e.g. establish community liaison group, programme of meetings, meeting notes and correspondence). |
| Manage the process |
| Understand who will be affected by the project, to what extent, and whether this will be positive, negative or a combination. Gauge the capacity for involvement, and how much involvement people will want or expect – recognising that too much engagement can be as detrimental as too little. Understand why people should get involved and be clear and consistent about the message: the direct benefits for them, and the wider benefits for the community. |
| Communicate authentically |
| Be realistic and honest about why stakeholders are being involved, how they can engage, what influence they will have, and then report back to them. |
| Define end user communication strategy |
| Once key messages have been developed for each of the key stakeholder types, these can be developed into an end user communications strategy. At every stage, be as realistic as possible about the potential for the end users to affect the outcomes of the project and their opportunity to engage, to build trust between them and the project developers. |
Figure 2.
4. Action Plan
An Action Plan for engagement should set out the timelines for planned engagement activities, based on an understanding of each stakeholder’s capacity for involvement, reflecting how much involvement different stakeholders want or expect, and drawing upon the pre-defined communications strategy.
Positive community engagement is important not just for those directly involved, but also for future phases. The potential for future expansion of any heat project will be made so much easier if those involved in the first phase have a positive experience.
| Strategy | Communicating strategic messaging and objectives; Defining onward strategy. |
| Masterplanning | Define viability and secure in-principle support from anchor loads; Raising awareness of project(s) via press release, email, etc. |
| Feasibility | Define viability and secure in-principle support from anchor loads; Run events to engage stakeholders and raise awareness. |
| Detailed Development | Establish willingness through in-principle support or memorandum of understanding; In-depth engagement with potential heat customers. |
| Pre-planning | Public engagement via pre-planning press release; Communicating commercial arrangements with project partners and customers. |
| Construction | Communication with public (awareness of project programme and disruption); Communication with customers on delivery timescales. |
| Operation & Maintenance | Ongoing communication with current customers; Monitoring and evaluation of project outcomes; Outreach to potential future heat customers. |
“In Hackney, we held a community event in one of the prospective parks for a heat pump project. We invited members of the community, the park user group and councillors to a ‘Heat Seekers Quest’. We gave them thermal imaging cameras and ground thermometers so that they could experience for themselves the ambient heat stored beneath the parkland and playing fields. They completed challenges and we met up afterwards to discuss their experiences and introduced the idea of harnessing this heat for use in a nearby public building. We showed them our video of how heat pumps work and answered their questions. It was a great way to engage people in a positive and practical way.”