Students Press on with Renewables Community Research

This week’s Q&A is a change of pace. I was contacted by two student researchers – Rebecca Barel and Dan Cassata – requesting to interview me for some policy and social science research they’ve been up to at Columbia University sponsored by the policy organization Clean Tomorrow.

Then it hit me like a ton of bricks: Wouldn’t it be neat if I interviewed academics engaging in this research about their experience doing this work in such a hostile political environment?

So I asked Rebecca and Dan if our conversation could wind up being a bit of a dialogue, instead of something one-sided. Much to my satisfaction, they agreed – and I wound up getting a lot more hopeful by the end of our talk than I was when it started.

Anywho, the following chat has been edited for clarity. Let’s take it away?

Tell me about your research project, first and foremost.

Dan: The project writ large, the central idea of it is there’s this suite of either policy or non-policy mechanisms we can use to take benefits that accrue from a renewables project and deliver them to a local community, as opposed to let’s say an extractive model. The project is trying to understand what that suite of tools look like and to what extent any of those tools have an influence on public opinion. You’ve done a lot of reporting on community backlash, community opposition. We’re trying to understand how much of this opposition is coming from this view: benefits aren’t coming to us, so why should we support this?

It feels like we can actually add value here. Sometimes when you do grad school research, you’re just putting stuff on paper to get a degree and not doing anything meaningful.

I wanted to talk about this with you because I love conversations with those who, like myself, are obsessed with this niche issue. Can you tell me more about the experience of researching conflicts in renewable energy development right now, amid the war on climate action and renewable energy generally? How does it feel to be doing this research at this time?

Rebecca: I can take that – I mean, in California specifically, one of the mechanisms was that the offshore wind leases are required to have community benefit agreements and a labor agreement. I had an interview with someone who’d written about this topic yesterday who said, quick question – where do you see this going? What’s happening now that Trump is so anti-offshore wind? And I said, That’s what I was going to ask you. Most of my research is at this point coming from Heatmap, because most of the mainstream news outlets aren’t concerned with these issues. They’re bogged down with the visa situations, and being at Columbia is an interesting experience right now.

Dan: Rebecca touched on this but to be more explicit – it is entirely up to the state governments. We’re not looking at the federal policies. That’s not to say there aren’t uncertainties that come with that, and federal incentives obviously matter. Whether or not a project is going to pencil depends on federal incentives. But focusing on the state level has created more of a lane where our work can still feel relevant and be completely overturned and what not.

I’d ask you, Jael – are they more or less confident about opposing projects now that Trump’s in office?

Maybe. There’s certainly some degree of emboldened opposition. I see that as a journalist and I wonder what place there is for the research you’re doing – I wonder how it will be used.

Dan: The dimensions on which some of this is happening is separate from the politics, and that’s a note of optimism from me I guess. You can structure things and it might not be as uniform and widespread as you would like but there are places where you can work and be effective.

Rebecca: I’d add the renewable energy debate, there’s a broader question of what will win out in America over the next few years. Money in pocket or charismatic propaganda that motivates how people vote and what people choose to back. I think we’re at a crux in that right now because of the tariffs but in Texas, generally, if you were to put the people in that area into a box – they might have MAGA hats but at the end of the day, they’re about the money in their pocket. That’s how we ordinarily think of American voters.

I feel like money in my pocket might win, but it’s going to take a while.

How much interest in your work have you seen from the private sector or public officials?

Dan: We’ve spoken to public commissioners at the county level. I had a call right before this conversation with someone from a state-level public service commission. Everyone gets back to us. I do think the private sector has been less engaged. I don’t know if that’s less of an interest though – I read it as the private sector not tending to talk about their work with folks like us very often. There’s not that much in it for them.

Dan: I’d like to ask you this Jael – does it feel like community engagement is a meaningful thing?

This edition of the newsletter will begin with a company accusing a township of soliciting a bribe after years of moving goalposts and redlines. I’m not that optimistic.

Where do you see policy being a solution in this circumstance?

Dan: Let’s take as a given that community benefit agreements work. The research – and what we’ve found – is that that’s not really a given. But they can work. And there are states like New York and California that have legislation that heavily incentivizes developers to go through this process of community engagement to qualify for tax credits or get permits. The reason that we are doing this research is because if you were able to have a case that this is really effective at improving projects and the speed of getting buy-in – we’d argue in our [eventual] report that this type of legislation should become more widespread.

If the conclusion is these things don’t seem to be impactful, then that’s where it justifies the case to look at this other suite of mechanisms that might be more helpful. For projects of a certain size, in New York for example, you can circumvent local zoning regulations and go through a state approval process.

The last thing I’ll ask: what gives you hope at this moment?

Dan: There’s obviously a lot of things that are going poorly right now when it comes to policy at the federal level on the energy transition. But I just think the ship has sailed – the boat might take longer to get there but the ship has left the port, and renewables are cost competitive if not cheaper than fossil energy.

Rebecca: There are people trying to do bad things and bad faith actors in power, but there are a lot of people trying really hard to make things better, and as long as there are people trying – there is a chance. It might take longer, and we might be slowed down, but for me what brings me hope is that every conversation I have with someone smart and capable and actively doing something to improve the environment, we’re not done yet.