The next phase of the energy transition is not simply about generating clean power but also ensuring the communities hosting renewable energy infrastructure experience clear, meaningful and lasting benefits.

In many respects, the industry has faced a similar challenge before. A decade ago, biodiversity net gain was not a central part of project development. Today, environmental enhancement, habitat creation and long-term land stewardship are increasingly embedded in how projects are designed, consented and delivered. Expectations evolved, developers adapted and the sector built the expertise, partnerships and frameworks required to create measurable environmental outcomes.

As a result, the sector has become increasingly effective at creating environmental value. The question now is whether we can apply the same thinking to communities.

Community benefit has become established, but has it become meaningful?

Community benefit funds are now a familiar feature of renewable energy development across the UK, supporting countless worthwhile projects and delivering value across host communities.

However, there is a distinction between investment and impact which deserves greater attention.

Many community benefit mechanisms have become highly standardised. A project provides funding; that funding is administered by a third party and eventually distributed to local initiatives. Valuable work is supported, but the relationship between the renewable energy project and the benefit it enables can often become distant, fragmented or invisible.

In effect, community benefit risks becoming something that exists on paper rather than in everyday community life.

Communities can point to a village hall, a community building, a nature reserve or another local asset that has been strengthened. They can understand what it does, why it matters and how it contributes to local life. They cannot always point to a funding mechanism that sits behind the scenes.

Public support is shaped not only by what developers invest, but by whether communities can recognise the outcomes that investment creates. The industry has become increasingly effective at measuring what projects generate; it now needs to place the same focus on what projects leave behind.

The difference between funding and legacy

Knowl Green in Essex provides a useful example.

Through the site’s Community Benefit Fund, British Solar Renewables committed £50,000 towards the Belchamp St Paul Energy Savings Project, supporting upgrades to a community building serving seven rural parishes. Once complete, the improvements are expected to significantly reduce heating demand, lower running costs and enable year-round use of a space relied upon by local residents and community groups.

What makes the project significant is not the funding itself, but that it addressed a clearly identified local need through an asset people already understood and valued.

That distinction is important because it shifts the conversation from community funding to community outcomes.

The most successful examples of community value are often those that respond to what communities tell us they need, rather than what developers assume they might want. In doing so, they create a visible connection between an energy project and a local benefit that remains long after the initial investment has been made.

The industry has become increasingly effective at measuring what projects generate; it now needs to place the same focus on what projects leave behind. 
 

Community value is the next frontier

One of the lessons learned through biodiversity enhancement is that meaningful environmental outcomes cannot be delivered through a standardised formula.

Different sites require different interventions. Habitat creation, species management and ecological improvement all respond to local conditions. No developer would expect the same solution to be appropriate everywhere.

Yet when it comes to communities, the sector has often looked for precisely that: a replicable model that can be applied consistently from one project to the next. Communities do not work that way.

What matters to a rural parish may differ from what matters to a coastal town, a farming community or a growing urban area. The assumption that community value can be delivered through a universal process is increasingly being challenged by experience across the industry.

In Australia, these discussions are often framed through the concept of a project’s social licence to operate. While the terminology differs, the principle is the same: communities are more likely to support infrastructure when they can understand how it contributes positively to local life.

This is why community value increasingly feels like the next frontier for the renewable energy sector.

Instead of beginning with a predefined solution, developers may need to start with a more fundamental question: what would make this place stronger because this project exists?

Thinking beyond planning permission

This shift also requires a different perspective on engagement.

Much of the industry’s engagement activity is understandably concentrated around planning and consultation. Once consent is secured, attention naturally moves towards delivery. For independent power producers, however, long-term ownership creates a different perspective. Projects operate for decades, and the organisations responsible for them remain present throughout that period, maintaining infrastructure, managing land and interacting with the communities around them. Long-term ownership creates an opportunity to build deeper relationships and ensure benefits continue long after construction has ended.

Community relationships therefore cannot be viewed solely as part of the planning process. They become part of how a project succeeds throughout its operational life, reinforcing the importance of creating a visible and enduring connection between a project and the legacy it leaves behind.

This is why creating a visible and enduring connection between a project and a local legacy becomes so important. The stronger that connection, the stronger the accountability and understanding that develops around it.

Beyond minimising impact

The renewable energy sector has made significant progress in reducing impacts, improving design standards and delivering environmental enhancement. Many projects are now integrated so successfully into the landscape that communities barely notice them once established, which is an achievement in itself.

But it also raises a more ambitious question. If the only legacy a renewable energy project leaves behind is that it caused less disruption than people feared, is that enough?

As the energy transition continues, success should not be defined solely by our ability to minimise negative impacts. It should increasingly be defined by our ability to create positive and enduring value.

Twenty years from now, communities should be able to recognise not only the electricity those projects generated, but also the contribution they made to local life. Whether that contribution takes the form of a strengthened community asset, a preserved facility, an educational initiative, environmental enhancement or another locally meaningful outcome will vary from place to place.

What should not vary is the ambition behind it.

The sector has already learned how to create environmental value. The next challenge is creating community value with the same ambition and intent.

Because, ultimately, the success of the energy transition should not be measured only by what projects generate. It should also be measured by what they leave behind.

The views and opinions expressed in this article are those of the author and do not necessarily reflect those of the Energy Institute.

• Further reading: ‘Data centre ecosystems: a new wave of sustainable infrastructure’. Data centre operators must demonstrate environmental sustainability, responsible planning, transparent operations and clear community benefit – or risk losing both clients and development opportunities, writes Fredrik Jansson, Chief Strategy and Marketing & Communications Officer at Nordic data centre services company AtNorth.

• ‘Community-led home energy efficiency – why it might work in the UK’. Heating leaky homes is a major and persistent source of UK carbon emissions, yet this problem has never been fully addressed. Maybe it needs a new, community-based business model, argues Kit Evans, General Manager of SaveEnergy, which offers green homes services in the Maidenhead, Berkshire, UK, area.