The Social License to Operate Across the Energy Industry: Lessons for Low-Carbon Energy from Oil and Gas

The concept of the Social License to Operate (SLO), or the ongoing acceptance and approval of an operation (Parsons and Moffat, Social Epistemology: A Journal of Knowledge, Culture and Policy 28:340–363, 2014), originates from the oil and gas industry (Morrison, The Social License: How to Keep Your Organization Legitimate, Palgrave Macmillan, 2014). The SLO emerged in response to a pressing need for local communities to accept operations relating to the extraction of naturally occurring resources; the local acceptance of such operations was and remains vital. Naturally occurring resources such as oil and gas are geographically bound, and so the location of the operation depends on the presence of the resource, not on the support of the local population. Further, resource extraction is often highly disruptive and thus the support of the local population may not be easily won. To address this issue, much attention has been devoted to understanding the conditions of local acceptance within the oil and gas industry. As the energy industry diversifies in pursuit of sustainability, many energy companies are seeking to expand their portfolio to renewable sources. Despite their green credentials, new energy projects such as onshore wind farms, nuclear sites, and solar farms often face local opposition. In particular, onshore wind energy faces a significant amount of local resistance (Botetzagias et al., 2015; Horst, 2007) and, in countries such as the UK where local acceptance is required for the approval of new developments, local opposition will have serious implications for the industry. In this chapter, we argue that much can be learned from the experiences of the oil and gas industry and that there are lessons which can be applied to other forms of energy based on naturally occurring resources. This chapter will consider the similarities and differences between the local acceptance challenges faced by the oil and gas industry, and renewable alternatives such as onshore wind. Community engagement and transparency, community benefits, and local content shall all be considered as opportunities for new energy initiatives to gain legitimacy among local communities. Conversely, the experiences of the onshore wind energy industry may offer some useful insights to the oil industry; these insights will also be presented and considered. While there are some concerns regarding the environmental impacts of onshore wind energy (Leung & Yang, 2012; Phillips, Renewable and Sustainable Energy Reviews 49:1261–1270, 2015), it is generally accepted to be a sustainable source of energy. Therefore, where there is local resistance, this is likely not based on sustainability concerns, but on other, more local issues which the developments have failed to address. An improved understanding of what these concerns are may inform the way in which the oil and gas industry approaches challenges of social acceptance. This well be of great value to both the oil industry and the onshore wind energy sector as governments and consumers seek diversified energy portfolios which make the most of our available resources.