Getting to Yes (Technical Report)

About Re.Climate 

Re.Climate is Canada’s go-to centre for training, research, and strategy on climate change communications and public engagement. Based at Carleton University, we provide strategic services to help practitioners reach new audiences, overcome polarization, communicate urgency, and motivate change.

Project team

Project partner: Abacus Data

Research, analysis, author: Dr. Louise Comeau, Senior Advisor

Research assistants: Seamus Hodgins, Carleton PhD candidate Anthropology (literature review); Fatemeh Ahmadi Harchegani, Carleton PhD candidate Data Sciences (population segmentation, structural equation and regression modelling)

Reviewers: Re.Climate: Amber Bennett, Dr. Ghadah Alrasheed, Dr. Emma Bider; Dr. Chad Walker, Dalhousie University, Dr. Erick Lachapelle, University of Montreal

Copy editing: Jennifer Mayville, Re.Climate

Design (figures and graphics): Leigh Peterson, justafrog.net

Method

National survey of 4,232 Canadians in partnership with Abacus Data, fielded in English and French from September 12 to 19, 2025. All results are reported at the 95 per cent confidence level (p = <.05). Totals may not add to 100 due to rounding. The data is weighted by age, gender, education and region. The short-form battery of the Five Canada’s Segmenter was integrated into the survey, and data was processed using the EcoAnalytics Segmenter tool. Three focus groups were held on November 18 to 19, 2025, with participants from Nova Scotia and Ontario.  

Limitations 

Panel-based surveys are not probabilistic samples. They rely on self-selected survey respondents. Large samples, however, with weighting, have been found to be generally representative. Survey respondents self-reported their exposure to wind and or transmission projects. 

Citation

Comeau, L. (2026). Getting to Yes: What It Really Takes to Build Social Acceptance of Wind and Transmission Projects. Re.Climate. Carleton University. Ottawa, ON.

The world needs more electricity from sources that don’t pollute or destabilize the climate to power our lives, our industries and our communities. Electricity generated from wind and solar technologies is likely, due to relative cost-effectiveness, to be the part of the growing global and Canadian electricity supply mix, along with renewable or fossil gas, hydro and nuclear. The growth opportunity is enormous.

The Canadian Climate Institute, in modelling for The Big Switch: Powering Canada’s Net Zero Future, projects electricity demand will at least double by 2050 as Canada and the world moves to net zero, a state where the world drastically cuts the amount of heat-trapping pollution it generates from burning oil, coal and gas and then removes any remainder naturally through nature restoration or using technology. According to the International Panel on Climate Change, the world must urgently achieve this balance because every vehicle, furnace, industrial process and power plant burning fossil fuels adds greenhouse gases to the air, destabilizing the climate and making weather more extreme, unsafe and unhealthy.

The economic opportunity nationally in terms of jobs, investment and consumers is enormous, according to Natural Resources Canada. At the international or national scale, the path seems clear; the Electrotech revolution is inevitable. But energy projects don’t just exist in our imagination or in energy models and reports. They are grounded in places, where people live, love and work today, with history and memories influencing perspectives. Locations with great wind regimes may not be perceived as a fit for cherished landscapes or agriculture cultures. Residents willing to accept previous projects may reject new ones as communities hit saturation points.

Tensions between electricity system build-out aspirations and host communities will grow as more large-scale wind and transmission projects move from the discussion stage to concrete proposals and then construction and operation. In fact, we have these tensions today, with a growing number of “unwilling host” resolutions passed by Ontario municipalities, partly due to campaigns by groups like Wind Concerns Ontario. There are significant restrictions on renewable energy development in Alberta.

This social gap between high levels of support and project success is a signal that we need to pay attention to if Canada is to succeed in its energy transition ambitions. Surveys consistently show there is strong social support for renewable energy in Canada, with strong majorities of Canadians somewhat or strongly supporting wind and solar. As we move from discussions about projects to concrete proposals and then construction and operation, however, we can expect to see shifts in opinion, support falling during the uncertain proposal phase and then increasing again, if the conditions are right, once projects are operational. At least that can be the case, if fairness and trust-building processes and community benefits are part of the journey.

There is a tendency to dismiss opposition to wind and transmission projects as simply a matter of Not-in-My-Backyard attitudes or lack of information. Decades of research, however, shows the evidence directs us elsewhere if we want to increase social acceptance of large-scale wind and transmission in places where they operate. In fact, there’s a toolbox that’s hardly been opened and it has little to do with financing and permitting. Instead (see Appendix 4 for details), increasing the potential for social acceptance of projects depends, according to our own structural equation modelling analysis on:

1. Delivering on distributional fairness: Supporters believe projects are fair or financially neutral (e.g., will not be financially worse off or in comparison to others, low-income households protected and), that nature, the environment and future generations will be protected, expect financial benefits like power bill and property tax reductions, and indicate more general trust in government. Greater concern for climate change increases support for transmission.
2. Community benefits increase support: Opponents believe there are negative financial effects (personally and compared to others, low-income not protected) and are more skeptical of government (distorts facts, too influenced by industry, changes policies without good reason). Want community benefits (lower power bills, property tax reductions and land lease payments) but doubt they will happen.
3. Addressing the fairness concerns of older Canadians. Age is a significant influence on results outside of other influences like fairness, trust and benefits. Younger survey respondents prioritize renewable energy transition more than older generations do. Older people also worry more that projects are less financially fair and are concerned about household financial effects. Addressing these personal financial concerns could dampen opposition to wind and transmission projects.
4. Promote the story of why and the benefits of an electricity-based future. Collective benefits beliefs (e.g., support investment in community and social infrastructure, job training and jointly owned projects) and electrotech optimism strongly reinforce each other. Those who agree electricity will replace oil and gas support wind and expect personal benefits like lower power bills.

General trust and skepticism have important influences on support for transmission, according to the statistical modeling. Skepticism perceptions relate to beliefs about institutions (e.g., their province) lacking credibility (e.g., distorts facts), reliability (changes policies without good reason) and integrity (too influenced by industry). Greater skepticism undermines support for transmission projects, while greater levels of general trust increase support. Perceiving higher personal benefits (e.g., power bill reductions, lower property taxes, land lease payments) from transmission projects also increases support.

To minimize skepticism, and increase fairness perceptions requires institutions and proponents demonstrate credibility, reliability and integrity, as well as to nurture general trust through demonstrations of competence, openness, fair dealing and risk regulation. One important pathway to minimizing skepticism is to avoid overhyping projects. Trust building efforts are important because:

• Without trust, offers of community benefits can look like bribes. A trust deficit is also a breeding ground for misinformation, disinformation and conspiracy mindsets.
• Once lost, trust is hard to win back.

We need to work with the tools in the social acceptance toolbox. Using these tools takes skill, patience, humility, authenticity, and commitment. Figure 1 summarizes the engagement, trust and benefits tools we need to deploy to build and sustain fairness perceptions, which in turn, support and sustain acceptance of wind and transmission projects.

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Figure 1. Increasing acceptance of wind and transmission projects depends on fairness perceptions.

Note: Fairness perceptions are fundamental to acceptance of wind and transmission projects. Building and sustaining positive fairness perceptions requires (1) early engagement to establish community relationships, planning to be a long-term good neighbour, respecting local context, being accountable and transparent. (2) A focus on minimizing skepticism by working to avoid or lower perceptions of bias and unfair dealing by being credible, reliable and acting with integrity. General, or institutional trust, also needs to be nurtured through demonstrations of competence, care, fair dealing, openness, values alignment and risk regulation, particularly for transmission projects. (3) Finally, and importantly, personal benefits like power bill and property tax reductions and land lease payments increase fairness perceptions, which in turn, can increase support for projects. The strongest predictor of support for wind in particular, however, is intergenerational fairness perceptions based on the belief that projects protect nature, the environment and future generations. Community benefits that invest in social, community and environmental projects, predictably then, increase support for wind projects.

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Our mixed-method study involved a national survey of 4,232 Canadians in September 2025 and three focus groups (two in Nova Scotia and one in Ontario) in November 2025. Focus group participants were selected based on self-reported exposure to wind and transmission projects through either discussion, proposed or built projects.

We give voice to these participants with quote boxes throughout this report. We also reviewed websites and Facebook pages of groups in Ontario and Nova Scotia concerned about renewable energy projects, particularly wind, to review their concerns. This research is also unique in including results using a Five Canadas population segmentation.

Re.Climate’s goal is to offer evidence-informed advice to practitioners seeking to increase socio-political and community acceptance of wind and transmission projects. Our research contributes to a large and growing literature on social acceptance of renewable energy, including the role of community benefits. Many of our findings confirm past work, but with our 2025 large-sample national survey of Canadians, we make a unique contribution to the understanding of social acceptance through a multi-dimensional analysis of trust and distributional fairness, as well as frame analysis.

A word about transmission

Support for transmission projects is low relative to their importance in moving electricity generated by large-scale wind projects. It is important to educate Canadians on the value of transmission, its role in energy transition, and its potential contribution to concerns the public has about price stability and power reliability. Building out the story of “why” appears, from this research, to be particularly urgent and important. It is also important to emphasize the contribution transmission projects make to moving electricity we consume in our homes, communities, provinces and regions and to build the case for why transmission is needed to export electricity to other jurisdictions.

There is an opportunity to build on the current patriotic moment Canadians are experiencing to build support for investment in wind and transmission projects that expand economic opportunities in home provinces, regions and nationally. Finally, there is a need to properly attend to the material needs of host communities and residents either through community benefits or policies that truly help with household energy costs. Equity partnerships and expropriation payments do not constitute the entire palate of community benefits transmission project proponents can draw from to secure community acceptance of projects. Failure to meet the material needs of Canadians will generate resistance that will grow over time.

A word about Nova Scotia, British Columbia and Alberta

Nova Scotians have the highest level of support for wind in the country and have more general trust in their province’s ability to regulate and manage renewable energy project approvals. Cape Breton participants in the focus groups expressed hope and optimism that wind development projects would generate economic opportunity in their region and allow residents to work closer to home, rather than travel to the oil sands. The moment is ripe to get this right in Nova Scotia, but more work is required to ensure best practices focused on trust building, fairness and real public engagement.

Frame experiments (Pollution Blanket and Time to Build) did boost support for transmission projects somewhat in Nova Scotia but had little influence on growing support for large-scale onshore and offshore wind. This result could suggest that support has limits, meaning with conditions. Frames may have simply not resonated or they included details that did not resonate. There is strong support in Nova Scotia for an electricity-based future frame, particularly focused on “Future growth in our economy and careers will be driven by electrotech (technologies like solar, wind, storage, and electric heating, cooling and vehicles).” This phenomenon has been described by Ember as the “Electrotech Revolution (Ember 2025). Further testing is required to ensure messaging about large-scale wind and transmission resonates in Nova Scotia.

Most Nova Scotians report being exposed to proposed wind and discussed and proposed transmission projects. Research indicates that we could experience a decline in support from the discussion to the proposed exposure stages, and then rise again once projects are operational. This outcome is not guaranteed. If fairness and trust perceptions are undermined through poorly designed engagement processes or community benefits that don’t meet resident expectations, support will decline from today’s levels and may not recover. Such a result will undermine the province’s ability to achieve its objectives with projects like Wind West.

British Columbians are less supportive of transmission than are Albertans. British Columbians score higher on general trust and lower on skepticism, while Albertans score their province much lower on general trust and higher on skepticism. Albertans rate accountability and transparency as more important to them, then residents of other provinces do. The Time to Build frame significantly increases support for transmission in British Columbia, but not in Alberta where the Pollution Blanket frame was more effective in increasing support for both transmission and wind projects.

A Net Zero and populist Unfair frame do not increase support for the federal government to invest in the energy transition in Alberta or British Columbia. More concerning, the populist Unfair frame increases support for the energy status quo in both provinces. An electricity-based future frame may have potential in British Columbia, but less so in Alberta. As with Nova Scotia, there is a strong need to articulate the “why” behind proposed transmission interconnection projects and to sincerely address public concerns about exports vulnerabilities, sovereignty concerns and the potential risks and benefits to household energy costs. Community benefits that extend beyond equity ownership and partnerships with indigenous rights holders to include communities along routes can be just as important to transmission projects as they are for other kinds of projects.

There are models to follow. A 2025 report investigating the use of community benefits for transmission and renewable energy projects (Acadia Center et al., 2025) profiles United States and Canadian case studies, including Alliance l’Est. This shareholder alliance comprises 209 communities from 16 municipalities and the Wolastoqiyik Wahsipekuk First Nation. The Alliance acts as a shareholder in wind projects developed within its territory and shares profits among its members.

Also mentioned in an Acadia Center study (2025) is the partnership between Hydro-Québec and the Mohawk Council, featuring co-ownership of a 58-kilometre, 400-kilovolt transmission line, and the negotiation of a rate mitigation agreement between the federal government and Newfoundland and Labrador regarding the development of Muskrat Falls.

Population segment insights

The population segmentation results mirror general population results, with some notable results:

• Civic nationals, Disengaged middle and Populist conservatives are particularly concerned with personal financial effects of projects and most want to see community benefits that target households, including property tax and power bill reductions.
• Civic nationals are more concerned than other segments about the health and environmental risks associated with large-scale wind and transmission projects (e.g., effects on water quality or availability, oil spills, causes cancer).
• Civic nationals and Progressive activists most want to see new electricity projects power their communities over exports.
• Progressive activists and Populist conservatives are similar in wanting to participate and have influence in wind and transmission project decisions. Both these segments also show high support for hydro power. 
• Civic nationals and Populist conservatives are most skeptical of their province’s ability to regulate wind and transmission projects but Civic nationals also score high on general trust. Progressive activists and Populist conservatives hold similarly low levels of general trust.
• Civic nationals respond most favourably to the Time to Build frame increasing support for large-scale wind and transmission, whereas this frame reduces support for transmission among Centrist liberals.

Additional observations

What can we learn from best practices identified by research and practiced by some regulators and developers in some locations? First, we will observe some of the failures before turning to opportunities to expand uptake of best practice.

Failures:

• Expedient and transactional approaches to public engagement geared toward speeding up project approvals and construction, while minimizing exposure to delay and profitability risks associated with opposition. The reality, however, is that the DAD model (Nilson, Hoen, et al., 2024) of “decide-announce-defend” approaches (Boudet, 2019, p. 451; Colvin et al., 2016) needs to be replaced with the “consult-consider-modify-proceed” model (Elmallah and Rand, 2022). This kind of shift in approach, focused more on co-production, is increasingly common in energy infrastructure project development that includes indigenous rights holders and equity partnerships. We need to slow down to speed up project execution.
• A prevailing view that opponents are Not-in-My-Backyard defenders, rather than residents with unmet needs for information, participation and fair play when it comes to community benefits and a narrow casting of what community benefits can include, particularly as it relates to meeting their material needs(e.g., finding ways to bring power bills down, hold the line on property projects because of project based benefits).
• A failure to address structural barriers that continually leave citizens to hear about projects after land lease deals are signed and siting decisions have been made. This structural failure undermines fairness and trust perceptions just as citizens first hear of projects, when they are at their highest level of uncertainty, needing reassurance and details on every aspect of the proposed project. Failures at this early stage can influence community perspectives through to operational-stage projects, as we see in the Ontario results.
• Prioritizing international exports over first meeting local, regional and then national supply needs, which is a priority for citizens. The current Canada-first mood extends to electricity with sensitivity about exports to the United States.
• A propensity to see places as sites with good wind regimes rather than places full of context, history, love stories and traumas, which influence how people evaluate the fit of projects onto their landscapes (Hogan, 2025).
• A failure to understand that public engagement is about more than providing information and includes early and ongoing fairness and trust-building, a commitment to comprehensive community benefits, and the recognition that energy democracy and co-development are important to all Canadians.

Opportunities:

Fortunately, the evidence points to solutions and indicates that opposition to wind and transmission projects is not always absolute. Participants in this study who indicate they somewhat or strongly oppose wind and transmission projects also support the guiding principles of accountability, transparency, benefits, compensation, participation and influence, and demonstrate openness to the role community benefits can play in securing their support for large-scale wind and transmission projects. Think of opposition as a signal of unmet expectations around governance, accountability and reciprocity rather than representing selfish Not-in-My-Backyard attitudes. This point is further reinforced by evidence of a strong ‘neighbour’ effect, in which opponents or concerned residents seek benefits not just for their own households but also for neighbours (Parkins et al., 2017). Support for wind and transmission projects is also not absolute. Conditional support needs to be nurtured in the same way that we aim to respond to opponent concerns.

Broadly speaking, project proponents, governments, and regulators need to consider social acceptance not as a nice-to-have but as essential infrastructure, requiring best-practice commitments and approaches. A commitment to social acceptance best practices should be a requirement for any federal Major Projects Office project approvals.

Critically, an insight from this investigation is that we may garner greater support for large-scale wind and transmission through a balance with investments in community-scale projects, deploying a range of ownership options. Research comparing Ontario and Nova Scotia approaches to renewable energy (Walker, 2017; Walker & Baxter, 2017b) finds that the community-based approach in Nova Scotia, supported by the Community Economic Development Investment Fund and Community Economic Development Fund through Equity Tax Credits, contributes to a more positive attitude toward renewable energy in that province, compared with the Ontario approach.

What can proponents do right now?

All stakeholders interested in advancing the energy transition can build fairness perceptions by:

• Consistently telling the story of why we need an energy transition, with a focus on:
  • The benefits to nature, the environment and future generations;
  • Opportunities for social, community and personal benefits;
  • Energy-system benefits like increased reliability and resilience, cost control, and increased capacity to electrify the economy.

• Demonstrating trust-building qualities, including:
  • Unbiased, transparent, accountable and fair-dealing behaviours and communications;
  • Commitments to best-in-class approaches to community benefits that cover personal and collective priorities of residents;
  • Avoiding overhyping projects in communications and Not-in-My-Backyard claims against opponents.

• Advancing new research that addresses the concerns of Canadians, including:
  • Options to ensure a fair and affordable balance between ratepayer funded and taxpayer funded energy transition projects;
  • Opportunities to address the material needs of Canadians by minimizing or lowering costs to households (e.g., lower power bills and property taxes) as projects are built;
  • Identifying a broader range of community benefits opportunities for transmission projects; and
  • Identifying ways to satisfy residents’ desire for new projects to meet local needs over prioritizing exports.

The recommendations section highlights 10 opportunities to increase social acceptance of large-scale wind and transmission projects for five sectors: Regulators (federal and provincial government), municipalities, developers, community groups and communications and public engagement practitioners. The recommendations, if pursued, would contribute to timely and efficient execution of wind and transmission projects.

Canadians are open to the Time to Build moment Canada finds itself in. This research indicates that exposure to a Time to Build frame increases support for a large-scale onshore or offshore wind project proposed near where you live by 12 per cent, compared with the a no exposure control group. Support for a large-scale transmission project proposed near where you live increases eight per cent), compared with the no-exposure control group. Whether Canada achieves this energy transition potential, truly is up to proponents being trustworthy and committing to fair propositions that address resident priorities and needs.

Regulators, federal and provincial governments, municipalities, wind and transmission developers, community groups and communicators each have important contributions to make to building social acceptance of large-scale wind and transmission projects. A cross-cutting insight from this research for all stakeholders is that building large projects requires a balance, ensuring that smaller-scale, locally owned or managed projects are also in the mix. The more empowered people feel, both through locally generated power and through participatory processes and community benefits, the better. In other words, a little energy democracy will take Canada a long way toward the energy transition.

Regulators

Federal government

1. Tell the story of why Canada needs to build new renewable energy infrastructure, including transmission. Build a sense of shared purpose about the energy transition.
2. Ensure consistency across the country, require best practices for social acceptance
   • Include processes, accountability, transparency and community benefits
   • Require social acceptance best practice to secure federal Major Project Office and provincial financing and permitting approvals.
3. Direct regional economic development agencies to incorporate social acceptance best practices into projects in order to receive funding.
4. Ensure funding for third-party reviews of environmental and social impact assessments and feasibility studies.

Provincial governments

1. Tell the story of why the province needs to build new renewable energy infrastructure, including transmission. Build a shared sense of purpose around the energy transition.
2. Ensure procurement rules require best practice in community engagement processes and community benefits.
   • Ensure a balance between points for price and points for social license. Nova Scotia, for example, has more points for social license than it does for price.
   • Require community benefit plans or agreements to be in place in order to bid.
3. Promote transparency in how decisions are made:
   • Include the rationale for decisions, how public input will be used, and create a public registry that includes community benefits plans.
   • Ensure open, transparent impact assessment processes with genuine opportunities for participation.
   • Build trust through authentic engagement. Don’t perpetuate NIMBY myths.
4. Remove barriers to municipal equity partnerships and provide financial guarantees to support community projects:
   • Quebec’s Alliance l’Est approach is a model. It consists of 209 communities from 16 municipalities and the Wolastoqiyik Wahsipekuk First Nation. The Alliance acts as a shareholder in wind projects developed within its territory and shares profits among its members.
5. Encourage developers to sign best-practice charters with communities and work with community groups and residents to co-develop community benefit plans.
6. Expand community benefit options to include stabilizing or lowering power bills and property taxes (through bill credits or other means).
   • Protect low-income households.
   • Encourage municipalities to release expenditure plans for property tax revenue generated by projects.
7. Fund municipalities to support community engagement processes, provide legal and bylaw templates, independent facilitations, and deliver neutral, fact-based information.
8. Create ombudsperson offices that residents can access to facilitate consensus building,
9. Provide support to enable community groups to retain expert advice to evaluate environmental and social impact assessments and feasibility studies.

Municipalities

1. Be the trusted source of information about the social, environmental and economic effects of renewable energy and transmission projects.
   • Tell the story of why, and why in your community, to what end and benefit.
   • Information from municipal officials is frequently more trusted than from other levels of government. 
   • Explain all aspects of the approval process and permitting.
   • Counter misinformation and disinformation.
2. Facilitate community dialogue. Avoid town hall meetings which can foster polarization and confrontation.
   • Convene conversations and facilitate peer-learning by connecting economic development officers or chief administrative officers with peers who have experience with renewable and transmission projects.
   • Identify community views through a baseline survey early in the project development process.
   • Test public opinion regularly throughout the development process.
   • Don’t perpetuate NIMBY myths.
3. Partner with local libraries to host information sessions about why new energy projects are needed, what energy systems of the future will look like and how projects in your community contribute to a shared purpose.
4. Publish information about potential property taxes and other revenue from wind and transmission projects.
   • Develop and publicly share plans for how the money will be used.
   • Find ways to direct some community benefit revenues to minimize property tax increases
5. Work with developers to ensure early public engagement, transparency, and accountability.
   • Let residents know if you are negotiating community benefits with developers.
   • Work to develop community benefit plans well ahead of project announcements.
6. Work with provincial municipal associations and the Federation of Canadian Municipalities to create best-practice tools for building social acceptance of renewable energy and transmission projects, facilitating consistency and social acceptance across Canada.
7. Be a willing host for developer-funded community funds and liaison committees and ensure resources are available for neutral facilitation.
   • Monitor liaison committee processes.
   • Deploy best practices to minimize negative experiences.
   • Consider funding for independent environmental and social impact assessments.
8. Pay attention to the needs of people living on lower incomes or closest to proposed projects.
9. Advocate for municipal opportunities to partner with developers and utilities on energy projects through equity or other arrangements to help build a balance between large-scale and smaller-scale, community-based projects that can power local communities.
10. Facilitate resident-to-resident conversations where communities considering renewable energy and transmission projects can learn from residents living with projects.

Developers

1. Prioritize relationship-building and being a good neighbour over sharing information.
   • Build trust and transparency to facilitate information-sharing and engagement.
2. Consider signing a best practice charter with communities. Australia’s Clean Energy Council Charter may be a guide. Commitments include:
   • We will engage respectfully with the local community, including traditional owners of the land, to see their views and input before submitting a development application and finalizing the design of the project.
   • We will be sensitive to areas of high biodiversity, cultural and landscape value in the design and operation of projects.
   • We will minimize the impacts of highly productive agricultural land and explore opportunities to integrate agricultural production.
   • We will consult the community on the potential visual, noise, traffic and other impacts of the project, and on the mitigation options.
   • We will support the local economy by providing local employment and procurement opportunities.
   • We will offer communities the opportunity to share in the benefits of the project, and consult with them on the options available, including the relevant governance arrangements.
   • We commit to using the project to support education and tourism opportunities where appropriate.
   • We will demonstrate responsible land stewardship over the life of the project and welcome opportunities to enhance the ecological, cultural and/or agricultural value of the land.
   • During the life of the project, we will recycle waste materials where feasible and commit to responsible decommissioning or refurbishment/repowering of the site at the end of the project’s life.
3. Engage communities and residents early, with processes designed to increase community influence, not simply to transmit information.
4. Stretch commitments to transparency and accountability as far as possible to build trust.
   • Avoid hype and overpromising, as they undermine trust.
   • Be forthcoming about project uncertainties and commitment to providing updates.
5. Deploy all the options in the community benefits toolbox with sensitivity to the community context, history, pride and traumas.
6. Acknowledge local environmental and health concerns.
   • Be transparent about how they will be addressed and be sensitive to community concerns about project saturation and project fit.
   • The place is always more than a wind site.
   • Don’t perpetuate NIMBY myths.
7. Opt-in to shared ownership in municipal, cooperative, and Indigenous projects.
   • Advocate for the removal of government barriers to equity partnerships so that municipalities and cooperatives can invest in projects alongside indigenous communities.
8. Consider the value of both small and large-scale projects in addressing community concerns about exports over domestic consumption of the power generated.
9. Work with national associations such as the Canadian Renewable Energy Association and utilities, directly or through Electricity Canada, to advocate for nationally consistent rules to support the development of social acceptance.
10. Tell the story of why projects are important, how they contribute to a national process of energy transition and how they contribute to system-wide reliability and stability.
    • Be an advocate for citizens looking for the benefits of cheaper power on their electricity or property tax bills.

Community groups

1. Activate supporters of large-scale and small-scale renewable energy and transmission projects, rather than focus on countering opponents.
   • Build social norms by emphasizing how many millions of Canadians support renewable energy.
2. Tell the story of why. Explain the need for an energy transition and how residents and communities can be part of it.
3. Advocate for best practice in social acceptance approaches (e.g., accountability, transparency, process and distributional fairness).
4. Work with local governments and developers to create community benefit plans and promote community benefit best-practice templates.
5. Facilitate dialogue and information sharing through face-to-face engagement.
6. Ensure that responses to environmental impact assessments or social impact assessments include comments on social acceptance best practices.
   • Be the voice for environmental and social concerns.
   • Develop or promote posts and fact sheets that address people’s concerns about projects, including effects on birds and bats, fisheries and ocean ecosystems, health effects and reliability.
   • Counter misinformation with credible information, taking care not to amplify it.
7. Engage the media in stories, case studies and members from other communities with positive experiences of renewable energy and transmission.
8. Define what energy democracy looks like and promote it (e.g., best practice in resident engagement, community energy planning, community benefits).
9. Be the voice for place-based perspectives that situate potential projects within the local context, history, hopes and dreams.
10. Hold governments and developers accountable. Monitor community benefit plans and agreements over the lifetime of projects.

Communicators and public engagement practitioners

1. Tell the story of why.
   • Build a vision of the future where local communities are partners in the energy transition.
   • Show how a particular project makes the electricity system more reliable and affordable, compared with other options.
2. Be a source of fact-based and curiosity-driven information that addresses key questions and anxieties. For example:
   • Will my power bills go down if this wind or transmission project is built?
   • What will happen to property taxes in my community?
   • What will happen to property values because of this wind project?
   • Will the environment really be better off if this wind or transmission project is
   • built?
   • How much of the power from this new wind project will be used in my
   • community?
   • Why aren’t the blades on the wind turbine turning all the time?
3. Avoid confrontation-generating town halls
   • Focus instead on relationship-building and conversations where people can ask basic questions about renewable energy and transmission, or the energy transition.
   • Partner with libraries to share information, hold meetings and engage in storytelling.
4. Give voice to legitimate concerns about projects and the solutions to those concerns.
5. Address misinformation and disinformation by providing warnings about misinformation techniques:
   • Identify false information and correct it, and use nudges to help people identify and share accurate information.
   • Use local voices — not only government or corporate spokespeople — to deliver corrective information.
6. Build case studies and stories around successful projects in peer communities.
   • Profile economic development stories, but also stories about how community benefit funds, including property taxes, have been used or are being used.
7. Prioritize communications and engagement that build social acceptance grounded in relationships, trust and fairness.
8. Avoid triggering polarization with language targeting the oil and gas sector.
   • Focus on the future, building on existing strengths and opportunities for future generations.
9. Conduct baseline surveys to identify community support, concerns and perspectives, and focus on engaging neutral citizens who need information to form an opinion and supporters who want to see projects happen.