speaker-0: big thing that we tried to get and we did. We secured public commitment from all three of the transmission owners in owning a set of principles for effective engagement with communities through community benefit funds. And there were five things that we said derived from those deliberative engagement kind of conversations with people affected. The five things are transparency, listening and involving communities, empowering people locally, having a meaningful lasting impact. and fairness.
speaker-1: Hello and welcome to local zero, the Strathclyde Institute for Sustainable Communities podcast. I'm Matt Hannan.
speaker-2: and I'm Jen Roberts and today we'll be discussing people's experiences from the front line of the UK's electricity grid expansion.
speaker-1: As our renewable power generation expands and our appetite for green electricity grows, we need to extend and reinforce our national grid to ensure it is capable of transporting power to where it is needed.
speaker-2: This means construction and disruption on a scale that we might not have seen since the grid was first built out. So what does this mean for those communities on the grid front line? And what does this mean for the electricity network companies planning this critical infrastructure?
speaker-1: To answer some of these tricky questions we will be joined by Claire Harris, Scotland's lead for the local storytelling exchange which finds local stories about green transitions and shines a spotlight on them.
speaker-2: You'll also be joined by David Murray, former Executive Director of Sustainability First, an independent charity and think tank that promotes practical ways to improve environmental, social and economic wellbeing in UK utilities.
speaker-1: But before we get into the discussion, as always, a reminder to follow Local Zero on LinkedIn to stay up to date with the podcast and to let us know your feedback and suggestions. Just search for Local Zero podcast.
speaker-2: And wherever you listen, don't forget to subscribe so you never miss an episode. We're also now on YouTube so you can find us and followers over there.
speaker-1: Jen, how are we now? Hot even.
speaker-2: warm. Actually the university aircon has kicked in enough that it's not quite sweltering, but my goodness it is warm outside. I mean everyone's talking about it.
speaker-1: record breaking heat. Glasgow has been cooking, but I think if we were to head further south, it has been exceptionally warm for May. mean, exceptionally warm full stop. just a little while ago, as we're recording two, three days, maybe 35.1 degrees Celsius was recorded at Kew Gardens in London, making it the second consecutive day, the May and spring UK temperature record has provisionally been broken. That means the record was broken two days on the bounce, which is absolutely bananas and really quite frightening.
speaker-2: Yeah, I know. And it is all over the news, but actually how many of those news articles have been actually explicitly linking this to really problematic heat and really problematic heat specifically far more, you know, related to climate change. It's been pretty eye watering, painful. yes, just seeing what the coverage has been like and additionally sweat inducing. Yeah.
speaker-1: Sweating juicy. Yeah. Well, it is funny your point there. And I think this is just something more generally about how the media report on climate change. And I might add there was a piece from actually a former guest of ours, Leo Hickman, who is editor of the Carbon Brief. And I saw him on Blue Sky say something about how the BBC's coverage of climate and climate change has been demoted and demoted and demoted from that front page, which I think is a more explicit way of how climate is or is not being reported by, I don't want to sound too Trumpian, but the mainstream ⁓ press. But in this particular instance with this, The Guardian did cover this off and they were essentially parroting something the Met Office had released. So a lot of this is a press release from the Met, right? I haven't seen it too many other outlets, I might add. I'm sure listeners may be able to point out a few others, but it... They did carry the line that the breaking the 32.8 degree May record, so I think this is the previous record because it was a study from a year or so back, so the former May record is around three times more likely now in our current climate than it would have been in a natural climate not impacted by greenhouse gas emissions. So in layman's terms, that means that around in a one in a hundred year event is now around a one in a 33 year event.
speaker-2: Yeah, and that's going to keep changing. That's what's amazing. These numbers are going to keep changing, not just the type of the temperature dial, but also those one in 100 year event will be one in 33 year will become one in 20 year.
speaker-1: But it's also about the time period. These are lifetimes. So, I I sincerely doubt I'll live to 100. And if I do, blimey, I'll be a real pain in the side of somebody for some time. But 33 years, I mean, I've already done that, which is good. But these are events that we will see regularly now. It's not like never experienced in my life. It's like, ah, I remember this happening 10, 15 years ago, 20, 30 years ago.
speaker-2: Yeah. Get rid of you by then, Matt.
speaker-1: You're quite right. But as you ratchet up the temperature dial and the sort of gas mark on the oven, it's going to become more frequent.
speaker-2: Yeah, and I think there is an element here of, know, we've not had a great spring so far until this point. So it has been like, well, we've been really waiting for that good weather. But I was out cycling over the weekend and stopped off in a cafe, kind of in the middle of nowhere in a lovely village. I was, you know, had really nice plenty of outdoor seating and absolutely no shade whatsoever. And so initially lots of people sat outside and they migrated indoors because it was just so hot. And then a couple of other cyclists arrived and like me, they'd been out on the bikes for about six hours. They'd been out in that sun for a long time and they sat in the sun for another hour and it's like just cooking themselves.
speaker-1: I know you're a keen sports person. I know you like your tennis, your cycling, right. Ditto. Also, I like my football. What is interesting is sport is one of, I'd say the few outlets that does cover extreme weather. It's not so much climate, but the French Open, like, has just been so on this. Tour de France, often, you you see riders with heat exhaustion. Football, the World Cup, right? Every, every World Cup, they seem to put it in hotter and hotter places, right? We've had it in the Middle East, we've got it in America, even in Mexico, right? We're gonna see some really crazy temperatures. I think, and I think we've said this before on the pod, there's a real opportunity here to educate people a little bit more about why we're experiencing these temperatures through sport, and also what the implications of that are.
speaker-2: Yeah. I mean, if you follow cycling, or have you ever been to the velodrome? The velodrome is kept ⁓ quite, it's very toasty in there. have to go dress for the Bahamas or something, because it's really warm, but it's kept a constant temperature to allow you for that kind of elite performance. But yeah, if you start messing with that temperature gets too much, then yeah, you need to delay sessions. know, we do see that in sport, you're right. And that is, people really care about sport. So that's a way to engage.
speaker-1: And how we adapt to that. You know, there's, there's a whole piece here about climate adaptation, which I think, you know, we've got a pretty cool episode coming up on, which you're to speak to a little bit more in a moment. ⁓ but I know how to adapt to sport to climate, but also when I say it's not just elite people, it's the people going for run in the morning or the evening and having to, bring it forward or push it back. I'm playing football this evening. ⁓ it just seems something buzz on my phone saying, instead of sevens tonight, lads will have eights cause it's going to be hot. It's really interesting how people pivot around.
speaker-2: So these things are kind of adapting our daily lives and our daily routines. And actually it's great that your footy friends are thinking like that.
speaker-1: I think they're also just lazy to be honest, and I include myself in that. It's less running, isn't it? They say the same thing in January.
speaker-2: tens. But yeah, mean, our long time listeners will might remember an episode we did not too long ago. I think it might have been episode 109, but I'm not going to claim that. I'm not going to claim that I remember the episode numbers.
speaker-1: laughing aside why not 110 I think it was.
speaker-2: Was it 110? Oh, well done. And that was around climate adaptation. And it was really to encourage and support our listeners to imagine what an adapted street looks like, an adapted home looks like, and think about adaptation practices. It's not just about items. It's not just about air conditioning. It's about what you do before you need that. closing your windows and closing your curtains. That's what I did before I left for work this morning. keeping the heat out, keeping the sun out. so these kind of, whether that's about turning your fives or sevens into eights for football, whether it's about actually planting things, planting trees to have dappled shade cover around your tennis courts, whatever it is, know, if it's about not sitting outside in the baking heat when you've been on the bike for six hours already that day, there are some of these things, it's not just about items and objects and so on, it's also just about how we approach.
speaker-1: change. And people adapting, you know, I remember reading something a little while back. There's various estimates. It's quite difficult to know how many people have air con in their homes because, you know, people can just have standalone little systems. You don't need to necessarily register these things to any power. they don't have to tell big brother that you've got an air conditioning unit, know, your shop or whatever. Estimates of about four million households in the UK. Be interesting to see what that was 10, 20 years ago. Yeah. But I just wonder whether you wanted to say a couple of words about our next episode before we get into this one, just as a little teaser to our guests to make sure they dial in next.
speaker-2: Yeah, So in a couple of weeks time, one of our next episodes will be hearing from Professor Chris White, who is an expert on climate hazards. And particularly, we're going to be learning from him and hearing a bit more about hazard stacking. So that's what happens when multiple hazards are occurring at the same time. And whether we're talking about kind of invest power law of impact or whether we're talking about just simple additions or sums and actually, most importantly for our listeners and probably to ourselves as well, it's about turning these conceptual ideas, not ideas, but these conceptual ⁓ information into, okay, what does that mean in day-to-day lives? Because there will be communities all across Scotland who will be, or have experienced, or are set to be experiencing more of climate hazard stacking.
speaker-1: That's a really interesting point. It's like converting some of this quite science fiction into something where people can envisage what the situation might be in 10 years time and to start planning accordingly. mean, like, you know, in terms of home renovations and often I'm putting insulation in not just to keep the cold out in winter, but to keep the heat out in summer. But yeah. Chris, bringing him along to talk about hazard stacking, you know, this is frightening stuff. But we will no doubt put a constructive, positive, optimistic spin on this.
speaker-2: Yeah, pragmatic, action based, 100%.
speaker-1: That's it. Even if it's just a prepper's guide to getting the heck out of there and what to do, you know, if it all...
speaker-2: reassuring that actually sometimes that's okay. Like actually we might have been experiencing multiple hazards hacking for decades or much longer as humans we've adapted. So I want to know kind of what to what extent is this part of our normal day-to-day life in the UK or elsewhere? We've got other things on its way so kind of what does this mean in terms of knowing what's coming and planning accordingly but actually how much of that is stuff that we're used to day-to-day?
speaker-1: Fantastic. So obviously climate adaptation, big part of Battle of the Gates, climate change, big part of what we do in terms of covering off topics here on Local Zero. But today's much more about mitigation and we're talking about the grid. We're talking about the national grid as we know it in the UK, but the electricity grid, transmission, distribution. This is all about getting power from where it's generated to where it's needed. And that's in terms of consumption and demand. Now, Jen, I came across a little sort of tidbit when I was putting the proposal together about community impacts from the grid and benefits associated with it. Did you know? I think you do know because you may have even told me this tidbit actually. The source of See if you remember the information you gave me. So did you know that between 2023 and 2030, seven year period, National Grid expect that we will need to build five times more transmission lines than we did in the last 30 years. Bit complicated, bit difficult to understand. But what it's saying is we need to really, really, really hit the accelerator pedal hard in terms of building out these lines. Some of this will be new lines in terms of lines where there are not existing lines. Some of these will be lines where we're looking to reinforce existing lines. ⁓ And this is going to be really, really disruptive to many, many people who are maybe not necessarily next to these things already.
speaker-2: Yeah.
speaker-1: or have a line outside which they're quite used to which is going to significantly
speaker-2: Yeah, and actually, you know, we're just talking about the lines themselves. I mean, I'm also wondering how many times you can say lines in a two minute clip of Local Zero. Pylons. Pylons, yeah. It's not just to mention those though, because at the end of those is power generation infrastructure. So we're not just talking about these lines. I mean, we are today, but we also, it's not that the construction is limited there or the change or disruption. It's kind of... these things come hand in hand with other developments. And that's what's really key. The other thing though, Matt, it's really hard to really make sense of that stat without knowing how much we've built in the last 30 years. So how are we starting from zero? Probably not. We've got a good network that serves most of our needs. There is something there though around kind of is that even possible in that you just had a seven year period and isn't it that the planning, I knew that the planning timelines for major infrastructure are typically longer than that.
speaker-1: Well, it's all part of this big push towards clean power 2030. And as you say, it's all got to be sequenced correctly. So you're looking to get your generation in, then you need to ensure that you've got your transmission lines. That's not just transmission. You've got your... substations, you've got to then, you know, step it up, step it down. You've got to go from transmission to distribution lines along there somewhere. You've probably got some storage, you you might have some pump hydro battery electric storage. I mean, this is another big, big development that people have get their heads around. And crucially, ⁓ to get this stuff built, you need to go through a statutory process in terms of planning. And then there will be a whole opportunity for the general public, local communities who are affected by this to contest what has been proposed. And this can lead to massive delays. So you're quite right. You know, if there is big pushback, there are processes there that may slow things down and essentially make it more expensive to companies to build out. So it could be if we don't do this right, if we don't engage with communities and make sure that they feel comfortable with the infrastructure that's going in and where it's going in, we may, it may put our net zero targets, climate targets.
speaker-2: at risk. But it's a classic trade-offs as well though, right? Because it's like, well, you've got maybe quite localized disruption for what is a nationally required infrastructure. this kind of this scale of, who pays and who gains? This is age old, you know, we've talked about this before, ⁓ but it's really very pressing right now with this sort of development that we're seeing. And also communities feeling that, they've already had a lot of change and, know, well, how much more do they need to take? it is... engaging in these processes is exhausting. So what are we doing to make that easier and to improve that process for all parties? I'm really interested to hear about that from our guest today.
speaker-1: Absolutely. Well, I think now is a good time to bring them in.
speaker-2: Yeah, let's bring them in.
speaker-3: Hi, I'm Claire and I'm the Scotland lead for a non-profit media organisation called Local Storytelling Exchange.
speaker-0: Hi, I'm David. former executive director at Sustainability First and a fellow of the Institute for Sustainability and Environmental Professionals.
speaker-2: Great to have you both here. Matt and I have got some questions for you, but I just thought you two know each other and I wondered if you wanted to just tell us a little bit about how you know each other and how you've worked together. So Claire, did you want to tackle that first?
speaker-3: Yeah, I guess over the past year we've been working together from each side of a screen jointly on a project. ⁓ my role at Local Storytelling Exchange ⁓ is about listening and hearing stories. And our outcome of the project was what we're calling a deep dive called Dispatches from the Grid Front Line. ⁓ Dave David can talk through what his element of the project was, but essentially there were two outcomes. There was a sort of public and sector facing outcome, which was a as I say, a deep dive into what we're hearing and seeing and feeling around the group.grode. And then there was an industry focused output, which perhaps Dave, you could talk to us about.
speaker-0: Yeah, so one of our trustees at Sustainability First, Lucy Holdaway, is at Local Storage and Exchange. She brought us as organisations together at the start of this project. And as Claire's just said, there's a public facing side to this. And then there was an industry focus side. the role that Sustainability First plays is to be that critical friend to industry, to the regulators, so OFGEM in this case, and to central government, and to try to bring to life the voices of communities and in particular consumers that might not get otherwise heard during policy development and the politics of policy development.
speaker-1: project that you're referring to is about dispatches from the grid frontline. What a fantastic name whoever came up with it. And so maybe before we get into what you're hearing from the front lines and what we do about it, I just wondered if one of you could maybe speak to the scale and the breadth of the UK's grid expansion. It's something that is regularly on the front pages. It's something that's all over the social media, Facebook groups. It's something that certain political parties
speaker-2: Yeah, it's fantastic.
speaker-1: rightly and or wrongly will pick up and put front and centre in manifesto. So I wonder David, would you like to maybe speak to that first and then we'll go to Claire.
speaker-0: Yeah, so this is absolutely huge. You know, we're talking about tens of billions of pounds. This is the biggest change to our energy system in generations. And so I suppose we shouldn't be surprised to see that there is controversy that lurks in amongst ⁓ communities who are at the front line of the impact of these changes. And this is all about this kind of this desire to move at such a pace and scale to tackle climate change, which absolutely is the thing that we should be trying to do. But how we do it is what's really, I think, the point of contention and how we're doing it with or to people is really where the biggest rub is with this project.
speaker-1: I'm clear anything you'd like to add.
speaker-3: Yeah, I I had literally written down it's big. I think there was a there was a quote from Professor Paul DeLeo from Robert Gordon Unian Aberdeen who said, We're seeing the biggest plumbing, rewiring and repurposing of our energy system for generations, as David said. So it was massive. But it's also necessary. And I think ⁓ it's about, you know, any kind of infrastructure needs to be updated and maintained. And this is the moment at which
speaker-1: How big?
speaker-3: We're doing it for lots of reasons and we'll come on to that. But you know, there's there's there's more than one reason why we're doing this and why we're doing it now. And what we're seeing in the headlines and in the papers and so forth is, I guess, an element of that. It's it's a backlash from people who are saying, Hang on a minute, what's happening here? I don't understand it. It doesn't look nice. Why is it in my back garden, my backfield? Why is it in my village? Why is no one listening to us fundamentally? But we can dig into that. A bit more later. So yeah, it's big, it's noticeable and it's gonna get bigger.
speaker-2: Well, I'm really interested to then pick up exactly what you're just touching on Claire. Why are we expanding or bolstering our grid at this time? presumably we have been maintaining and doing some things. It's not like we're very good at this sometimes. It's building something and then not maintaining it. But presumably we've been doing that. But what is it that's happening at this point or has there been a tipping point in recent years? And when was that and what is it?
speaker-3: ⁓ I'll defer back to you after David because you're the tech expert. But I I guess in terms of the headlines, yes, there has been an element of underinvestment, but also the lack of kind of commitment to grasp the nettle, I suppose, in terms of what's needed to be done with the grid. So that's one thing. Also, we're gonna be using by twenty fifty twice as much electricity as we are today, many sources say. And that that's partly because we use a lot of stuff. We used to have our phones that we need to charge. A lot of us now have electric cars, more we'll do, we're electrifying our heating. You know, we have all sorts of ways that we y live our daily lives that we need electricity for. And also the way we get our electricity is different now and and will be increasingly different. You know, you'll know the kind of big old cooling towers from coal power stations that you see around Nottinghamshire and the Midlands and so forth. They're kind of a relic of the past now, which is good. We've moved on from coal fired power, which is not great for the planet. But it's different now. So the power is no longer kind of close to to the big urban centres. It tends at the moment to be generated offshore, offshore wind, or ⁓ where there's lots of wind fundamentally in the Highlands of Scotland. So we need to get that power to where people need it.
speaker-1: Yeah, I always think a great example of that. And hopefully this registers to the international listener as well. It's Bassie Power Station. know, if you're in London along the Thames and you're like, Ooh, blimey, what's that? It captures exactly what you're saying instead of having, you know, wind turbine in Caithness or Sutherland on the far northern reaches of Scotland. David.
speaker-0: Yeah, so I suppose it's three big things that happening and all converging together at the same time. The first is that we are accelerating as a nation, that clean generation, that need for us to generate energy from clean sources. So wind being the most obvious on a windy island off the edge of Europe and particularly offshore wind. But that's not where we live. And so we need to bring it from wherever we've generated to where we need it. The second is that electrification. So if we are going to decarbonize our energy system and move off coal and away from gas or the current flavor of gas that's being used and which over 80 % of us are using gas for heating, the demand that's expected for us to shift how we're using energy is going to rise significantly too for heat, for transport, as well as the other things that we're already using it for. And then the third is that we need to ensure that we still got the same reliability for this national grid, which doesn't see the lights go out and keep the cost manageable. yet we've got a system where the demand is growing and yet the system is bursting at the seams. It's unable to take the congestion of the amount of energy that we need now and into the future to deliver that decarbonised, highly electrified system. And so that's why it's this kind of perfect storm. We have to have huge tens of millions of pounds of extra investment to make this grid to increase the capacity for us to be able to then generate at a scale that we've never done before because our demands for that energy are becoming even greedier, like we need more of that clean energy.
speaker-1: maybe then shining the spotlight on communities and at the local level. And I think it's always a useful thing to do to listeners, because I think everybody can imagine being in their home, getting a letter through the door, Scottish Boundary Networks or SSCN or any other electricity network provider planning permission. We are looking to put a transmission line in a mile down the road. And with that in mind, what level, what...
speaker-0: It's hot.
speaker-1: type of disruption is this causing communities across the UK? And I should say, I think that's framed very negatively. It could be some real benefits associated with this and it could be your project may have uncovered a lot of positivity around this, but how is it being felt at the local level? Claire, would you like to begin with that?
speaker-3: Yeah, I guess just to sort of we mentioned a bit about the project in the introduction, but but the sort of three ways in which we worked throughout the year of this this deep dive project was we we kind of sent out traditional journalists to areas along the east coast of of the UK where the Great Group Upgrade was happening and we did the kind of traditional journalism trying to speak to people about the ins and outs. We did focus group work with more in common, which were your standard focus groups very carefully selected. groups of people along the line of the the East Coast upgrade. But we also ⁓ the work we did specifically with with David at Sustainability First was much more in depth, much more kind of a deliberative process over a course of I believe it was six ⁓ kind of citizens panel sessions. So we it was just to emphasize we we kind of delved into this in a really, really kind of extended and deep way. On to answer your question, the I guess for me, three main things and disruption's not not not just physical. And you're right, it is a negative framing, which we found and we'll come back to about, you know, there are different ways of looking at this and there are different opinions out there. But really in kind of meeting people both out in their communities ⁓ and through the citizens panel, there's so there's a physical disruption. ⁓ construction works, lorries coming down narrow country roads, you know, the the the physicality of building this transmission infrastructure. or the expected physical impact. There's a what they a lot of people call the cumulative impact. So the sense that there are multiple planning proposals, possibly multiple letters through the door from different people, from different organizations on top of one another and no sense of join up. And then there's actually the mental health impact. It's a type of disruption where a lot of people we met were really struggling. Because it's stressful, 'cause they don't know what's happening, they don't know where it's coming from, they don't know how many there are, they don't know what it's gonna mean, they don't know why it's happening, or they they they feel it's not the right thing to happen. So there's some very real, both physical and I guess psychological elements of disruption there.
speaker-0: to add to that, that it's possible to say, you you can ask anybody anything and say, well, what would you feel if, if this were to happen on your doorstep? Firstly, there's, there's instant bias, isn't it? If we're being asked a question, then we're like, ⁓ what's the right thing to say? So that might skew you towards saying, well, absolutely, we've got to tackle climate change and absolutely we should be using more renewable energy. And I hear and believe that over the long term, that's going to make our bills cheaper too. So we're protecting the planet and it's good for my pocket. brilliant, I'd be happy and I'd be willing to accept that disruption that Claire's just described, until maybe it does actually land at the feet of your own doormat. And then what? Well, there is that sense of, potentially, of mental health harm in multiple ways, because of an uncertainty, because of a disempowerment, because what is this going to do to me? Short term, yes, there's that disruption of construction. Longer term, there may be if you own your own home, then you're losing value in your property. You could be losing that visual amenity value when you've gone out to walk in the hills surrounding your town or village. So that kind of sense of urbanization from a rural place. All of these things are cumulative and there is essentially a planning system which is failing everybody. So instead of it being a listening exercise, it's a fait accompli consultation process. And it's easy to see through that. You don't need to be a big cynic to say, I see that somebody is ticking a box through this process. To overcome that for something like this for a transmission owner like National Grid or Scottish Power or Scottish and Southern Electric, they need to go way above and beyond the compliance minimums that are required of them. And yet community benefit, the funds for these types of almost compensation are voluntary. So the decision from central government has been These companies will do the right thing because it's the right thing for them to do. And I think that actually sends the wrong signal and wrong message to these communities in the first instance. It should be mandated. It should be legally obliged for them to have to fund to improve places with those communities. And there should be a huge amount of listening going on. You know, we talk communication and often it's quick to jump to broadcast and assume that that's all that we need to do. We just need to do that really, really well. All we really need to do really well is sit quiet and listen.
speaker-3: Hundred percent. Active listening and hearing and acting and feeding back. That was another big thing we found. Don't just listen, take it away, tell the come back and say what you've heard and what you will or will not do about it, but at least you've heard it, you know.
speaker-2: active listening. I remember in a social impact assessment theory, the understanding that even rumour has social impact. Rumour, so a van, ⁓ a company van turning up in a rural place knowing that this system is coming down the line, the very occurrence of that van in that place will be causing a rumour that can then bring social impacts. And so actually you don't have to do specifically anything sometimes to already have this cascade of impacts. I think then actually, so that's really helpful. What I'm hearing here that I think would be really, also really helpful to maybe unpack and expand on is, we're talking about a national grid infrastructure program. So a national led, overseen in some way, I'm assuming, grid infrastructure and improvement program. So why is it that somebody might have multiple letters from different organizations? landing on their map if this is a national program that is being overseen and coordinated in some way. Is that what's happening in reality in these places and how does that come to be? Perhaps David, I'll go to you.
speaker-0: Yeah, so what we might see in this, this is, it may sound anecdotal, but it's from hearing from these communities that we brought together for this listening exercise through the derivative engagement process. So these were 45 people that we recruited through a sortition process, which is like a civil lottery process that says, you get a different letter on your door net. We're going to pay you for your time and to hear your opinions. And we're going to get kind of a great, eclectic mix of people from lots of different backgrounds. So there's a microcosm of society or at least of these communities that are most impacted. And in doing that, we listened ⁓ intently to what was being said. One of the things that we were hearing was that in some places, the field, let's kind of picture the field in our mind, there are lots of ideas for that field, which aren't just for that field to remain a field. It could be that it's a solar farm ⁓ idea. It could be, and it could be pre-planning. It could be that it's... up as a potential space for housing development. It could be that it's up for national grid infrastructure, at least partially, or that it's being impacted by it. It could be that it's a new reservoir or other major infrastructure project. It could be that it's near HS2 or 3 or 4 or whatever number we might be working on next. So even though they may be a joined up decision process for energy infrastructure, That is through a very messy, not yet joined up national plan for how we develop all infrastructure. then if you do look at the energy system itself, yes, we are talking about one big transmission owner, but we also having huge changes in the sector itself to try to accommodate making these changes. So bits of national grid kind of being moved out of themselves to turn into something different and... a national energy system operator and the owners are no longer owners, they're operators, etc. All of this is happening at the same time. So you can see why, like you go back to the rumour thing of seeing that kind of UK Power Networks van or whatever it might be that's in front of you being a, ⁓ why are they here? What are they doing? Or the rumour is that we're about to have, you know, a million pylons or whatever it might be. That is going to cause that kind of sense of disempowerment and uncertainty and nervousness. And, and, and that's what I think we're, we're really missing from, from this project and from all projects of all scales. How do communities get not just a voice, but a say in what goes where and what it looks like and what impact that has.
speaker-1: So just with that in mind, something you said a moment ago, Claire, that it's not a one size fits all, not necessarily all communities are responding in the same way. You obviously found some common themes and we'll put all the in the show notes here. We'll put a link to the report you mentioned and also the kind of deep dive interactive scrolling website, which is fantastic that you've pulled together. But just maybe Claire, any reflections on how different communities or different members of singular communities are reacting differently or the same to this disruption? Are you seeing differences? Because you looked across quite a number of areas, right?
speaker-3: Totally. So we've got storytellers we call ourselves storytellers essentially, journalists all up and down from like we've got somebody in East Anglia covering kind of Suffolk, round that area. We've got someone in Teaside, Humber, Aberdeenshire, all over. ⁓ so we're we're seeing differences up and down the country, but actually we're seeing differences in the type of response to this kind of development. And it's not all bad. I think that's the most important thing. We we've just talked quite a lot about the real kind of concerns around this that people are feeling, but they are not the only voices. And I think the biggest thing we've found through this process is that there is nuance ⁓ and there is room for ambition, there's room for thinking differently, and there's certainly room for thinking flexibly about what what's happening here in terms of the good upgrade. I suppose two points to your point, Jen, about that accumulation. You know, a lot communities we've spoken to, they don't necessarily differentiate between, ⁓ this is a transmission project, this is a generation project, especially in Scotland, when a lot of this has been going on for years, you know. So I think that's important to state. ⁓ and it's an example of a community that we've done a lot of work with that's featured in our work in East Lamure, who are taking a slightly different approach. So they're at the moment, last time we spoke to them, they're it's a They're facing a raft of around 14 separate development applications. So that includes transmission infrastructure, you know, that there's onshoring of ⁓ power lines from the North Sea, but it also includes wind, potentially solar. But to them it's all part of the same picture. It's all energy, right? ⁓ So they they're really interesting because they decided, right, we're getting all these letters on the doormat, all from different people. We don't know what's going on and where, how. ⁓ so we're gonna get them together. So the chair of their community council, who's a fantastic guy, Chris Bruce, said, Look, we're gonna get you all in a room, you're gonna get all together at one time and we're gonna ask you what's going on, which is what they did. ⁓ and that really, really helped, and it put in motion a process of dialogue that has been much more fruitful. ⁓ people know what's coming, people are able to ask the questions, and crucially on the side of the developers and the transmission operators that are willing players who are part of that as well. So it already feels ⁓ for them more, I suppose, acceptable to their community in terms of what's happening because they're much better informed fundamentally and they have a stake. So they have ⁓ set up an organisation called the East Lamanure Energy Projects Partnership, which has a lead officer. Which is a brilliant example she's called Beth, ⁓ of of how it could be done in certain places where there's one key person that in the middle of the community, the local council, the transmission operators, the developers who is ensuring there's a line of dialogue there. So I think that shows that not all communities are the same, and even within those communities there's definitely room for for shifts. Have a look at the video, but there's one woman, Barbara, who really struck me when we went out and filmed And she was saying she she'd bought a steading in in Innerwick, which is a lovely little village in in East Lamure, just outside Dunbar. She went there for peace and quiet, she's retired. She heard a substation was getting built outside like across the road. And at first she was like, ⁓ that doesn't sound good. ⁓ I don't want a substation across the road and then this this kind of communication work and dialogue work started happening with the community council and she gradually learned more about what was happening. And why it was happening crucially. And she said, Well, you know, maybe maybe there's something positive we can get out of this. And now she feels that she's accepting of the process because she can see that the other things that will come with that, whether that's nature regeneration work in the area because of the community benefits, whether that's a heat network that they're looking at with the local council, she feels part of that process.
speaker-2: Let me just dig into that a little bit more then and hear David, if there's anything else you'd like to expand on because I think that's really interesting hearing what sort of positives that we set out with a slightly negative frame. Let's talk about those positives then. what, as well as agency and in this case in the East Lanham Muir area, we've got communities coordinating a forum essentially on their own terms and that is... incredibly empowering to do that and to be listened to and so on, but actually beyond that in terms of material benefit to a community, what sort of thing are we talking about?
speaker-0: Yeah, this, I mean, it feels like the kind of antidote to the first part of our conversation, doesn't it? Where there's this sense of disempowerment and uncertainty. And we just heard about how local population have taken that power back into their own hands to, coordinate and convene, ⁓ to get to grips with and understand what's happening. And, and that very much kind of the power to the people, pardon the pun, is, is a bit of, of what we're seeing, kind of because of the changing needs of how... we develop power and how we make use of it, we can continue to just feel like we're having it done to and at us, or we can try to engage with the organizations and the stakeholders around that decision making to get to grips with what's happening and to make sure that at least you're making the most out of that kind of short term disruption and to really get a sense of clarity of what's happening and why and where and how and all of those things. We did see within some of the work that ⁓ Rachel Cox-Coon, a fantastic academic who was on this project with us too, kind of looked at with a process that had a whole host of statements called a Q-Sort. There's a whole host of statements about this system and people were forced on their own, forced to make the decision about which of these statements they felt most strongly about and then which two statements they may feel kind of second most strongly about until a pyramid of statements was was made and then all of those came back into Rachel to look at and then a kind of quant analysis of that qualitative data came through and it showed that there was a group of people that, and remember this is from people across England and Scotland, communities that either are or are about to have the impact of these major infrastructure projects happening to or with them. The first was power to the people. was the communities should always be offered a chance to own a part of grid infrastructure, that cost of compensating households and making community benefit payments work needs to be at kind of fair levels and, an engaging way for people to have skin in the game. The second group was a kind of pressing reasons to act as that kind of, it's both the right on climate activists or those who really do feel that strong sense of principles based for nature, for climate action, and would so strongly agree to those. sentiments that even when it is happening and having possibly some detrimental impact to themselves or their own lives still believe that it's the right thing for us to do. Then there's property pragmatists who say essentially this is a transactional thing, you're doing something, it's having an impact on me, I want to be compensated for that. And the fourth is this kind of strong sense of developer distrust that it doesn't matter what you say or do next, we just don't believe that the government knows best or that these big companies know best. And ⁓ we think that there should be regulations to ensure that existing funding for things like libraries and youth clubs and other things cannot be withdrawn from community benefit when new money is awarded. So this needs to be different. has to be additional. It can't be just a back door to funding the same things that we've already wanted. in these places. I'm a huge optimist and I think you have to be in this kind of line of work. So I like to think about a positive what if. So what if I could be a proactive consumer? What if I could produce energy that meets my needs and maybe more than I need? And what if I get paid for making that energy that somebody else, a neighbour might make use of? And what positive impact might that have at the other end of this huge change to the decarbonisation job of our energy system? Does that mean that there are fewer wind turbines offshore because I've met more of my needs where I need that energy and I've been able to make energy available to others. And so there may be a rebalancing. And I think what we've seen with the example that Claire was using in Scotland is, is a hint of that. It's a kind of another spotlight on actually there are lots of things we can do here. we need to be pragmatic whilst we're thinking about some of these, you know, really hard to digest and complicated kind of trade-offs that happening. And we never asked for them to happen, but here we are, you know, we, the people who are on, the planet right now, we didn't make these decisions to industrialize the country that we're in. went through industrialization and, and yet we know that the impacts of that and the impacts that we're still having today do have an impact on future generations. So we know we have to act as well. And unfortunately it is uncomfortable and there are trade-offs and there are losers as well as winners, but we have to be pragmatic to be able to ensure that we do have a truly sustainable. Society. So-
speaker-1: with all that in mind, and there is quite a lot to keep in mind here. I'm just wondering what you both think and feel about where we're at and what we need to do next. What do we do with all of this, these insights that you've been able to so usefully capture? I think there's pieces here about trust and legitimacy, perceived legitimacy of these organisations that you've, that's come out of the... ⁓ research is about how you engage with and enable participation of communities. There's a piece there about how you compensate and share the benefits of that. might be payments, it might be a share of ownership. There's a lot here. So in a couple of minutes, you won't be able to provide the guiding light, but there's just a couple of things we can take away. What should listeners do with this?
speaker-0: apologies for taking more airspace but I'd love to go first with this because the big thing that we tried to get and we did, we secured public commitment from all three of the transmission owners in owning a set of principles for effective engagement with communities through community benefit funds and there were five things that we said these derived from those deliberative engagement and kind of conversations with people affected. The five things are transparency, listening and involving communities, empowering people locally, having a meaningful lasting impact and fairness. And those were the things that mattered most above all else. And those were the things that we took at Sustainability First to the transmission owners and said, if you gave that transparency, if you showed that listening and engagement of communities in effective communication, and enabled empowered communities to make decisions removing barriers, hearing their voices, creating space for communities to share their own hopes and aspirations for their own places, how they're going to shape their neighborhoods. And you show that lasting impact and you do that fairly minimizing disruption, sharing the benefits equitably, then you may well find that there is more of the Islam and your kind of experience across the whole of the UK where the the most impact for these grid developments is coming.
speaker-1: It clear.
speaker-3: Yeah, a hundred percent. I I I think, you know, that that is certainly the aim and like David, I'm an optimist. ⁓ I guess from the sort of public facing and the the media point of view is which is the world in which I'm working. You said at the start of the the chat around the headlines, all the kind of big headlines we're seeing about people being angry about pylons and such like. I suppose my big takeaway was w ha and I've spoken about this at other events, is how can we as communicators and journalists and and and people working with a voice, how can we make that space for all voices to be heard? How can we make just as David is doing within the industry, it's is how can we make sure that that there is that space for nuance? There are many people out there who can hold two p opinions at once and can think about the flexibility. We need to give credit to ordinary people to be intelligent enough to to go along a journey with this and and sometimes take that off with the smooth. So I think my big takeaway would would be to be appreciate that, maybe look a little bit further and listen to people, don't dismiss people, I think. If we can stop political figures using the terms NIMBY and blocker, that would also be good.
speaker-2: Yeah, would very much. Thank you. think that's fantastic. And the other thing that I'm really hearing from the both of you as well is to not go in assuming that blank canvas or like that nothing has happened here before. ⁓ And I think that, you know, we have talked about this before, but it's still very, very true. we talk about it because it's true. It's important that there are other things happening in these communities. are other activities going on. And we need to be respectful of that. So it's amazing to hear your examples of stories that you were hearing of ⁓ efforts to bring those forums together, not just as one independent project doing and abiding by those principles, David, that you spoke about, ⁓ but as a collective. ⁓ And that's that to me, that's really come out of the conversation I've been hearing from you both as well.
speaker-1: And maybe just a thank you to you both, not just for your time today, but for the project in general. I think bringing to bear some of the research and the rigor, the deliberative methods is really important. But then that is a foundation for Claire for the storytelling exchange to then present that story in this rich and textured manner, this nuanced manner. And in a highly, highly really accessible 21st century manner where, you know, I'm able to click and listen and play and watch and That I think is sorely missing. And I think actually a lack of that has fed into this polarization around these issues. So bravo, well done. Keep up the good work. We'll make sure we got a link for listeners in there. We'd love to have you both along again soon to hear a little bit more about how this works progressing. Okay, till next time. Thanks.
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speaker-1: Hello and welcome to local zero, the Strathclyde Institute for Sustainable Communities podcast. I'm Matt Hannan.
speaker-2: and I'm Jen Roberts and today we'll be discussing people's experiences from the front line of the UK's electricity grid expansion.
speaker-1: As our renewable power generation expands and our appetite for green electricity grows, we need to extend and reinforce our national grid to ensure it is capable of transporting power to where it is needed.
speaker-2: This means construction and disruption on a scale that we might not have seen since the grid was first built out. So what does this mean for those communities on the grid front line? And what does this mean for the electricity network companies planning this critical infrastructure?
speaker-1: To answer some of these tricky questions we will be joined by Claire Harris, Scotland's lead for the local storytelling exchange which finds local stories about green transitions and shines a spotlight on them.
speaker-2: You'll also be joined by David Murray, former Executive Director of Sustainability First, an independent charity and think tank that promotes practical ways to improve environmental, social and economic wellbeing in UK utilities.
speaker-1: But before we get into the discussion, as always, a reminder to follow Local Zero on LinkedIn to stay up to date with the podcast and to let us know your feedback and suggestions. Just search for Local Zero podcast.
speaker-2: And wherever you listen, don't forget to subscribe so you never miss an episode. We're also now on YouTube so you can find us and followers over there.
speaker-1: Jen, how are we now? Hot even.
speaker-2: warm. Actually the university aircon has kicked in enough that it's not quite sweltering, but my goodness it is warm outside. I mean everyone's talking about it.
speaker-1: record breaking heat. Glasgow has been cooking, but I think if we were to head further south, it has been exceptionally warm for May. mean, exceptionally warm full stop. just a little while ago, as we're recording two, three days, maybe 35.1 degrees Celsius was recorded at Kew Gardens in London, making it the second consecutive day, the May and spring UK temperature record has provisionally been broken. That means the record was broken two days on the bounce, which is absolutely bananas and really quite frightening.
speaker-2: Yeah, I know. And it is all over the news, but actually how many of those news articles have been actually explicitly linking this to really problematic heat and really problematic heat specifically far more, you know, related to climate change. It's been pretty eye watering, painful. yes, just seeing what the coverage has been like and additionally sweat inducing. Yeah.
speaker-1: Sweating juicy. Yeah. Well, it is funny your point there. And I think this is just something more generally about how the media report on climate change. And I might add there was a piece from actually a former guest of ours, Leo Hickman, who is editor of the Carbon Brief. And I saw him on Blue Sky say something about how the BBC's coverage of climate and climate change has been demoted and demoted and demoted from that front page, which I think is a more explicit way of how climate is or is not being reported by, I don't want to sound too Trumpian, but the mainstream ⁓ press. But in this particular instance with this, The Guardian did cover this off and they were essentially parroting something the Met Office had released. So a lot of this is a press release from the Met, right? I haven't seen it too many other outlets, I might add. I'm sure listeners may be able to point out a few others, but it... They did carry the line that the breaking the 32.8 degree May record, so I think this is the previous record because it was a study from a year or so back, so the former May record is around three times more likely now in our current climate than it would have been in a natural climate not impacted by greenhouse gas emissions. So in layman's terms, that means that around in a one in a hundred year event is now around a one in a 33 year event.
speaker-2: Yeah, and that's going to keep changing. That's what's amazing. These numbers are going to keep changing, not just the type of the temperature dial, but also those one in 100 year event will be one in 33 year will become one in 20 year.
speaker-1: But it's also about the time period. These are lifetimes. So, I I sincerely doubt I'll live to 100. And if I do, blimey, I'll be a real pain in the side of somebody for some time. But 33 years, I mean, I've already done that, which is good. But these are events that we will see regularly now. It's not like never experienced in my life. It's like, ah, I remember this happening 10, 15 years ago, 20, 30 years ago.
speaker-2: Yeah. Get rid of you by then, Matt.
speaker-1: You're quite right. But as you ratchet up the temperature dial and the sort of gas mark on the oven, it's going to become more frequent.
speaker-2: Yeah, and I think there is an element here of, know, we've not had a great spring so far until this point. So it has been like, well, we've been really waiting for that good weather. But I was out cycling over the weekend and stopped off in a cafe, kind of in the middle of nowhere in a lovely village. I was, you know, had really nice plenty of outdoor seating and absolutely no shade whatsoever. And so initially lots of people sat outside and they migrated indoors because it was just so hot. And then a couple of other cyclists arrived and like me, they'd been out on the bikes for about six hours. They'd been out in that sun for a long time and they sat in the sun for another hour and it's like just cooking themselves.
speaker-1: I know you're a keen sports person. I know you like your tennis, your cycling, right. Ditto. Also, I like my football. What is interesting is sport is one of, I'd say the few outlets that does cover extreme weather. It's not so much climate, but the French Open, like, has just been so on this. Tour de France, often, you you see riders with heat exhaustion. Football, the World Cup, right? Every, every World Cup, they seem to put it in hotter and hotter places, right? We've had it in the Middle East, we've got it in America, even in Mexico, right? We're gonna see some really crazy temperatures. I think, and I think we've said this before on the pod, there's a real opportunity here to educate people a little bit more about why we're experiencing these temperatures through sport, and also what the implications of that are.
speaker-2: Yeah. I mean, if you follow cycling, or have you ever been to the velodrome? The velodrome is kept ⁓ quite, it's very toasty in there. have to go dress for the Bahamas or something, because it's really warm, but it's kept a constant temperature to allow you for that kind of elite performance. But yeah, if you start messing with that temperature gets too much, then yeah, you need to delay sessions. know, we do see that in sport, you're right. And that is, people really care about sport. So that's a way to engage.
speaker-1: And how we adapt to that. You know, there's, there's a whole piece here about climate adaptation, which I think, you know, we've got a pretty cool episode coming up on, which you're to speak to a little bit more in a moment. ⁓ but I know how to adapt to sport to climate, but also when I say it's not just elite people, it's the people going for run in the morning or the evening and having to, bring it forward or push it back. I'm playing football this evening. ⁓ it just seems something buzz on my phone saying, instead of sevens tonight, lads will have eights cause it's going to be hot. It's really interesting how people pivot around.
speaker-2: So these things are kind of adapting our daily lives and our daily routines. And actually it's great that your footy friends are thinking like that.
speaker-1: I think they're also just lazy to be honest, and I include myself in that. It's less running, isn't it? They say the same thing in January.
speaker-2: tens. But yeah, mean, our long time listeners will might remember an episode we did not too long ago. I think it might have been episode 109, but I'm not going to claim that. I'm not going to claim that I remember the episode numbers.
speaker-1: laughing aside why not 110 I think it was.
speaker-2: Was it 110? Oh, well done. And that was around climate adaptation. And it was really to encourage and support our listeners to imagine what an adapted street looks like, an adapted home looks like, and think about adaptation practices. It's not just about items. It's not just about air conditioning. It's about what you do before you need that. closing your windows and closing your curtains. That's what I did before I left for work this morning. keeping the heat out, keeping the sun out. so these kind of, whether that's about turning your fives or sevens into eights for football, whether it's about actually planting things, planting trees to have dappled shade cover around your tennis courts, whatever it is, know, if it's about not sitting outside in the baking heat when you've been on the bike for six hours already that day, there are some of these things, it's not just about items and objects and so on, it's also just about how we approach.
speaker-1: change. And people adapting, you know, I remember reading something a little while back. There's various estimates. It's quite difficult to know how many people have air con in their homes because, you know, people can just have standalone little systems. You don't need to necessarily register these things to any power. they don't have to tell big brother that you've got an air conditioning unit, know, your shop or whatever. Estimates of about four million households in the UK. Be interesting to see what that was 10, 20 years ago. Yeah. But I just wonder whether you wanted to say a couple of words about our next episode before we get into this one, just as a little teaser to our guests to make sure they dial in next.
speaker-2: Yeah, So in a couple of weeks time, one of our next episodes will be hearing from Professor Chris White, who is an expert on climate hazards. And particularly, we're going to be learning from him and hearing a bit more about hazard stacking. So that's what happens when multiple hazards are occurring at the same time. And whether we're talking about kind of invest power law of impact or whether we're talking about just simple additions or sums and actually, most importantly for our listeners and probably to ourselves as well, it's about turning these conceptual ideas, not ideas, but these conceptual ⁓ information into, okay, what does that mean in day-to-day lives? Because there will be communities all across Scotland who will be, or have experienced, or are set to be experiencing more of climate hazard stacking.
speaker-1: That's a really interesting point. It's like converting some of this quite science fiction into something where people can envisage what the situation might be in 10 years time and to start planning accordingly. mean, like, you know, in terms of home renovations and often I'm putting insulation in not just to keep the cold out in winter, but to keep the heat out in summer. But yeah. Chris, bringing him along to talk about hazard stacking, you know, this is frightening stuff. But we will no doubt put a constructive, positive, optimistic spin on this.
speaker-2: Yeah, pragmatic, action based, 100%.
speaker-1: That's it. Even if it's just a prepper's guide to getting the heck out of there and what to do, you know, if it all...
speaker-2: reassuring that actually sometimes that's okay. Like actually we might have been experiencing multiple hazards hacking for decades or much longer as humans we've adapted. So I want to know kind of what to what extent is this part of our normal day-to-day life in the UK or elsewhere? We've got other things on its way so kind of what does this mean in terms of knowing what's coming and planning accordingly but actually how much of that is stuff that we're used to day-to-day?
speaker-1: Fantastic. So obviously climate adaptation, big part of Battle of the Gates, climate change, big part of what we do in terms of covering off topics here on Local Zero. But today's much more about mitigation and we're talking about the grid. We're talking about the national grid as we know it in the UK, but the electricity grid, transmission, distribution. This is all about getting power from where it's generated to where it's needed. And that's in terms of consumption and demand. Now, Jen, I came across a little sort of tidbit when I was putting the proposal together about community impacts from the grid and benefits associated with it. Did you know? I think you do know because you may have even told me this tidbit actually. The source of See if you remember the information you gave me. So did you know that between 2023 and 2030, seven year period, National Grid expect that we will need to build five times more transmission lines than we did in the last 30 years. Bit complicated, bit difficult to understand. But what it's saying is we need to really, really, really hit the accelerator pedal hard in terms of building out these lines. Some of this will be new lines in terms of lines where there are not existing lines. Some of these will be lines where we're looking to reinforce existing lines. ⁓ And this is going to be really, really disruptive to many, many people who are maybe not necessarily next to these things already.
speaker-2: Yeah.
speaker-1: or have a line outside which they're quite used to which is going to significantly
speaker-2: Yeah, and actually, you know, we're just talking about the lines themselves. I mean, I'm also wondering how many times you can say lines in a two minute clip of Local Zero. Pylons. Pylons, yeah. It's not just to mention those though, because at the end of those is power generation infrastructure. So we're not just talking about these lines. I mean, we are today, but we also, it's not that the construction is limited there or the change or disruption. It's kind of... these things come hand in hand with other developments. And that's what's really key. The other thing though, Matt, it's really hard to really make sense of that stat without knowing how much we've built in the last 30 years. So how are we starting from zero? Probably not. We've got a good network that serves most of our needs. There is something there though around kind of is that even possible in that you just had a seven year period and isn't it that the planning, I knew that the planning timelines for major infrastructure are typically longer than that.
speaker-1: Well, it's all part of this big push towards clean power 2030. And as you say, it's all got to be sequenced correctly. So you're looking to get your generation in, then you need to ensure that you've got your transmission lines. That's not just transmission. You've got your... substations, you've got to then, you know, step it up, step it down. You've got to go from transmission to distribution lines along there somewhere. You've probably got some storage, you you might have some pump hydro battery electric storage. I mean, this is another big, big development that people have get their heads around. And crucially, ⁓ to get this stuff built, you need to go through a statutory process in terms of planning. And then there will be a whole opportunity for the general public, local communities who are affected by this to contest what has been proposed. And this can lead to massive delays. So you're quite right. You know, if there is big pushback, there are processes there that may slow things down and essentially make it more expensive to companies to build out. So it could be if we don't do this right, if we don't engage with communities and make sure that they feel comfortable with the infrastructure that's going in and where it's going in, we may, it may put our net zero targets, climate targets.
speaker-2: at risk. But it's a classic trade-offs as well though, right? Because it's like, well, you've got maybe quite localized disruption for what is a nationally required infrastructure. this kind of this scale of, who pays and who gains? This is age old, you know, we've talked about this before, ⁓ but it's really very pressing right now with this sort of development that we're seeing. And also communities feeling that, they've already had a lot of change and, know, well, how much more do they need to take? it is... engaging in these processes is exhausting. So what are we doing to make that easier and to improve that process for all parties? I'm really interested to hear about that from our guest today.
speaker-1: Absolutely. Well, I think now is a good time to bring them in.
speaker-2: Yeah, let's bring them in.
speaker-3: Hi, I'm Claire and I'm the Scotland lead for a non-profit media organisation called Local Storytelling Exchange.
speaker-0: Hi, I'm David. former executive director at Sustainability First and a fellow of the Institute for Sustainability and Environmental Professionals.
speaker-2: Great to have you both here. Matt and I have got some questions for you, but I just thought you two know each other and I wondered if you wanted to just tell us a little bit about how you know each other and how you've worked together. So Claire, did you want to tackle that first?
speaker-3: Yeah, I guess over the past year we've been working together from each side of a screen jointly on a project. ⁓ my role at Local Storytelling Exchange ⁓ is about listening and hearing stories. And our outcome of the project was what we're calling a deep dive called Dispatches from the Grid Front Line. ⁓ Dave David can talk through what his element of the project was, but essentially there were two outcomes. There was a sort of public and sector facing outcome, which was a as I say, a deep dive into what we're hearing and seeing and feeling around the group.grode. And then there was an industry focused output, which perhaps Dave, you could talk to us about.
speaker-0: Yeah, so one of our trustees at Sustainability First, Lucy Holdaway, is at Local Storage and Exchange. She brought us as organisations together at the start of this project. And as Claire's just said, there's a public facing side to this. And then there was an industry focus side. the role that Sustainability First plays is to be that critical friend to industry, to the regulators, so OFGEM in this case, and to central government, and to try to bring to life the voices of communities and in particular consumers that might not get otherwise heard during policy development and the politics of policy development.
speaker-1: project that you're referring to is about dispatches from the grid frontline. What a fantastic name whoever came up with it. And so maybe before we get into what you're hearing from the front lines and what we do about it, I just wondered if one of you could maybe speak to the scale and the breadth of the UK's grid expansion. It's something that is regularly on the front pages. It's something that's all over the social media, Facebook groups. It's something that certain political parties
speaker-2: Yeah, it's fantastic.
speaker-1: rightly and or wrongly will pick up and put front and centre in manifesto. So I wonder David, would you like to maybe speak to that first and then we'll go to Claire.
speaker-0: Yeah, so this is absolutely huge. You know, we're talking about tens of billions of pounds. This is the biggest change to our energy system in generations. And so I suppose we shouldn't be surprised to see that there is controversy that lurks in amongst ⁓ communities who are at the front line of the impact of these changes. And this is all about this kind of this desire to move at such a pace and scale to tackle climate change, which absolutely is the thing that we should be trying to do. But how we do it is what's really, I think, the point of contention and how we're doing it with or to people is really where the biggest rub is with this project.
speaker-1: I'm clear anything you'd like to add.
speaker-3: Yeah, I I had literally written down it's big. I think there was a there was a quote from Professor Paul DeLeo from Robert Gordon Unian Aberdeen who said, We're seeing the biggest plumbing, rewiring and repurposing of our energy system for generations, as David said. So it was massive. But it's also necessary. And I think ⁓ it's about, you know, any kind of infrastructure needs to be updated and maintained. And this is the moment at which
speaker-1: How big?
speaker-3: We're doing it for lots of reasons and we'll come on to that. But you know, there's there's there's more than one reason why we're doing this and why we're doing it now. And what we're seeing in the headlines and in the papers and so forth is, I guess, an element of that. It's it's a backlash from people who are saying, Hang on a minute, what's happening here? I don't understand it. It doesn't look nice. Why is it in my back garden, my backfield? Why is it in my village? Why is no one listening to us fundamentally? But we can dig into that. A bit more later. So yeah, it's big, it's noticeable and it's gonna get bigger.
speaker-2: Well, I'm really interested to then pick up exactly what you're just touching on Claire. Why are we expanding or bolstering our grid at this time? presumably we have been maintaining and doing some things. It's not like we're very good at this sometimes. It's building something and then not maintaining it. But presumably we've been doing that. But what is it that's happening at this point or has there been a tipping point in recent years? And when was that and what is it?
speaker-3: ⁓ I'll defer back to you after David because you're the tech expert. But I I guess in terms of the headlines, yes, there has been an element of underinvestment, but also the lack of kind of commitment to grasp the nettle, I suppose, in terms of what's needed to be done with the grid. So that's one thing. Also, we're gonna be using by twenty fifty twice as much electricity as we are today, many sources say. And that that's partly because we use a lot of stuff. We used to have our phones that we need to charge. A lot of us now have electric cars, more we'll do, we're electrifying our heating. You know, we have all sorts of ways that we y live our daily lives that we need electricity for. And also the way we get our electricity is different now and and will be increasingly different. You know, you'll know the kind of big old cooling towers from coal power stations that you see around Nottinghamshire and the Midlands and so forth. They're kind of a relic of the past now, which is good. We've moved on from coal fired power, which is not great for the planet. But it's different now. So the power is no longer kind of close to to the big urban centres. It tends at the moment to be generated offshore, offshore wind, or ⁓ where there's lots of wind fundamentally in the Highlands of Scotland. So we need to get that power to where people need it.
speaker-1: Yeah, I always think a great example of that. And hopefully this registers to the international listener as well. It's Bassie Power Station. know, if you're in London along the Thames and you're like, Ooh, blimey, what's that? It captures exactly what you're saying instead of having, you know, wind turbine in Caithness or Sutherland on the far northern reaches of Scotland. David.
speaker-0: Yeah, so I suppose it's three big things that happening and all converging together at the same time. The first is that we are accelerating as a nation, that clean generation, that need for us to generate energy from clean sources. So wind being the most obvious on a windy island off the edge of Europe and particularly offshore wind. But that's not where we live. And so we need to bring it from wherever we've generated to where we need it. The second is that electrification. So if we are going to decarbonize our energy system and move off coal and away from gas or the current flavor of gas that's being used and which over 80 % of us are using gas for heating, the demand that's expected for us to shift how we're using energy is going to rise significantly too for heat, for transport, as well as the other things that we're already using it for. And then the third is that we need to ensure that we still got the same reliability for this national grid, which doesn't see the lights go out and keep the cost manageable. yet we've got a system where the demand is growing and yet the system is bursting at the seams. It's unable to take the congestion of the amount of energy that we need now and into the future to deliver that decarbonised, highly electrified system. And so that's why it's this kind of perfect storm. We have to have huge tens of millions of pounds of extra investment to make this grid to increase the capacity for us to be able to then generate at a scale that we've never done before because our demands for that energy are becoming even greedier, like we need more of that clean energy.
speaker-1: maybe then shining the spotlight on communities and at the local level. And I think it's always a useful thing to do to listeners, because I think everybody can imagine being in their home, getting a letter through the door, Scottish Boundary Networks or SSCN or any other electricity network provider planning permission. We are looking to put a transmission line in a mile down the road. And with that in mind, what level, what...
speaker-0: It's hot.
speaker-1: type of disruption is this causing communities across the UK? And I should say, I think that's framed very negatively. It could be some real benefits associated with this and it could be your project may have uncovered a lot of positivity around this, but how is it being felt at the local level? Claire, would you like to begin with that?
speaker-3: Yeah, I guess just to sort of we mentioned a bit about the project in the introduction, but but the sort of three ways in which we worked throughout the year of this this deep dive project was we we kind of sent out traditional journalists to areas along the east coast of of the UK where the Great Group Upgrade was happening and we did the kind of traditional journalism trying to speak to people about the ins and outs. We did focus group work with more in common, which were your standard focus groups very carefully selected. groups of people along the line of the the East Coast upgrade. But we also ⁓ the work we did specifically with with David at Sustainability First was much more in depth, much more kind of a deliberative process over a course of I believe it was six ⁓ kind of citizens panel sessions. So we it was just to emphasize we we kind of delved into this in a really, really kind of extended and deep way. On to answer your question, the I guess for me, three main things and disruption's not not not just physical. And you're right, it is a negative framing, which we found and we'll come back to about, you know, there are different ways of looking at this and there are different opinions out there. But really in kind of meeting people both out in their communities ⁓ and through the citizens panel, there's so there's a physical disruption. ⁓ construction works, lorries coming down narrow country roads, you know, the the the physicality of building this transmission infrastructure. or the expected physical impact. There's a what they a lot of people call the cumulative impact. So the sense that there are multiple planning proposals, possibly multiple letters through the door from different people, from different organizations on top of one another and no sense of join up. And then there's actually the mental health impact. It's a type of disruption where a lot of people we met were really struggling. Because it's stressful, 'cause they don't know what's happening, they don't know where it's coming from, they don't know how many there are, they don't know what it's gonna mean, they don't know why it's happening, or they they they feel it's not the right thing to happen. So there's some very real, both physical and I guess psychological elements of disruption there.
speaker-0: to add to that, that it's possible to say, you you can ask anybody anything and say, well, what would you feel if, if this were to happen on your doorstep? Firstly, there's, there's instant bias, isn't it? If we're being asked a question, then we're like, ⁓ what's the right thing to say? So that might skew you towards saying, well, absolutely, we've got to tackle climate change and absolutely we should be using more renewable energy. And I hear and believe that over the long term, that's going to make our bills cheaper too. So we're protecting the planet and it's good for my pocket. brilliant, I'd be happy and I'd be willing to accept that disruption that Claire's just described, until maybe it does actually land at the feet of your own doormat. And then what? Well, there is that sense of, potentially, of mental health harm in multiple ways, because of an uncertainty, because of a disempowerment, because what is this going to do to me? Short term, yes, there's that disruption of construction. Longer term, there may be if you own your own home, then you're losing value in your property. You could be losing that visual amenity value when you've gone out to walk in the hills surrounding your town or village. So that kind of sense of urbanization from a rural place. All of these things are cumulative and there is essentially a planning system which is failing everybody. So instead of it being a listening exercise, it's a fait accompli consultation process. And it's easy to see through that. You don't need to be a big cynic to say, I see that somebody is ticking a box through this process. To overcome that for something like this for a transmission owner like National Grid or Scottish Power or Scottish and Southern Electric, they need to go way above and beyond the compliance minimums that are required of them. And yet community benefit, the funds for these types of almost compensation are voluntary. So the decision from central government has been These companies will do the right thing because it's the right thing for them to do. And I think that actually sends the wrong signal and wrong message to these communities in the first instance. It should be mandated. It should be legally obliged for them to have to fund to improve places with those communities. And there should be a huge amount of listening going on. You know, we talk communication and often it's quick to jump to broadcast and assume that that's all that we need to do. We just need to do that really, really well. All we really need to do really well is sit quiet and listen.
speaker-3: Hundred percent. Active listening and hearing and acting and feeding back. That was another big thing we found. Don't just listen, take it away, tell the come back and say what you've heard and what you will or will not do about it, but at least you've heard it, you know.
speaker-2: active listening. I remember in a social impact assessment theory, the understanding that even rumour has social impact. Rumour, so a van, ⁓ a company van turning up in a rural place knowing that this system is coming down the line, the very occurrence of that van in that place will be causing a rumour that can then bring social impacts. And so actually you don't have to do specifically anything sometimes to already have this cascade of impacts. I think then actually, so that's really helpful. What I'm hearing here that I think would be really, also really helpful to maybe unpack and expand on is, we're talking about a national grid infrastructure program. So a national led, overseen in some way, I'm assuming, grid infrastructure and improvement program. So why is it that somebody might have multiple letters from different organizations? landing on their map if this is a national program that is being overseen and coordinated in some way. Is that what's happening in reality in these places and how does that come to be? Perhaps David, I'll go to you.
speaker-0: Yeah, so what we might see in this, this is, it may sound anecdotal, but it's from hearing from these communities that we brought together for this listening exercise through the derivative engagement process. So these were 45 people that we recruited through a sortition process, which is like a civil lottery process that says, you get a different letter on your door net. We're going to pay you for your time and to hear your opinions. And we're going to get kind of a great, eclectic mix of people from lots of different backgrounds. So there's a microcosm of society or at least of these communities that are most impacted. And in doing that, we listened ⁓ intently to what was being said. One of the things that we were hearing was that in some places, the field, let's kind of picture the field in our mind, there are lots of ideas for that field, which aren't just for that field to remain a field. It could be that it's a solar farm ⁓ idea. It could be, and it could be pre-planning. It could be that it's... up as a potential space for housing development. It could be that it's up for national grid infrastructure, at least partially, or that it's being impacted by it. It could be that it's a new reservoir or other major infrastructure project. It could be that it's near HS2 or 3 or 4 or whatever number we might be working on next. So even though they may be a joined up decision process for energy infrastructure, That is through a very messy, not yet joined up national plan for how we develop all infrastructure. then if you do look at the energy system itself, yes, we are talking about one big transmission owner, but we also having huge changes in the sector itself to try to accommodate making these changes. So bits of national grid kind of being moved out of themselves to turn into something different and... a national energy system operator and the owners are no longer owners, they're operators, etc. All of this is happening at the same time. So you can see why, like you go back to the rumour thing of seeing that kind of UK Power Networks van or whatever it might be that's in front of you being a, ⁓ why are they here? What are they doing? Or the rumour is that we're about to have, you know, a million pylons or whatever it might be. That is going to cause that kind of sense of disempowerment and uncertainty and nervousness. And, and, and that's what I think we're, we're really missing from, from this project and from all projects of all scales. How do communities get not just a voice, but a say in what goes where and what it looks like and what impact that has.
speaker-1: So just with that in mind, something you said a moment ago, Claire, that it's not a one size fits all, not necessarily all communities are responding in the same way. You obviously found some common themes and we'll put all the in the show notes here. We'll put a link to the report you mentioned and also the kind of deep dive interactive scrolling website, which is fantastic that you've pulled together. But just maybe Claire, any reflections on how different communities or different members of singular communities are reacting differently or the same to this disruption? Are you seeing differences? Because you looked across quite a number of areas, right?
speaker-3: Totally. So we've got storytellers we call ourselves storytellers essentially, journalists all up and down from like we've got somebody in East Anglia covering kind of Suffolk, round that area. We've got someone in Teaside, Humber, Aberdeenshire, all over. ⁓ so we're we're seeing differences up and down the country, but actually we're seeing differences in the type of response to this kind of development. And it's not all bad. I think that's the most important thing. We we've just talked quite a lot about the real kind of concerns around this that people are feeling, but they are not the only voices. And I think the biggest thing we've found through this process is that there is nuance ⁓ and there is room for ambition, there's room for thinking differently, and there's certainly room for thinking flexibly about what what's happening here in terms of the good upgrade. I suppose two points to your point, Jen, about that accumulation. You know, a lot communities we've spoken to, they don't necessarily differentiate between, ⁓ this is a transmission project, this is a generation project, especially in Scotland, when a lot of this has been going on for years, you know. So I think that's important to state. ⁓ and it's an example of a community that we've done a lot of work with that's featured in our work in East Lamure, who are taking a slightly different approach. So they're at the moment, last time we spoke to them, they're it's a They're facing a raft of around 14 separate development applications. So that includes transmission infrastructure, you know, that there's onshoring of ⁓ power lines from the North Sea, but it also includes wind, potentially solar. But to them it's all part of the same picture. It's all energy, right? ⁓ So they they're really interesting because they decided, right, we're getting all these letters on the doormat, all from different people. We don't know what's going on and where, how. ⁓ so we're gonna get them together. So the chair of their community council, who's a fantastic guy, Chris Bruce, said, Look, we're gonna get you all in a room, you're gonna get all together at one time and we're gonna ask you what's going on, which is what they did. ⁓ and that really, really helped, and it put in motion a process of dialogue that has been much more fruitful. ⁓ people know what's coming, people are able to ask the questions, and crucially on the side of the developers and the transmission operators that are willing players who are part of that as well. So it already feels ⁓ for them more, I suppose, acceptable to their community in terms of what's happening because they're much better informed fundamentally and they have a stake. So they have ⁓ set up an organisation called the East Lamanure Energy Projects Partnership, which has a lead officer. Which is a brilliant example she's called Beth, ⁓ of of how it could be done in certain places where there's one key person that in the middle of the community, the local council, the transmission operators, the developers who is ensuring there's a line of dialogue there. So I think that shows that not all communities are the same, and even within those communities there's definitely room for for shifts. Have a look at the video, but there's one woman, Barbara, who really struck me when we went out and filmed And she was saying she she'd bought a steading in in Innerwick, which is a lovely little village in in East Lamure, just outside Dunbar. She went there for peace and quiet, she's retired. She heard a substation was getting built outside like across the road. And at first she was like, ⁓ that doesn't sound good. ⁓ I don't want a substation across the road and then this this kind of communication work and dialogue work started happening with the community council and she gradually learned more about what was happening. And why it was happening crucially. And she said, Well, you know, maybe maybe there's something positive we can get out of this. And now she feels that she's accepting of the process because she can see that the other things that will come with that, whether that's nature regeneration work in the area because of the community benefits, whether that's a heat network that they're looking at with the local council, she feels part of that process.
speaker-2: Let me just dig into that a little bit more then and hear David, if there's anything else you'd like to expand on because I think that's really interesting hearing what sort of positives that we set out with a slightly negative frame. Let's talk about those positives then. what, as well as agency and in this case in the East Lanham Muir area, we've got communities coordinating a forum essentially on their own terms and that is... incredibly empowering to do that and to be listened to and so on, but actually beyond that in terms of material benefit to a community, what sort of thing are we talking about?
speaker-0: Yeah, this, I mean, it feels like the kind of antidote to the first part of our conversation, doesn't it? Where there's this sense of disempowerment and uncertainty. And we just heard about how local population have taken that power back into their own hands to, coordinate and convene, ⁓ to get to grips with and understand what's happening. And, and that very much kind of the power to the people, pardon the pun, is, is a bit of, of what we're seeing, kind of because of the changing needs of how... we develop power and how we make use of it, we can continue to just feel like we're having it done to and at us, or we can try to engage with the organizations and the stakeholders around that decision making to get to grips with what's happening and to make sure that at least you're making the most out of that kind of short term disruption and to really get a sense of clarity of what's happening and why and where and how and all of those things. We did see within some of the work that ⁓ Rachel Cox-Coon, a fantastic academic who was on this project with us too, kind of looked at with a process that had a whole host of statements called a Q-Sort. There's a whole host of statements about this system and people were forced on their own, forced to make the decision about which of these statements they felt most strongly about and then which two statements they may feel kind of second most strongly about until a pyramid of statements was was made and then all of those came back into Rachel to look at and then a kind of quant analysis of that qualitative data came through and it showed that there was a group of people that, and remember this is from people across England and Scotland, communities that either are or are about to have the impact of these major infrastructure projects happening to or with them. The first was power to the people. was the communities should always be offered a chance to own a part of grid infrastructure, that cost of compensating households and making community benefit payments work needs to be at kind of fair levels and, an engaging way for people to have skin in the game. The second group was a kind of pressing reasons to act as that kind of, it's both the right on climate activists or those who really do feel that strong sense of principles based for nature, for climate action, and would so strongly agree to those. sentiments that even when it is happening and having possibly some detrimental impact to themselves or their own lives still believe that it's the right thing for us to do. Then there's property pragmatists who say essentially this is a transactional thing, you're doing something, it's having an impact on me, I want to be compensated for that. And the fourth is this kind of strong sense of developer distrust that it doesn't matter what you say or do next, we just don't believe that the government knows best or that these big companies know best. And ⁓ we think that there should be regulations to ensure that existing funding for things like libraries and youth clubs and other things cannot be withdrawn from community benefit when new money is awarded. So this needs to be different. has to be additional. It can't be just a back door to funding the same things that we've already wanted. in these places. I'm a huge optimist and I think you have to be in this kind of line of work. So I like to think about a positive what if. So what if I could be a proactive consumer? What if I could produce energy that meets my needs and maybe more than I need? And what if I get paid for making that energy that somebody else, a neighbour might make use of? And what positive impact might that have at the other end of this huge change to the decarbonisation job of our energy system? Does that mean that there are fewer wind turbines offshore because I've met more of my needs where I need that energy and I've been able to make energy available to others. And so there may be a rebalancing. And I think what we've seen with the example that Claire was using in Scotland is, is a hint of that. It's a kind of another spotlight on actually there are lots of things we can do here. we need to be pragmatic whilst we're thinking about some of these, you know, really hard to digest and complicated kind of trade-offs that happening. And we never asked for them to happen, but here we are, you know, we, the people who are on, the planet right now, we didn't make these decisions to industrialize the country that we're in. went through industrialization and, and yet we know that the impacts of that and the impacts that we're still having today do have an impact on future generations. So we know we have to act as well. And unfortunately it is uncomfortable and there are trade-offs and there are losers as well as winners, but we have to be pragmatic to be able to ensure that we do have a truly sustainable. Society. So-
speaker-1: with all that in mind, and there is quite a lot to keep in mind here. I'm just wondering what you both think and feel about where we're at and what we need to do next. What do we do with all of this, these insights that you've been able to so usefully capture? I think there's pieces here about trust and legitimacy, perceived legitimacy of these organisations that you've, that's come out of the... ⁓ research is about how you engage with and enable participation of communities. There's a piece there about how you compensate and share the benefits of that. might be payments, it might be a share of ownership. There's a lot here. So in a couple of minutes, you won't be able to provide the guiding light, but there's just a couple of things we can take away. What should listeners do with this?
speaker-0: apologies for taking more airspace but I'd love to go first with this because the big thing that we tried to get and we did, we secured public commitment from all three of the transmission owners in owning a set of principles for effective engagement with communities through community benefit funds and there were five things that we said these derived from those deliberative engagement and kind of conversations with people affected. The five things are transparency, listening and involving communities, empowering people locally, having a meaningful lasting impact and fairness. And those were the things that mattered most above all else. And those were the things that we took at Sustainability First to the transmission owners and said, if you gave that transparency, if you showed that listening and engagement of communities in effective communication, and enabled empowered communities to make decisions removing barriers, hearing their voices, creating space for communities to share their own hopes and aspirations for their own places, how they're going to shape their neighborhoods. And you show that lasting impact and you do that fairly minimizing disruption, sharing the benefits equitably, then you may well find that there is more of the Islam and your kind of experience across the whole of the UK where the the most impact for these grid developments is coming.
speaker-1: It clear.
speaker-3: Yeah, a hundred percent. I I I think, you know, that that is certainly the aim and like David, I'm an optimist. ⁓ I guess from the sort of public facing and the the media point of view is which is the world in which I'm working. You said at the start of the the chat around the headlines, all the kind of big headlines we're seeing about people being angry about pylons and such like. I suppose my big takeaway was w ha and I've spoken about this at other events, is how can we as communicators and journalists and and and people working with a voice, how can we make that space for all voices to be heard? How can we make just as David is doing within the industry, it's is how can we make sure that that there is that space for nuance? There are many people out there who can hold two p opinions at once and can think about the flexibility. We need to give credit to ordinary people to be intelligent enough to to go along a journey with this and and sometimes take that off with the smooth. So I think my big takeaway would would be to be appreciate that, maybe look a little bit further and listen to people, don't dismiss people, I think. If we can stop political figures using the terms NIMBY and blocker, that would also be good.
speaker-2: Yeah, would very much. Thank you. think that's fantastic. And the other thing that I'm really hearing from the both of you as well is to not go in assuming that blank canvas or like that nothing has happened here before. ⁓ And I think that, you know, we have talked about this before, but it's still very, very true. we talk about it because it's true. It's important that there are other things happening in these communities. are other activities going on. And we need to be respectful of that. So it's amazing to hear your examples of stories that you were hearing of ⁓ efforts to bring those forums together, not just as one independent project doing and abiding by those principles, David, that you spoke about, ⁓ but as a collective. ⁓ And that's that to me, that's really come out of the conversation I've been hearing from you both as well.
speaker-1: And maybe just a thank you to you both, not just for your time today, but for the project in general. I think bringing to bear some of the research and the rigor, the deliberative methods is really important. But then that is a foundation for Claire for the storytelling exchange to then present that story in this rich and textured manner, this nuanced manner. And in a highly, highly really accessible 21st century manner where, you know, I'm able to click and listen and play and watch and That I think is sorely missing. And I think actually a lack of that has fed into this polarization around these issues. So bravo, well done. Keep up the good work. We'll make sure we got a link for listeners in there. We'd love to have you both along again soon to hear a little bit more about how this works progressing. Okay, till next time. Thanks.
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