The Role of Public Confidence in Energy Policy and Regulation

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The Role of Public Confidence in
Energy Policy and Regulation:
Elephants, Horses and Sitting Ducks
Professor Monica Gattinger, Chair, Positive Energy
Director, Institute for Science, Society and Policy

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Presentation Overview
Context
• Brave New World of Energy
– Energy policy and regulation increasingly complex
– Energy development increasingly contentious
• The Positive Energy project
Public Confidence
• Drivers
• The diagnostique: why now?
– Elephants, Horses and Sitting Ducks
• The prescription: how to strengthen public confidence

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Brave New World of Energy
Energy Policy and Regulation
Increasingly Complex
– Governments in search of ‘holy grail’ of
energy policy/regulation
• Identifying the appropriate balance points
between four imperatives: market,
environment, security and social
acceptance/support

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The Brave New World of Energy
Politics of energy increasingly fierce and
polarized
– From NIMBY to BANANA & principled opposition
– Not just fossil fuels
Can we afford to go on this way?
– Costly: money/time going into projects
– Deteriorating relationships
– Capital flight / lost economic & environmental
opportunities

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Positive Energy
Uses convening power of the university
to bring together key energy players to
strengthen public confidence
– Policy-makers, regulators, industry, environmental
NGOs, Indigenous groups, academia
Undertakes solution-oriented applied
evidence-based research to inform
dialogue and action

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What Drives Public Confidence?
Public
Confidence
Governments:
Policy and
Regulation
Society:
NGOs,
communities,
neighbours
Industry:
Performance

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Public Confidence: Why Now?
Social /
Value
Change
Policy
Gaps
Energy
decision-
making
processes
Project
proponent
practices

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The Horses: Social & Value Change
Fundamental changes in postwar period
- Decline of trust in institutions and deference to
authority/expertise
• consequence: whither evidence-based decision-making
and credibility of public authorities to take unbiased
decisions?
- Desire for greater public involvement in decisions
• tension between participatory & rep’ve democracy
- Shift from communitarian to individual values
• Prioritizes individual/local over group/national interests

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The Horses: Social & Value Change
- Rise of anti-corporate/big business/fossil fuel values
• Preference for small-scale locally owned renewable
- Decline in risk tolerance
• Perceptions of risk can trump realities of risk; risk/benefit
rather than cost/benefit
We aren’t in (1950s) Kansas anymore:
the horses have left the barn

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The Elephants: Policy Gaps
Many elephants in many rooms
- Climate change: absence of forums/action
• Playing out in energy decision-making processes
- Indigenous concerns / Reconciliation
- Many concerns beyond energy playing out in energy
decision-making
- Lack of mechanisms to address cumulative effects
or to plan regionally
• Playing out in regulatory process for individual projects

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Sitting Ducks: Energy Decision Processes
Unresolved
Policy Issues
Played out in
policy/reg’y
processes
Reduce
public
confidence

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The Sitting Ducks
Energy policy & regulatory decision-
making processes
- Regulatory processes critiqued on all these lines;
regulators’ responses may exacerbate the problem
- Where project decision-making brought to political
level, leaders’ responses may undermine
confidence in regulatory processes and privilege
short term over long term imperatives

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Who Cares? Who Should Care?
• Democracies with large energy resource bases
and ambitious targets for energy transition
• Solutions require involvement of ministries/policy
sectors beyond energy
• Need to be willing to ask – and answer – the
tough questions
• Getting energy governance right will unlock
economic and social opportunities, and help
countries move to a cleaner energy future

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What to do?
Importance of getting diagnosis/solutions right
Accept the horses
- Can’t turn back the clock on social and value change
- Governments can’t act unilaterally but need to
balance listening/acting
Befriend the elephants
– Address gaps: climate, reconciliation, cumulative/
regional effects
– Ask & answer tough questions: how do we move from
the ‘what’ to the ‘how’ on climate?

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What to do?
Get the ducks back on their feet
– Strengthen confidence in energy decision-making:
• Substance: fairness, evidence-based decision-
making
• Process: access, trust in evidence, capacity,
representation, political/regulatory interface
Opportunity for Canada (and North America) to
move from bleeding edge to leading edge of
public confidence

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www.uottawa.ca/positive-
energy