How do we win local support for renewable energy projects?
Opposition to renewable energy is growing. Blocked permits, local protests, rural backlash – the headlines are multiplying. And they point to a bottleneck that has nothing to do with technology or cost.
It is acceptance.
Every turbine and every solar park depends on access to land. And land is where people live, work, and care deeply about what happens next. When new infrastructure arrives without dialogue or shared benefit, resistance is not irrational – it is predictable.
But it is also avoidable.
In the latest episode of Sound of Green, we sit down with three voices at the heart of this challenge to explore what it actually takes to build local support for renewable energy – and why it may be just as important as the technologies themselves.
Mogens Hagelskjær, Programme Director for Renewables at Andel, shares how Denmark's largest cooperatively owned energy company has learned that early, honest dialogue outweighs financial compensation – and how inviting people to experience life next to a wind turbine first-hand proved far more powerful than any traditional campaign.
Stephan Krabsen, Vice-President of Energy Communities Denmark and co-founder of Energy Community Avedøre, takes us inside Denmark's first legally recognised energy community, where housing associations, schools, and local government produce and share renewable energy together – turning everyday citizens into engaged energy stakeholders who push for more, not less.
Chris Vrettos, Senior Policy Advisor at REScoop EU, places these local experiences in a European context, explaining how decades of energy market liberalisation have fuelled public mistrust – and why new EU policy is now moving local benefit-sharing from a nice-to-have to a structural requirement.
Together, their insights make a compelling case for why local acceptance matters beyond climate policy. Distributed, locally owned renewable energy is inherently more resilient – and in a world where energy dependence remains a geopolitical vulnerability, building systems that people actively shape is not just good practice. It is strategic.
Because trust, it turns out, is not a soft factor. It is critical infrastructure.
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