Miles Scott-Brown and Barry Dalal-Clayton, both seasoned SEA experts and IAIA members, chat with IAIA CEO Gary Baker about their work researching, collecting, and compiling data and expertise for this guide. They discuss the history and global uptake of SEA, emphasizing its value for governments and its role in ensuring sustainable outcomes in renewable energy projects. Challenges surrounding its use and uptake are also addressed.
Gary Baker, IAIA CEO: I'm here today to talk about a new report that IAIA is releasing called “Improved Decision Making for the Energy Transition: Guidance for Using Strategic Environmental Assessment.” This guidance comes at a critical juncture for us all indeed -- and not to get too grandiose, but for the whole planet -- in terms of how we support strong and accurate decision making when facing a tidal wave of new renewable energy projects.
Why are we facing this tidal wave? It is because the threat of climate change is forcing us to speed this transition from fossil fuels into renewable energy. The good news is that the transition is indeed happening. The bad news is that some of the decisions that have been taken now, we will see the ramifications of later. And that's because in many jurisdictions, there is insufficient structure/procedure to be making confident, long-term, sustainable decisions.
That is why we felt the need for a global guidance on the use of strategic environmental assessment specifically related to renewable energy projects. To discuss that, I'm delighted to be joined by the coauthors of this new work, Barry Dalal-Clayton and Miles Scott-Brown. Both of them are seasoned SEA experts who have covered many projects around the world, but have also spent the last few years helping to collect and refine as much expertise as we could find in terms of producing this document. So welcome to you both. Thank you for joining me today. I'm going to ask a couple questions to try and get a flavor of what the document is, and then maybe a few other items that we may get into a little bit later.
Let’s start with some basics -- clearly SEAs have been around for many years. It's quite embedded in the systems in many countries. But perhaps for an audience that is less familiar, what is a strategic environmental assessment? And related to that, why do we feel a need for this sort of guidance now?
Miles Scott-Brown (co-author): Strategic environmental assessment, now known perhaps more commonly as strategic environmental and social assessment, has been around for a long time. It is a high-level, strategic look at policies, programs, and plans of government (and in this case, relating to the energy transition, or the move away from using coal and fossil fuels as primary fuel sources towards renewable energy). What we see in the guidance is SEA is widespread, in place in over 100 countries. And what we have found in our practice and during completion of this work, one of the challenges is there's lots of guidance out there, but not specific to the energy transition. And many of these guidelines, although in place, are not in practice. So that was one of the first things that we came to conclude -- the lack of practice to put SEA into place.
Gary: You mentioned SEAs are in place in certain jurisdictions, but how would you characterize the uptake of SEAs more broadly across the globe?
Barry Dalal-Clayton (co-author): I think we can go back to 1969, when the USA introduced the National Environmental and Policy Act (NEPA), which really paved the way. NEPA introduced environmental impact assessment, which allowed for looking at higher level instruments like policies and even laws, but practice actually rolled out predominantly for projects. And initially it was largely biophysical; much later we added in the social dimension. In the late 1980s / early 1990s, a number of developed countries started to introduce strategic environmental assessment. (Netherlands, Canada, and Australia) -- that was the rich countries starting. Then the European Union brought out its famous SEA directive in 2001, and that has become binding and transposed into domestic law in all 27 member countries. Since then it has expanded across the world, with uptake on all continents. As Miles mentioned, there are laws and regulations concerning SEA in over 100 countries and voluntary practice in many areas.
But while the laws and regulations are there in quite a lot of jurisdictions, practice does not follow. Because to a large extent there is a lack of awareness, particularly in higher echelons of government, and it is governments that are mainly responsible for initiating SEAs. The lack of awareness at that level still persists. There is also a lack of real domestic expertise and skills. In many of those countries, it's largely the donors and the multilateral development banks, that require SEA as part of their safeguards, that finance and push it. So SEA has expanded -- there is great interest around the world, particularly among environmentalists and concerned people. But in government, there is not a lot of understanding of why they should do it and how they should do it. That is something that we have to overcome.
Gary: This document specifically tries to deal with the application of SEA within the energy transition process. So what do you think SEA brings specifically to that energy transition? What is going to be most helpful and most useful within it?
Barry: SEA is a process, first of all. It can use any number of tools that may be appropriate, and every SEA will be different – it has to be tailored to context, needs, and circumstances. And that requires a considerable amount of thinking as to how to make it work for the particular situation. But whatever process you end up formulating or designing, what it delivers is allowing governments to make much better decisions, to be more informed about the opportunities and the risks around environmental and social concerns, and to maximize the benefits of renewable energy while also minimizing/avoiding/mitigating the risks and negative aspects or impacts. And having that better awareness and knowledge, governments can actually formulate much better policies and plans and programs for delivering the energy transition and moving towards renewables. And since we are taking on board all these environmental and social concerns, we also have a much better chance of ensuring that the outcomes are much more sustainable than they would otherwise be.
There's a widespread view that going green for green energy is the best thing to do. It's obvious, isn't it? Why wouldn't we? But it is not necessarily benign. We have to manage those risks and potential impacts; otherwise, we can get really unsustainable outcomes, which undermine the whole journey.
Miles: For me, one of the challenges of energy transition is its scale, both in time and space. For developed economies, we hear 2030-2035, but for many developing economies, that is not realistic – so we are looking at 2050-2060 – that’s 25-30 years away. And it's a massive change, going from fossil fuels to renewable energy. And we cannot plan from the bottom up, from the individual project level. What we found was renewable energy in and of itself is a different cat – it is much more widely dispersed across the landscape than having a single coal-fired power plant. So, as Barry said, it does have a huge number of impacts. We need to look at a much higher level and take into consideration the combined cumulative impacts of going from removing coal to solar / wind / we don’t even know! It's going to be very different depending on the institution or country. So SEA allows flexibility and a strategic approach to make decisions now that we are planning for the next 20-30 years of the energy transition.
Gary: Putting it like that, it all sounds incredibly compelling! But if I'm going to play devil's advocate for a bit, what are the arguments that prevent or discourage SEAs from taking place?
Barry: Well, environmental impact assessment, which most people are aware of, is a project-level tool. You have a road or new industrial development, for example, and people often say, “well, impact assessment is just a green break, or something that gets in the way of getting on with developments.” Some people make the same argument for SEAs. Governments want to get on and develop and roll out their policies and plans. And developers want to follow up and invest in the opportunities for particular projects. They don't want to have to wait for some process or requirement to be gone through. There is a concern that a lot of people might have without understanding the benefits that really undertaking SEA would deliver. Two specific things I think often come up.
How much is it going to cost, and how long will it take? Cost varies, depending enormously on the complexity of the SEA. Are we dealing with multiple, different policies? One recent SEA I was involved with in Bangladesh had to address 89 different policies and plans because it was about old development in a region that was very complex; it took 18 months. In other cases, you could do a rapid SEA in 2-3 months as a desk exercise and get 80-90% of the issues on the table. In general terms, a good SEA is going to take you 6-9 months (or even a year or more). The costs will also vary depending on complexity, from $100,000 up to one million or more. Sometimes it will depend if you are dealing with seasonal issues where you have to wait and gather data at all the different seasons to have a look at the differences, which means research and it takes longer to do.
Behind that there's this issue I have already raised -- the lack of understanding, particularly among non-experts, decision makers, and planners. This is a challenge that we have to overcome. We need to invest much more in awareness raising and training up front so that we can work with the people that are going to make the decisions and deliver the information they will value and use. The lack of domestic experience and expertise is another side of the same coin. So these are the kinds of issues that get raised, but I'm sure there are a lot of others we could talk about.
Gary: So that discusses SEA in broad terms, and as people dive into this document, they will see just how enormous the undertaking has been in terms of covering all of the major renewable energy options. Who do you see as the primary reader here? Who are we trying to influence with this document?
Miles: Barry brought up the very important point of the lack of capacity – government decision makers really don't know much about SEA, and they probably have not had much experience with it. So the decision makers are the primary target, with decision makers being not just politicians, but also high-level government officials working in a civil service capacity. But it's more than that, too, because these decisions affect a wide range of stakeholders. Developers are looking at this tool because they want to have more certainty in the landscape. Financiers, too – SEA is a wonderful process to provide more certainty for investment decisions. So there's a wide range, but we look at decision makers as being the primary target of this guidance. And as Barry said, this isn't just a report – it is meant to be a guidance on many levels. It could be videos, training, or courses – that’s the beauty of digital technology, reaching a much broader audiences at different levels and different times.
Barry: There's something for everybody in this guidance. It’s quite extensive – it’s not going to be a bedtime read. I imagine people will delve into it for the bits that concern them or that they are particularly interested in. If they are interested in a particular renewable energy technology, such as wind, they will go to that chapter. If they want to know how to conduct an SEA, they can go to the chapter showing practitioners what we have distilled from best practice all around the world. Our challenge is going to be targeting different audiences with key messaging, to excite them and invite them to take a look at this and see what's in it that could be beneficial to them.
Gary: I totally agree. That very much speaks to the next steps and what our ambition is for this guidance document. Despite the two to three years of work that’s gone into this, it really just gets us to the starting line. It is what happens next that is so important, as to how we get this into the hands of decision makers and practitioners and start to influence them. Unless we succeed in that, then it's been a lot of noble work for very little return. So we are now in the phase of soliciting feedback and interest. And I hope that interest will come from countries outside of those traditional countries we talked about earlier. It's not just about the global north – far from it. We need representation. We need interest. We need workshops in Asia, Latin America, and Africa. That's what I really hope we can achieve, particularly with the partners that we have. Many organizations have supported us in producing this document, and we now hope to partner with these organizations, such as IFC, World Bank, Asian Development Bank, and many others. We hope to get this guidance into countries and into policymakers’ hands, where it is going to start to make a difference. As Miles said, that will include digital versions and different ways of approaching the information, such as infographics aimed at younger audiences or specific energy-type audiences.
We do not have all the answers on this. This guidance is a fantastic contribution to the energy transition, but we have a lot more work to actually bring it to life and make sure that it's actually of utility to as many people as possible. One final question. I am always fascinated when people undertake these exercises. Can you describe what have you learned most through this exercise? What is it that surprised you most about all this work and investigating you have done?
Barry: For me, I have learned a hell of a lot! An enormous amount. To start off, we did a survey to assess what guidelines were out there across the world. We found approximately 150 or so SEA guidelines of one sort or another, some across the board and some for specific sectors. The quality and content of them varied enormously, but all of them had nuggets in them. All of them had built on some experience, either their own or from others. We were able to pull all that together and interact with a whole array of expertise around the world and bring their knowledge and experience into this guidance. It has been a journey of many people pulling things together, and from that I personally have learned a great deal, and I hope that will improve the way I can deliver when using SEA myself. So that's been probably the richest thing for me as an individual – all that I have learned.
This process has also confirmed the view I held that we really have to develop much better terms of reference. I review a lot of these things, and the main problem with SEAs that are either of poor quality or don't deliver what decision makers and planners really need is the poor terms of reference set in the beginning. Terms of reference are often set by people who don't necessarily understand SEA or have never done an SEA themselves. So we need to improve on that. Practitioners who are appointed as consultants need to interrogate the terms of reference at the very get-go and then discuss with the client where there may be room for improvement (usually there is). That ties into the comments we were both making about the lack of awareness that persists in governments at senior levels, amongst those that may be tasked with commissioning or using the outputs of SEAs. The SEA process has to have built into it at the outset (the inception and scoping phases) much more attention to initial awareness raising and training of those who will receive and be involved in the SEA. I don't think we have done enough of that to-date.
Miles: For me, it was the tremendous interest there is in this topic. It’s not just climate change or energy transition – it’s that perhaps strategic assessment can be the process that’s actually going to work for what is needed. We have seen a lot in in the history of environmental assessment that we cannot plan from the project level up. We have seen a lot of the problems we have caused going single project, by project, by project. The scale of this energy transition is such a huge thing, across countries, across the globe. I think maybe this will be an opportunity to integrate the strategic assessment process with the land use planning and project-level impact assessment processes, really integrating these decisions.
One of the challenges with SEA is it is often too little, too late. There are lots of SEAs done, but they are not necessarily implemented. The private developers work on a different scale – they want to make decisions today. Governments are looking within their election cycle – it’s a different time frame. The challenge here is how we can make this process work, to make those linkages and provide more certainty for stakeholders – that we are all going to be part of the energy transition, and that this is not benign; that the impacts that will arise will be dealt with in a timely way; and that we can make decisions when they are needed instead of waiting for an impact situation to occur. Then it's a much different ballgame.
Gary: What has struck me about the guidance is that it covers the high level of SEA (the legal basis, history, etc., and the operation of how one goes about developing that process), but it also deals directly with the individual energy types. It has sections on things that are sometimes overlooked or forgotten, like the actual transmission lines – how you get them into and out of a location, and what the impact of that process is on the physical and social environment. Also the overall policymaking aspect is addressed, so there's advice in here for policymakers and institutions engaged in this process. It really is quite a comprehensive attempt to provide global guidance. That’s why I think it will have shelf life, but we really (really!) want feedback in terms of what more we can do. How can this improve? Where should we go next? What are the spin-offs that we should be considering?
Barry: You're absolutely right about that, Gary. It is worth saying that this is not static. It is not the end of the journey – instead, it's the end of the beginning, as Churchill once said. The next steps are turning it into a rolling resource available to search online and providing mechanisms to update it when it needs doing so. We hope to add case studies, videos, and commentary to make it a living, renewable resource in its own right. It’s going to be exciting as we move forward. All we have done is push the start button.
Gary: I totally agree, and that is our intention at IAIA. We feel there is a responsibility and a role to play in making this as live of a discussion document as possible. It’s also encouraging that we have partnerships with various organizations around the world. Now one lighter question to finish with. I know you all have your biases, but as you have gone through this process, which renewable energy type gives you the most hope, or for which energy type do you really have a soft spot?
Barry: I'm going to cop out on directly answering that – for me, the answer to questions like this is always, “it depends.” From what we have learned, it depends on the location. Does it suit one type versus another? Will the environmental or social risks be too overwhelming for one particular energy type, making another one a better option? Will it lead to a loss of ecosystems, services, and biodiversity? And if intervention or development is a large problem, will it mean people are relocated or alienated from resources they depend on? Will people will lose livelihood opportunities? These are all the kinds of questions I would have to be able to answer before suggesting I have a preference. So for me, the answer is, as always, it depends.
Miles: I started my career off as an extractive industry guy, and some years back I saw the light – renewables are coming. I got involved through the International Hydropower Association into sustainable hydropower. It was a natural progression and an interesting topic. Hydropower has had a bad rap in the past, but there is a tremendous opportunity to make it sustainable. In a lot of ways, hydropower is a bridge in energy transition in that it can provide a baseload power equivalent to what we can do from fossil fuels. At the same time, we are developing better storage capacity so that we can bring on variable energy sources like wind and solar. Hydropower is that transition in the transition, so to speak. It also relates to another big, important question – one of our future challenges for humanity is not just climate change, but also water – how we manage water and how we use water for power. With the combination of those two, I'm betting on hydro.
Gary: All that remains is for me to thank both of you for doing this short video and for the work that you have invested in getting this global guidance published. As we have said repeatedly, this is the start of that next phase of the process. We really look forward to engaging with as many people as possible as we work to make the energy transition a sustainable one. Thank you all.
