Enhancing local support for tidal energy projects in developing countries: Case study inFlores Timur Regency, Indonesia

Abstract

Tidal energy is a new renewable energy source that can be used to provide electricity to remote islands, while contributing to climate change mitigation. Like all renewable energy projects, public awareness and support are not only crucial for the successful development of marine renewable energy projects too, but also aid the private sector project developers in making long-term plans. As information about tidal energy is not easily available, public views toward it are not well known, making it challenging for the project developers to strategize implementation strategies. Moreover, the limited studies focusing on such social aspects of tidal energy come from advanced countries, highlighting the lack of focus on cases from developing countries. Our study fulfills this gap by providing a case study focusing on the social aspects of tidal energy in a developing country, which can be utilized by developers for designing their public engagement strategies. We estimate the public support for tidal energy in eastern Indonesia using two methods: (a) stages of development and (b) information provision. Using the first method, we found that support for tidal energy is lower in the initial stages, but it keeps rising once the public can realize the benefits. The second method shows that though people tend to support tidal energy, the role of information provision is dissimilar compared with western cases. Additionally, Probit modeling shows that Age, Education, Collective Outcome Favorability, and especially, Individual Outcome Favorability are the key factors that positively impact the support for tidal energy in eastern Indonesia.

Information Flow to Increase Support for Tidal Energy Development in Remote Islands of a Developing Country: Agent-Based Simulation of Information Flow in Flores Timur Regency, Indonesia

“…The study also considers two types of information that may impact the public view on tidal energy. Statistical results of Ramachandran et al (2020) show that the local people in Flores Timur regency tend to show more support for tidal energy if their preference is for information related to individual benefits of tidal energy, as opposed to the information about collective benefits of tidal energy.…”

“…[ insert table 3 ] Table 3 also highlights the conditions that govern the interaction between agents of different In the ABS, the difference in the hierarchies based on their information preferences are manifest by the information harvesting and information receiving functions. From observations in the field, it is evident that the agents from top hierarchies have higher capability of harvesting information due to their greater access to information, as well as higher education [21]. Likewise, better education also allows agents to receive more information due to higher ability to process more information.…”

“…The general design of the model is inspired from the interactions between the members of the local community, and it replicates the ideal characteristics of the actual situation observed in Flores Timur regency, including the hierarchical nature, age, education, and information preferences [21]. The simulation is arbitrarily set up with 2,500 agents classified into four hierarchical groups reflecting the nature of society, with the number of agents in each group distributed according to the values shown in table 3.…”

“…To provide a unique voice toward tidal energy development, this study focuses on the information flow for promotion of tidal energy in a remote isolated area of a developing country. This research adds on to the previous study by Ramachandran et al (2020) which estimated the support for tidal energy based on information provision, identified the key factors that impact information provision in the local community, and explored the impact of information provision for developing countries compared to advanced nations. This study also directly contributes to the agenda for social research in marine renewable energy [16] This study uses Multinomial Probit regression model to estimate the probability of support for tidal energy in Flores Timur regency as well as verify the aptness of the key variables identified in the previous study [21].…”

“…The importance of information provision is emphasized more if the awareness level of the local population is relatively low, for example in remote isolated islands in developing countries where favourable conditions for tidal energy development persist as revealed by Ramachandran et al (2020). Therefore, when it is related to a new technology such as tidal energy, most aspects of which are largely unknown to the general public, information provision is not only the initial process for public engagement, but also the most vital.…”