Defining communities

Community perceptions of hydrogen may vary by project and community as well as over time.

It is important to define the community and understand what they want and need to know. There are many ways to define a community, but for our context:

a community is a group of people either living in the same location or having characteristics or attitudes in common.

As we transition to using more hydrogen there will be a variety of communities or groups directly or indirectly involved. Australian Hydrogen Council’s Public Communication Paper provides a helpful overview of some of those groups and how they will be involved.

_{Adapted from AHC Appendix B: AHC public communications paper}

It’s important when developing a social licence for hydrogen to understand how your stakeholders and community may respond to a variety of issues. How they respond to issues may depend on their proximity to infrastructure or their experiences with hydrogen technologies.

Support for hydrogen is also linked to a person’s personal beliefs and use of technology.

_{©Deakin University}

For example, people who strongly support environmental preservation are less accepting of blue (vs. green) hydrogen.

In a Deakin University study (unpublished) investigating hydrogen perceptions in South West Victoria, Australia, four groups were segmented in terms of their level of support.

_{©Deakin University}

Supporters tended to be more politically progressive and reported high support for the development and use of hydrogen technologies in their community.

Reserved tended to be younger and less concerned about the environmental benefits of developing hydrogen technologies. They were less likely to have children and overall saw the benefits of hydrogen energy as lower than the other groups.

Apathetic respondents were older and the least likely to perceive the ‘pioneering’ benefits to developing this technology as being important. They also had little knowledge or familiarity with these technologies.

Trust but Verify were a group with higher knowledge and familiarity about hydrogen energy. Moreover, despite holding some negative perceptions, support for development of hydrogen technologies was still high among this group.

These four groupings present a complex challenge for hydrogen technologies. If looking at perceptions of hydrogen, this research revealed that those with greater knowledge and familiarity of hydrogen also have more concerns around the potential drawbacks. Understanding your community and the type of information they want, and need, is key to building social licence.

Your task

Identify three stakeholder groups and brainstorm where you think they fit in the ‘personal belief and use of technology ranking’ from the project you are focusing on.