Information and public consultation exercises concerning geothermal projects. “The Strasbourg case”

Philippe Chavot (1) , Anne Masseran (2) , Yeny Serrano (1)

1 LISEC - Laboratoire Interuniversitaire des Sciences de l'Education et de la Communication
2 Crem - Centre de Recherche sur les Médiations

Four public inquiries on deep geothermal projects in the Eurometropolis of Strasbourg were conducted during the Spring of 2015. These consultation exercises were carried out in a context of public controversy over the risk related to deep drilling. Residents’ associations have been deeply involved and the media largely covered the issue. Following these consultations, three of the four projects received a negative opinion from the investigating commissioners. Later, prefectural authority granted two of the four projects. How to interpret this opposition to urban geothermal projects? And what can we say about the way residents, stakeholders and public authorities engage with the public inquiries? To answer such questions we have decided to work on three distinct corpuses: (1) The public inquiries per se, taking into account the input from citizens during the enquiry and all the documents produced in the framework of these consultation exercises; (2) Local media, these public inquiries having been widely reported in the media. It is therefore crucial to examine the way journalists feature stakeholders and geothermal issues; (3) A series of interviews we have carried out with different stakeholders (scientists, industrialists, associations representatives, elected officials, inquiry commissioners, etc.).We will analyse these three corpuses according to two main guidelines. First, we will focus on the public inquiry system. Indeed, it is important to understand how it works and how the publics, the stakeholders and the investigator commissioners tackle it. At a more global level, it is important to analyse what public inquiries have led to. Has a social dialogue been established? Or, have the public inquiries led to the strengthening of demarcation lines between opponents and supporters of geothermal projects? In the background, of course, it is the public perception of the public inquiry system that becomes apparent. The second line of enquiry concerns the public perception of deep geothermal projects and the dynamics of the public controversy. For example, how are the different issues related to geothermal projects perceived by the different stakeholders? Are geothermal projects perceived to serve populations and/or the state energy policy? How are the economic, political and social dimensions of these projects perceived? It is also important to understand the purpose for which citizens engage in the debate on geothermal projects: is it to preserve their close environment and their quality of life? Or is this engagement related to philosophical or political convictions? In this context, it is crucial to understand how the citizens get informed about the geothermal issues and the public inquiries. And more particularly, what roles do the media and the residents’ associations (among others) play in this public controversy?

Mots clés: deep geothermal project; citizen participation; residents; studies; media; citizen participation.; public inquiry; information; media studies; energy transition

Domaines: Sciences de l'information et de la communication; Histoire, Philosophie et Sociologie des sciences

Philippe Chavot, Anne Masseran, Yeny Serrano. Information and public consultation exercises concerning geothermal projects. “The Strasbourg case”. European Geothermal Congress 2016, European Geothermal Energy Council (EGEC), Sep 2016, Strasbourg, France. ⟨hal-01371135⟩