We aim to go above the minimum regulatory requirements regarding engagement with affected communities, as we believe these engagements are essential for securing and sustaining the social license necessary for advancing renewable energy development. To ensure that our decisions reflect the perspectives of affected communities, we engage proactively with community stakeholders and local organisations and seek ongoing dialogue with them, ensuring their voices are heard and considered in our decision-making processes. This approach is being integrated across our business functions, markets, and asset projects. Engagement occurs at various frequencies and at various stages of a project. Our aim is to initiate early dialogue during the planning phase to gather the insights and concerns of the affected communities. This takes place through e.g. our community liaison officers and project staff employing different types of interaction, such as public meetings and consultations to facilitate open communication. When we employ community liaison officers in our projects, they often come from the communities we engage with, helping us gain a profound understanding of the local contexts. We continue this dialogue through the development, construction, and operation phases of our renewable energy assets.

We work closely with materially affected communities to monitor issues raised and addressed while also assessing the effectiveness of these grievance channels. We currently assess the effectiveness of our mechanisms and communication channels through our ongoing dialogue with local stakeholders. We want to further improve our processes of assessing the effectiveness of these efforts and are working to establish a global method for aggregating community feedback and grievance management. This will allow us to systematically track and monitor the effectiveness of our efforts. Specifically, we aim to implement a standardised process for receiving, addressing, resolving, and providing remedies to affected communities when necessary. We plan to pilot a grievance reporting channel for a select supplier to collect workers’ grievances via a digital solution by 2025.