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.

It is our responsibility to ensure that affected communities, whether directly or indirectly impacted, are considered, and that their voices are integrated into the project planning. Depending on the specific context of the project, we engage either directly with affected communities, their legitimate representatives, or credible proxies, such as local NGOs or government representatives, to gain insights into their needs and concerns.

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.

We see value in gaining insights into the perspectives of vulnerable or marginalised communities, including environmental justice communities, to ensure that their needs and concerns are appropriately addressed in our projects. We have actively engaged with Indigenous communities in connection with projects both in the US and Australia. Our goal is to secure FPIC for projects impacting Indigenous lands or territories, respecting their rights and their cultural, intellectual, religious, and spiritual property.

In 2024, we laid the foundation for many of the initiatives currently in progress for managing our negative impact and risks associated with failing to respect Indigenous Peoples’ rights and ensuring FPIC in our own operations. We began by developing a global guidance for social and human rights impact assessments, which will allow us to proactively manage these risks and impacts before the construction of new projects. Furthermore, we finalised our internal guidelines for free, prior, and informed consent (FPIC), a framework designed to ensure respectful and transparent engagement with Indigenous communities. These guidelines guarantee that we secure consent from Indigenous communities before initiating projects that might impact their lands or cultural heritage.

Currently, we have not set time-bound and outcome-oriented targets that meet the criteria for effectively reducing negative impacts, advancing positive impacts, or managing material risks and opportunities related to affected communities. However, we recognise the importance of establishing robust targets to drive meaningful progress in this area. We are working to establish a clear community engagement process that will involve engaging directly with the affected communities, their representatives, or credible proxies. In the meantime, we are focused on gathering data and assessing current practices to ensure that future targets are effective and aligned with stakeholder needs.

We are working to establish a clear community engagement process that will involve engaging directly with the affected communities, their representatives, or credible proxies. In the meantime, we are focused on gathering data and assessing current practices to ensure that future targets are effective and aligned with stakeholder needs. We are not yet fully able to monitor how effectively our policies and actions address our material sustainability-related impacts, risks, and opportunities for affected communities.

One of our major accomplishments this year was launching the Hornsea 3 Community Fund to support local groups and organisations in North Norfolk and parts of Suffolk in the UK who work with community facilities or activities, skills and education, or environmental projects. In September 2024, the fund announced its first round of awards, as a total of GBP 249,000 was distributed to 21 local organisations selected for their potential to strengthen community well-being and resilience.

These projects include educational initiatives to enhance skills, environmental conservation efforts, and programmes aimed at improving public health and social well-being. Among the funded projects are community centres, youth initiatives, and environmental programmes focused on boosting local biodiversity. The fund is made available as part of our project to create the world’s single largest offshore wind farm, Hornsea 3, and will award a total of GBP 7 million over a targeted ten-year period.