Industrial sociologist Boitumelo Malope researches renewable energy and labour markets. He interviewed residents, community leaders and employees of two wind farms outside the small, impoverished town of Loeriesfontein in the Northern Cape to find out.

How should renewable energy projects benefit communities?

The South African government’s Renewable Energy Independent Power Producer Procurement Programme accepts bids from independent power producers and decides which can go ahead. The bids are assessed based on the tariffs the company will charge (worth 70% of the points) and on economic development (worth 30%).

Economic development includes the creation of jobs for locals as well as enterprise and socio-economic development projects. These are funded from a percentage of the revenue each renewable project earns from the sale of electricity to Eskom, the state-owned electricity provider. In addition, a community trust representing people who live within a 50 kilometre radius of a renewable project must own between 2% and 5% of the shares in each renewable project.

Companies that run the renewable projects fund community development from their revenues, and the term of their contract with Eskom, the state-owned utility, is 20 years. So community development is meant to last for 20 years.

My research on two wind farms found that community development plans were not publicly available. Community projects were introduced in a top-down fashion in the absence of an assessment carried out in partnership with community organisations of what the community needed.

What problems with job creation did your research find?

There are eight phases in the construction of wind farms: from road construction between wind turbines on the farm to the construction of the foundations for a wind turbine, laying the cables from a turbine to a substation, and wind turbine erection and testing.

During the first five phases of the project, the skills required were mostly low- to semi-skilled. Around 100 community members were employed for between three and 18 months in these phases, but not as supervisors, they said. The indirect jobs on the project, such as cleaners in guesthouses and administrative work, are also low- to semi-skilled jobs.

Phases six to eight require specialised and highly trained workers who are not always based in the host community. The types of jobs performed during the last two phases are better paid, but local workers aren’t trained to do them.

The International Labour Organisation says decent work involves social dialogue, social protection, rights at work and opportunities “to obtain decent and productive work, in conditions of freedom, equality, security and human dignity”. Its guidelines on the Just Transition say decent work must be at the centre of policies for strong, sustainable and inclusive growth and development. Decent work is also goal eight of the United Nations sustainable development goals that need to be met by 2030.

But in South Africa, the licensing requirements for renewables don’t include the need to create decent work – only employment.

With proper planning, local workers could have been trained to do specialised jobs. It takes between 12 and 18 months from the time a renewable project is awarded preferred bidder status to the start of construction – enough time for training. However, the Renewable Energy Independent Power Producer Programme does not say this must happen – a serious weakness in the design of the programme.

What else did you find about community development?

Communities weren’t involved in the planning of the community development projects. Local households in general, and the most needy members of the community in particular, should benefit from these projects. For example, the community of Loeriesfontein said they needed street lights and wifi.

My research found that community development was decided by Mainstream Renewable Power, the company that runs the two wind farms. For example, an all-weather synthetic running track was built which does not benefit the whole community. A gym was also built but because it has a monthly membership fee of R200 (about US$11), it is unaffordable to most residents of the town.

What lessons can be learned for future projects?

There are two major lessons for developers. The first is effective and consistent communication with the local community. In Loeriesfontein, the developer chose to communicate with the community not at mass meetings, but through a political channel – the ward committee. This politicised the project and disrupted communication.

Also, the developer wasn’t consistent. During the construction phase, for example, the developer scheduled community meetings but cancelled these without notice. Good communication must start in the construction phase. If it does not, problems are carried over to the operations phase.

Read More: South Africa’s move to green energy was slowed down by government to protect coal mining

Another lesson is that community development should create jobs and develop local infrastructure that the community needs. Loeriesfontein has vast municipal commonage land. This empty land could be used, with local workers and knowledge, to develop a community-owned renewable energy project to provide much cheaper electricity to impoverished homes.

The company should also have planned shorter-term projects to benefit the community, such as installing solar panels on the roofs of indigent households.

Community development is different to corporate social responsibility. Because it is funded by a portion of revenue from the sale of electricity, it is a 20 year commitment. In rural areas especially, it is a real opportunity to provide vital amenities and infrastructure that the community has never had. It must be a partnership between the developer and community and not viewed by the developer as an act of kindness or a heavy burden.

What renewable energy developers should be doing is anchoring their community development approach to sustainable development. This must focus on satisfying human needs (eradicating household poverty), ensuring social equity (helping those most needy first), and respecting environmental limits.

• Boitumelo (Tumi) Malope is a Postdoctoral fellow, Stellenbosch University
• This article first appeared in The Conversation

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But offshore wind farms are already being affected by cyberattacks, according to a recent report. And unless the vulnerabilities are addressed, cyberattacks could cause power outages, leading to critical services such as hospitals being unable to function.

Successful cyberattacks could lower public trust in wind energy and other renewables, the report from the Alan Turing Institute says. The authors add that artificial intelligence (AI) could help boost the resilience of offshore wind farms to cyber threats. However, government and industry need to act fast.

The fact that offshore wind installations are relatively remote makes them particularly vulnerable to disruption. Land turbines can have nearby offices, so getting someone to visit the site is much easier than at sea. Offshore turbines tend to require remote monitoring and special technology for long-distance communication. These more complicated solutions mean that things can go wrong more easily.

One of the technologies that could reduce the vulnerability of wind farms to cyberattacks is called anomaly-based intrusion detection. This uses machine learning, a subset of AI, to build up a picture of normal activity on a computer network and then identify patterns of unusual activity that could signal a cyberattack.

Another is predictive maintenance, which relies on AI to detect and flag small vulnerabilities in IT systems and operational technology – the hardware and software that monitors and controls infrastructure – so that they can be fixed before they become bigger problems.

In general, this enhanced security and resilience could be supported by an approach called intelligent automation, where AI and other technologies are combined to streamline the operation of offshore wind installations.

Why hackers target wind farms

Most cyberattacks are financially motivated, such as the ransomware attacks that have targeted the NHS in recent years. These typically block the users’ access to their computer data until a payment is made to the hackers.

But critical infrastructure such as energy installations are also exposed. There may be various motivations for launching cyberattacks against them. One important possibility is that of a hostile state that wants to disrupt the UK’s energy supply – and perhaps also undermine public confidence in it.

There have already been attacks on offshore wind farms outside the UK. The Danish wind power company Vestas was hit by a ransomware attack in 2021. Reports suggest Vestas had to shut down IT systems across multiple locations to contain the issue.

German wind power company Deutsche Windtechnik faced a ransomware attack the following year. The attack forced the company to disable around 2,000 of its 7,500 wind turbines across Germany to prevent them from being damaged. Normally, turbines adjust their movement to the speed and direction of the wind. If a turbine’s ability to do this is disrupted, for example, by a cyberattack that affects control systems, it could cause stress and structural damage to the blades.

In a worst-case scenario, cyberattacks could lead to the functioning of critical systems at wind farms being lost. Power outages could result if cyberattacks on offshore wind farms are combined with attacks on other energy sources.

It could even lead to loss of life if, for example, hospitals were to lose their power supplies. If control systems at offshore wind farms are lost, and turbine blades move too fast in the wind, the stress on the motor can also cause a fire, and put first responders at risk.

The potential negative effects of such attacks on public trust in renewables are significant. During the 2021 “big freeze” in Texas, when the winter cold led to power outages and other disruptions, some critics blamed frozen wind turbines.

At the time, Texas agriculture commissioner Sid Miller commented: “We should never build another wind turbine in Texas. The experiment failed big time.”

However, Miller’s claims were contradicted by the Electric Reliability Council of Texas, which operates the state’s power grid. It said that failures in natural gas, coal and nuclear energy systems were responsible for nearly twice as many outages as frozen wind turbines and solar panels.

Climate challenge

A loss of confidence in renewable sources such as offshore wind among the public and policymakers could seriously undermine the UK’s climate change efforts.

The UK has committed itself to reaching the target of net zero by 2050, which means that the total greenhouse gases emitted equal the emissions removed from the atmosphere.

In order to achieve this, it’s necessary to wean the country off fossil fuels, by switching to electric vehicles, for example, and ensuring homes are more energy efficient. But a major step is decarbonising Britain’s energy supply.

Read More: Giant batteries to store wind and solar power can speed up South Africa’s energy transition – how that can happen

Here at the University of Plymouth, we have started a project called Crown, which stands for cyber-resilience of offshore wind networks.

This will support the study of offshore wind technology and its control networks. Researchers will focus on understanding the vulnerability of these wind farms to cyberattacks, and on enhancing security and resilience to attacks.

This is probably one of the best times to analyse and discuss how to mitigate the threats posed by cyberattacks on offshore wind. Any earlier, and the engineering and operations aspects would not be advanced enough to explore the risks. Any later, and the installation of infrastructure on multiple planned projects might proceed apace with vulnerabilities that are difficult to fix retrospectively.

• Kimberly Tam is an Associate Professor in Cyber Security, University of Plymouth
• This article first appeared in The Conversation

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