On November 19-20, 2004, Nova Scotia Power's (NSP) Customer Energy Forum was implemented as the first deliberative poll initiative in Canada designed to meet the needs of future generations in the context of increasingly strict emissions requirements.
Brief description
Nova Scotia Power's (NSP) Customer Energy Forum was the first deliberative poll initiative in Canada designed to meet the needs of future generations in a context of increasingly strict emissions requirements. On November 19-20, 2004, NSP invited a representative sample of its residential customers to discuss energy alternatives. The 135 participants met in large and small group sessions over a day and a half.
Problems and Purpose
NSP's Customer Energy Forum involved a random sample of the utility's customers and sought opinions on energy planning for the province. In particular, it sought informed opinions on options (including fossil fuel, renewables, and conservation, or "demand-side management" options) to meet future energy needs in light of increasingly strict environmental regulations. The expressed aim was to involve Nova Scotians in developing NSP's future energy plan. The rationale for a deliberative poll was to gain an understanding of public opinion both before and after deliberation.
Chief Operating Officer Ralph Tedesco said the company was motivated to reach out and engage its customers and stakeholders, ‘to address generation, supply and emissions issues’[1]. Nova Scotia Power is a private company regulated by the Nova Scotia Utility and Review Board which supplies power to 95% of Nova Scotia, covering approximately 500,000 residents[2]. To move into a more energy-efficient resource posed a significant challenge for NSP, requiring funding and popular support.
Background History and Context
NSP is an energy provider in the Nova Scotia region dedicated to the generation, transmission and distribution of energy. On the 26th of June 2001, the Nova Scotia government released a statement in support of the wind energy initiative to in response to the issue of renewable energy generation. At that time, Nova Scotia Power predominantly relied on coal-fired power. Prior to 2001, the NSP attempted to add 50 megawatts of wind power, representing 2% of its fuel mix, to its power generation portfolio. However, more than 70% of the general fuel oil remained coal-based in 2004.
Nova Scotia Power sought informed consumer opinions on how it should employ new and existing forms of energy in the province, especially regarding diverse fuel types, to meet future energy regulations and consumer demand. To accomplish this, NSP used deliberative polling, a novel approach to the region and sector, to secure effective public participation in the process.
Organizing, Supporting, and Funding Entities
The main funding entity was Nova Scotia Power. Nova Scotia Power is a regulated electricity supplier to around 500,000 residential, commercial and industrial customers in Nova Scotia, a province located in eastern Canada. The utility company accounts for 95 percent of Nova Scotia’s generation, transmission and distribution services. NSP is Emera’s founding affiliate and a wholly owned subsidiary. It is regulated by the Nova Scotia Utility and Review board. The Nova Scotia Power Privatization Act was passed in the year of 1992 which made the NSP into a privately-owned company.
The design and process consultation for the Customer Meeting deliberative poll was provided by Dennis Thomas, Will Guild, and Ron Lehr through the Public Decision Partnership.
An independent polling company (Corporate Research Associates of Halifax) was hired to organize the recruitment for the deliberative poll on the future of the company. They played a vital role in the recruitment process, as the participants were invited to join the Customer Forum after collecting the response to a questionnaire distributed beforehand. It also offered initial tabulation of data.
Throughout the deliberative customer poll, a trained, neutral moderator from Corporate Research Associates and MT&L of Halifax led each small group through a discussion of the issues. The issues were outlined in a set of briefing materials delivered to participants approximately four weeks in advance of the event.
Nova Scotia Power also created a 15-person Advisory Group with diverse viewpoints and from different stakeholder groups to sample discussion issues and help plan the event. This group met four times to discuss ways to make the process fair and balanced. Included in this committee was a representative of the United Way of Halifax, an organization dedicated to supporting and representing vulnerable people in the community. Also included was a representative of the Electricity Consumers Alliance of Nova Scotia. Members agreed on the use of Deliberative Polling because it brings, ‘a broad range of people to the discussion,’ and makes sure ‘Nova Scotia Power isn’t bringing their friends to the table’[5].
The Canadian Broadcasting Corporation also assisted in videotaping the Customer Forum and published it as a documentary[6]. This videotaping was a source of external transparency, allowing individuals on the outside to see how the process generated its outcomes.
Participant Recruitment and Selection
NSP's Customer Energy Forum involved a random sample of the utility's customers in Nova Scotia. Nova Scotia Power consumers were randomly recruited in order to create a statistically representative sample of their residential customers. This was done by Corporate Research Associates, a local public opinion research firm.
The method of recruitment was to randomly call numbers from the database of NSP's customers. However, targeted phone calls were also employed to encourage the participation of those least likely to attend. This allowed the organizers to gain an unbiased and representative sample, including customers who would be least likely to be involved in the deliberative democratic process. However, one shortcoming of this recruitment process was that any customers without an up-to-date number on Nova Scotia Power’s database were excluded from selection.
Potential participants contacted by phone were then administered a questionnaire on electricity issues before being invited to the Customer Energy Forum. Upon accepting this invitation, individuals were then offered C$150 along with a hotel room and meal vouchers. Additionally, participants who were required to travel were reimbursed for their expenses.
NSP recruited its team of expert panel members by convening an advisory committee of 15 people, each representing different perspectives and interests including government, business, consumers, seniors, and environmental and charitable organizations. This committee was responsible for overseeing the delivery of survey questions and the appointment of subsidiary expert panels. Furthermore, they also ensured that the participants recruited were inclusive of all interests in the province and provided a fair representation of all citizens in the area. Additionally, the moderators were provided by Corporate Research Associates and MT&L Public Relations Limited, local consulting firms.
Methods and Tools Used
Deliberative Polling as used by the NSP customer's forum was developed and pioneered by Professor James Fishkin and was employed in this case partly because it emphasized both education and empathy during its process[3]. Deliberative polling helped ensure that the sample of the population NSP had gathered would give an actionable account of their conclusions and avoid ‘off the top of the head’ opinion.
James Fishkin has laid down a dominant principle in designing a deliberative poll, which is investigating the net opinion change in the event by comparing survey responses before and after deliberation. Organizers of a deliberative poll must also divide the population sample into a control group and an experimental group for accuracy. The NSP Forum used this method to compare the opinion outcomes before and after the chosen participants joined the deliberative polls. This process included a questionnaire at the recruitment stage and second one at the end of the event to compare opinion outcomes.
What went on: Deliberation, Discussions and Public Interaction
After being invited to the customer forum, a set of materials outlining issues to be discussed was delivered to each participant around 4 weeks in advance of the event. These materials consisted of a range of balanced background information prepared by subject experts. These were often peer-reviewed articles, offering legitimacy as balanced and comprehensive studies. Participants were not expected to have read all pre-reading in advance of the event but were expected to be able to discuss the subjects on the program.
Participants were randomly assigned to 9 groups of around 15 people. A trained, neutral moderator was assigned to each group to aid discussion. During the forum, participants alternated between small group sessions and large ones. In the large sessions, diverse panels of subject-matter experts and advocates were questioned. The experts varied in their area of knowledge, allowing participants’ questions to be answered by professionals. These experts included the general manager of power production, environmental advocates, and spokespeople from appropriate companies along with representatives from NSP itself. The smaller sessions had a more communal and deliberative focus, where participants would ask questions and converse between themselves with a dedicated resource person to answer questions of fact[7].
Lead moderator Ron Lehr gave a speech at the beginning of the weekend, telling the participants they made up a ‘representative sample’ of the population and that ‘everyone in the sample is exposed to the same opinions’ to come to ‘our own informed opinion at the end’[8]. This type of description is typical of a deliberative polling process in an effort to make participants consider issues and their effects on the wider public as a collective rather than individually. This was especially important for the subject matter of this customer forum because the outcomes of the deliberation would have effects long term effects extending beyond the people directly participating in the deliberative process.
The media was given full access to all parts of the process and a CBC documentary film was produced on the forum. The express purpose of the film was to include the wider public in the process and spread the findings of the event. The presenters joined the participants at every meeting and interviewed the participants after deliberation, discussion and interaction[9].
Influence, Outcomes, and Effects
The initiative received positive feedback from participants. On a 10-point scale where 10 was said to represent “extremely valuable” and 1 “a waste of time”, participants reported an average score of 9.4. This evidences a high level of belief in the deliberative process and the good relationship between Nova Scotia residents and NSP.
Information made available to Nova Scotia Power included the customers' list of priorities when it came to stability of electricity costs, the cheapness of energy, pollution levels, job creation and, assurance of energy demands being met. The results of both polls were made available in a public document and were represented in histogram form [10]. These results were presented to the Nova Scotia Utility and Review Board with an application for an investment of ‘$5 million in demand-side management programs[11]. This application failed. This process does not qualify as participatory budgeting because the participation in the deliberative poll was not done with the understanding there was a budget available, nor was there any allocation of resources. Participants were only polled about their energy priorities.
Furthermore, NSP implemented a climate and demand-side management strategy in order to modify the consumer demand for energy through various methods such as financial incentives or education. This allowed them to reduce power consumption in order to prevent building a new, larger power plant. This new integrated resource plan and its focus on energy conservation was at the forefront of NSP's business model and an important element in the future of Nova Scotia, and was created using the information collected by this deliberative poll. These Energy Efficiency & Conservation programs (EEC) became available to customers in 2008.
However, after this process, there was no further effort from Nova Scotia Power to follow up this initiative. A possible cause of this was the rejection of NSP's application for increased funding by the Nova Scotia Energy Board.
Analysis and Lesson Learned
In a self-assessment, the Forum Report stated it succeeded in ‘realizing inclusion, procedural equality, access to information, a form of public reasoning, and convergence on shared interests’.[12]
The goal of the deliberative poll was to identify Nova Scotian's preferences for future energy options in which Nova Scotia Power should invest on a long-term basis. The deliberative poll facilitated the key focus of the intended research objective by asking and answering a comprehensive set of questions.
The Nova Scotia Power Customer Forum was effective in delivering the goals of inclusion and education of stakeholders. This could be seen in the participant satisfaction rating, shown to be a 9.4 out of 10. The confidence level of the collected survey result is high (+/-10%) as approximately 95% of the customers answered the survey[13]. The process did, however, suffer from the common demographic problems of many participatory processes, as those with free time and interest tend to come from an older and wealthier populations. Despite this, the issue of income diversity was well mitigated by the paying of participants’ expenses.
One arguable flaw of this poll is the limit on the participants’ choices on energy options, limiting the extent of popular control customers have. However, an additional aim of the poll was also to educate customers about the best options, not to have a wholly ‘bottom-up’ process. Fishkin argues that for popular control to be fulfilled, ‘the alternatives for public decision need to be significantly different and realistically available’[14]. The use of a limited set of options, set by experts in the field, helps fulfill the principle of popular control, therefore, all options are viable and significantly different as to make any popular decision meaningful.
The poll did well at fulfilling Smith’s principle of considered judgment because, as is inherent in the process of a deliberative poll, there were many stages of small and large group discussion aided by experts in the field and pre-reading provided for participants. This ensured that participants of the process took into account both the ‘technical details’ of each option and the ‘perspectives of other citizens’[15].
In looking at the transparency of the process, it is unclear if the results of the forum had multiple applications. While it was stated that the forum was used in a failed bid for funding from the Nova Scotia Utility and Review Board, no other evidence has been provided for any use of the forum. However, the forum itself had a high degree of transparency, with a comprehensive and publicly available report being published and documentary made about the process.
Furthermore, the event had a high cost of organization, with external companies being hired to outsource many processes and expenses for participants being provided. The high costs and inefficiencies of the process may explain why, despite having such positive feedback and being deemed a success as an initiative, the NSP failed to pursue these methods further.
The possible inefficiencies of deliberative polling also impact its transferability and practicality as a democratic decision-making process. The process of a deliberative poll is well established and has been adapted to many settings, making it at a theoretical level, very transferable to other contexts. However, on a large scale such as that employed by NSP, it is only transferable to well-funded entities which are at least of large regional significance or equivalent governmental bodies. There is also a high cost of training or outsourcing for individuals capable of organizing and moderating these events. Moreover, in order for the event to be inclusive, there are high costs of participants’ expenses.
Another point of contention for the NSP forum's results is that the organizers gave participants a different poll at the beginning of the process than the one they were given at the end. As the institutional design for a deliberative poll was aimed to signify the importance of public education in decision-making through the form of citizen participation, differences between the poll before and after the deliberation process could make it difficult to show the genuine changes in opinion over the course of the initiative, lowering its validity. This, however, does not hamper the main goal of finding participants’ final opinions on energy issues, given that the final poll adequately presents these.
The Nova Scotia Power Forum has served as the flagship example of deliberative polling in Canada. According to the Center for Deliberative Democracy, the development of deliberative polls in Canada has subsequently been supported by ‘Foreign Policy by Canadians’, 15 years after the NSP Forum, in order to educate Canadians on how their foreign policy should be designed in a globalized world[16]. This is due to the genuine results achieved by the NSP forum and its commendation by several customers for its impact on energy choices in the region[17]. Overall, the forum conducted by Nova Scotia Power presented a huge progression in the effective use of deliberative polls in Canada.
See Also
https://participedia.net/case/5187 Seeking the Meaningful Inclusion of People with Disabilities: Hearts & Hands’ PATH Process in L’Arche Antigonish.
https://participedia.net/case/739 Citizens' Dialogue on the Long-term Management of Used
https://participedia.net/method/598 Choicework Dialogue™ (Viewpoint Learning)
References
[1] Nova Scotians Discuss Future Energy Alternatives, Stanford Centre for Deliberative Democracy
https://cdd.stanford.edu/mm/2004/ns-discuss-energy.pdf
[2]Emera. 2022. Nova Scotia Power https://www.emera.com/companies/regulated-electric/nova-scotia-power
[3] Fishkin, James. (2003). Consulting the Public through Deliberative Polling. Journal of Policy Analysis and Management. 22. 128-133. 10.1002/pam.10101.
[4] Smith, G. (2009). Democratic Innovations, Designing Institutions for Citizens Participation, Cambridge University Press, DOI: https://doi.org/10.1017/CBO9780511609848
[5] Nova Scotians Discuss Future Energy Alternatives, Stanford Centre for Deliberative Democracy
https://cdd.stanford.edu/mm/2004/ns-discuss-energy.pdf
[6] Energy Forum Video, Stanford Center for Deliberative Democracy https://cdd.stanford.edu/2004/deliberative-polling-nova-scotia-power/
[7] Johnson, G. F. (2009). Deliberative Democratic Practices in Canada: An Analysis of Institutional Empowerment in Three Cases. Canadian Journal of Political Science / Revue Canadienne de Science Politique, 42(3), 679–703. http://www.jstor.org/stable/27754507
[8] Energy Forum Video, Stanford Center for Deliberative Democracy https://cdd.stanford.edu/2004/deliberative-polling-nova-scotia-power/
[9] Energy Forum Video, Stanford Center for Deliberative Democracy https://cdd.stanford.edu/2004/deliberative-polling-nova-scotia-power/
[10] Guild, W. et al. (2004). Results of the Nova Scotia Power Customer Energy Forum. Stanford Center for Deliberative Democracy. https://cdd.stanford.edu/2004/results-of-the-nova-scotia-power-customer-energy-forum/
[11] Johnson, G. F. (2009). Deliberative Democratic Practices in Canada: An Analysis of Institutional Empowerment in Three Cases. Canadian Journal of Political Science / Revue Canadienne de Science Politique, 42(3), 679–703. http://www.jstor.org/stable/27754507
[12] Guild, W. et al. (2004). Results of the Nova Scotia Power Customer Energy Forum. Stanford Center for Deliberative Democracy. https://cdd.stanford.edu/2004/results-of-the-nova-scotia-power-customer-energy-forum/
[13] Guild, W. et al. (2004). Results of the Nova Scotia Power Customer Energy Forum. Stanford Center for Deliberative Democracy. https://cdd.stanford.edu/2004/results-of-the-nova-scotia-power-customer-energy-forum/
[14] Deliberative Polls and the Systemic Democratization of Democracy, Stanford Centre for Deliberative Democracy
https://cdd.stanford.edu/mm/2019/12/goodsociety-sintomer.pdf
[15] Smith, G. (2009). Democratic Innovations, Designing Institutions for Citizens Participation, Cambridge University Press, DOI: https://doi.org/10.1017/CBO9780511609848
[16] Energy Forum Video, Stanford Center for Deliberative Democracy https://cdd.stanford.edu/2004/deliberative-polling-nova-scotia-power/
[17] Johnson, G. F. (2009). Deliberative Democratic Practices in Canada: An Analysis of Institutional Empowerment in Three Cases. Canadian Journal of Political Science / Revue Canadienne de Science Politique, 42(3), 679–703. http://www.jstor.org/stable/27754507