The Energy Transition involves governance issues which need to be overcome to ensure its success. In Europe, the policies that accompany this energy transition have fixed very short term goals such as the diversification and the development of renewable energy sources by 2020. The benefits of developing these technologies for limiting greenhouse gases emissions is widely accepted at European and national level and is frequently invoked by the State for legitimizing the current projects. However, many projects declared of public interest by the State lead to conflicts, at the territorial level, between the objective of economic development, and those of biodiversity conservation and of social interests protection. In this context, the compensation is often deployed for facilitating the social acceptability of projects. Defined according to the social and environmental impacts of the project, it seeks to preserve the territorial interests without challenging the legitimacy of the project. However, the effect of the compensation on social acceptability of development projects, specifically in energy infrastructure, remains a widely discussed point within the scientific literature. The study, based on a scientific literature review, gives an overview of the empirical contributions and debate which feed the reflexions on how the compensation operationalize the concept of acceptability in a marine renewable energy development context.