By Mel Moyce & Taylor Carnevale
Transitioning the United States energy system to one that’s more sustainable and resilient will bring huge investment into countless new projects—whether critical mineral mining, energy supply chain manufacturing, or clean energy generation. When the developers of these projects collaborate well with host communities, everyone benefits. That’s why CA FWD and the UC Berkeley Possibility Lab are working together to build the capacity of regions and communities to engage effectively in negotiations with energy project developers across California and the broader U.S.
Our collaboration launched in December with Phase 1 of this project, which included building a digital database of 328 agreements between developers and communities across the energy sector. Each agreement establishes specific commitments between developers and impacted communities, workers, or governments, outlining the distribution of social, economic, and/or environmental benefits generated by the project. Commitments can take many forms and should be determined based on identified community priorities and project characteristics. The database includes different types of agreements, such as Community Benefits Agreements (CBAs), Host Community Agreements, Neutrality and Workforce Development Agreements, Community Benefits Plans, and more. Some of these represent enforceable contracts, while others are simply public commitments.
This database is designed to be as helpful as possible to those actually negotiating agreements on the ground. For instance: to bolster access and usability, the database includes a robust, first-of-its-kind taxonomy that allows users to sort by industry and supply chain phase, alongside counterparty type, benefit type, and community characteristics. This taxonomy enables users to easily analyze, compare, and understand these commitments across different industry, geographic, and community contexts, helping them identify models and strategies that best fit their needs. In addition, the database highlights agreements where benefits are specific to the project itself—for instance, creating high quality jobs on the project, or land remediation on the project site—to underscore the reality that these agreements can directly benefit communities and reduce overall project risk and cost for developers.
The database was just one piece of a graduate capstone project done for CA FWD by Melissa Moyce at UC Berkeley’s Goldman School of Public Policy. Melissa’s capstone report, “Rethinking Community Benefits: Industry Specific Insights for a Transforming California,” draws from the database and her broader research effort, including expert interviews, policy analysis, and case studies, to assess how project benefits are being shared across three important industries in the energy transition.
Key takeaways from the report include:
- Project benefit agreements are underutilized and lack consistent structures across commitment, project, and counterparty types. While expectations around community benefits are growing, formal agreements remain relatively rare and vary widely in format, enforceability, and scope.
- Limited community capacity to negotiate can contribute to imbalances in project outcomes and project uncertainty. Many communities lack the legal, financial, and technical resources needed to engage in benefit-sharing negotiations on equal footing with project leads. For project developers and/or owners, this lack of capacity can create delays, misaligned expectations, and reputational risk.
- When community and worker priorities are clear, everyone benefits. When communities can proactively identify and advocate for their needs and priorities, project benefit agreements are more likely to result in meaningful investments and developers gain a reliable roadmap for delivering benefits that align with local priorities.
- Local governments are increasingly using project benefit agreements as tools of public governance. When these agreements first emerged, they were in the form of contracts between developers and coalitions of community groups, but now, particularly in the case of energy projects, the local government often serves as the counterparty to the agreement. This may represent a shift in local government land use approvals and permitting processes.
The report outlines potential strategies to advance effective project benefit-sharing across California. These include tying public funding and procurement to meaningful benefit commitments, following federal models like the Department of Energy’s Community Benefits Plan framework; piloting Community Benefit Ordinances (CBOs) at the local and regional levels to establish clearer, more transparent negotiation pathways; expanding the use of co-ownership and revenue-sharing models to support long-term community wealth-building; and strengthening access to technical assistance to ensure communities can engage as effectively as possible.
CA FWD’s work on community benefits is just getting started. We are excited to kick off Phase 2 of this work, including developing complementary toolkits, networking resources, negotiation training, and more. We hope this work will serve to standardize, strengthen, and scale project benefit practices in energy-related projects across California, as well as the broader national and international landscape.
Watch this space in the coming months, as CA FWD and the Possibility Lab kick off the next phase of this work!
