1

Leveraging Community Benefit Frameworks Workshop Overview

With the passage of the Inflation Reduction Act and the Bipartisan Infrastructure Law, and the establishment of the Justice40 Initiative, the Department of Energy (DOE) required consideration of community benefits as part of the assessment of its funding and loan opportunities.¹ By doing so, DOE aimed to meet four policy priorities that included engaging with the host communities and workforce; investing in America’s workers through quality jobs; advancing diversity, equity, inclusion, and accessibility through recruitment and training; and implementing the objectives of the Justice40 Initiative, which directed that 40 percent of the overall benefits of certain federal investments flow to disadvantaged communities. The categories of investments included in Justice40 included climate change, clean energy and energy efficiency, clean transit, affordable and sustainable housing, training and workforce development, remediation and reduction of legacy pollution, and the development of clean water and wastewater infrastructure. The program aimed to confront underinvestment in disadvantaged communities and bring critical resources to communities overburdened by legacy pollution and environmental hazards through grant or procurement spending. The National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine’s Planning Committee on the Empowering Justice 40 Communities: A Workshop on Leveraging Community Benefit Agreements to Support the Department of Energy’s Mandate to Serve Disadvantaged Communities was tasked with exploring how different strategies for community benefits, planning, and stakeholder engagement could be utilized to meet the needs of the communities that may host federally funded energy infrastructure projects.

The 2-day workshop was titled Leveraging Community Benefit Frameworks: Empowering Communities to Benefit from Federally Funded Energy Projects. The workshop was hosted at the National Academy of Sciences Building in Washington, DC, and virtually via Zoom on May 16 and 17, 2024. Speakers and participants at the workshop included experts and thought leaders

___________________

¹ The Executive Order 14008 that established the Justice40 initiative was rescinded by the Trump administration on January 20, 2025.

from communities, national and regional community-based organizations, academia, federal agencies, and private-sector project developers. Appendix A includes the workshop agenda, and Appendixes B and C include the biographies of the planning committee members and speakers, respectively. Appendix D includes results from interactive (web-based) Slido activities where participants could share their insights and respond to polls. The goals of the workshop were as follows:

• Review the status of community benefits determination, guidance, and tools developed by DOE, the Council on Environmental Quality, and other agencies relevant to Justice40;
• Discuss the alignment, gaps, and areas of conflict across current and proposed approaches to community benefit formulation;
• Learn from historically disadvantaged and host communities about successful engagement models and how to formulate community benefits;
• Describe and discuss existing and proposed methods for measuring, reporting, and evaluating community benefits under Justice40 and contributions from relevant academic scholarship that could inform the development of community benefits, particularly in assessing non-monetary contributions;
• Highlight community benefit agreements developed by state and local governments and the private sector that can serve as national models for Justice40 programs; and
• Discuss steps that could improve the formulation and delivery of Justice40 goals in energy and infrastructure projects.

This workshop was developed thanks to the financial support of the Cynthia and George Mitchell Foundation. At the opening of the first day, David Monsma, director of Energy Programs at the Mitchell Foundation, shared that the motivation for the workshop was the lack of a good knowledge base for how to meet and assess Justice40 objectives in new energy development projects, and how the societal considerations associated with the energy transition will be met.

The planning committee chair Devashree Saha, director of the U.S. Clean Energy Economy Program at the World Resources Institute, opened the discussion on the first day by welcoming the attendees and outlining the agenda for the workshop. Saha noted that there is an increasing interest among policymakers and civil society organizations to ensure that new energy infrastructure projects benefit the communities where these projects are sited, leading to shared prosperity for communities. She noted that this is a pivotal moment to address the harms and burdens of structural racism that have been imposed on some communities, such as pollution, gentrification, and displacement. The Inflation Reduction Act, the Bipartisan Infrastructure Law, and Justice40 have provided a once-in-a-generation opportunity to invest in climate

infrastructure projects in a way that protects vulnerable groups during the energy transition.

Saha highlighted that the workshop would focus on the process and outcomes of community benefits frameworks—an all-encompassing term for negotiated commitments that bring community members, government stakeholders, project developers, and community organizations together to outline how to achieve sustained benefits for host communities. Community benefit frameworks by their nature build trust and ensure continued support from the community throughout the lifetime of a project. The workshop sought to encourage conversations that highlight a diversity of community perspectives to better understand their priorities and concerns. The foundation for an equitable energy transition requires centering the welfare of communities, providing them with opportunities for socioeconomic development, and protecting them against environmental, social, political, and economic harm.

There are many ways to work toward community-centric goals, including community benefits agreements (CBAs), community benefits plans (CBPs), project labor agreements (PLAs), community workforce agreements (CWAs), and good neighbor agreements (GNAs), to name a few (see Box 1-1 for definitions).

Saha set expectations by highlighting that the workshop is not a magic pill that can answer all questions about community benefits. Saha hoped that it would be an opportunity to share information, learn about different benefit frameworks, and develop connections that could translate into a community of practice. The workshop was organized into eight sessions focused on learning about the broad landscape of frameworks for providing community benefits; hearing about successful engagement models, tools, and resources needed for meaningful community benefits negotiation; and understanding what is required for proactive and long-term capacity building in communities. Most panels included opening remarks by moderators and panelists, a panel discussion, and a question-and-answer session with workshop participants. One panel was designed as a “fishbowl” discussion, wherein all audience members were invited to engage in an interactive dialogue. The room was set up in concentric circles with the moderator and panelists at the center, and an empty chair was available for any audience member. The workshop also included an in-person-only game activity where participants role-played as different stakeholders to develop a CBP together. This game activity, designed by DOE, featured a fictional community that has been approached to host a hydrogen fuel cell trucking project. The game highlighted the trade-offs and checkpoints in decision-making, the plurality of possible viewpoints on benefits and interests, and the types of negotiations that are critical to developing community benefits frameworks.

The sessions on the first day included the following activities: (1) a panel on the perspectives of DOE staff about why community benefits frameworks are important, their approach to CBPs and associated processes, the feedback they have received from stakeholders, and lessons learned;² (2) a panel on the perspectives of community-based organizations on how success can be achieved during the engagement and negotiation processes; (3) a fireside chat case-study on a CBA negotiation from the perspective of a developer and a community member representing Montana’s Black Butte Copper Project; (4) DOE’s CBP

___________________

² A summary of this session is not included in this proceedings as the federal requirement for CBPs at the Department of Energy was suspended on January 28, 2025, in response to Executive Orders 14148, 14151, and 14154.

game activity; (5) a panel discussion on the pros and cons of different framework types (e.g., PLAs versus CWAs versus GNAs); and (6) the fishbowl activity that invited panelists and audience members to share their experiences with various community benefits frameworks.

Sessions and panels on the second day included the following activities: (1) a panel on challenges faced by community-based organizations during developer-led community engagement efforts, (2) a panel on developers’ experiences with DOE’s CBP application process and with community engagement more broadly, and (3) a panel discussion on how community benefits frameworks can support the development of enduring community coalitions, build local power, and extend the capacity to deliver community benefits over long timeframes.

Some key themes surfaced throughout the workshop, including the following:

• Community benefits frameworks can provide opportunities to build a healthy, resilient, and equitable economy. Community benefits frameworks enable projects to address many societal challenges simultaneously, such as reversing environmental and energy inequities and past harms from structural racism. Negotiations of community benefit frameworks encourage new socioeconomic paradigms and can help build pathways out of generational poverty.
• There are many types of community benefits frameworks. Stakeholders have access to a myriad of examples that have worked for a variety of industries, projects, and communities and new tools can be tailored to a specific community’s needs. In most cases, the gold standard is a legally enforceable framework, like a CBA, to ensure the promised benefits are delivered to the community.
• A coordinated cross-sector effort for community benefit planning is critical. While DOE’s requirement for CBPs during the Biden administration was intended to be resilient to the uncertainties of the political process, community benefit planning must also be supported by philanthropy, private equity, and subnational actors to make it more politically durable.
• Accountability, transparency about a project’s risks, and respect are fundamental to building trust within a community. Trust and accountability in the community engagement process are impacted by many things, including perceptions about developers; past experiences and relationships with developers and community organizations; familiarity, or lack thereof, with new technologies; public education; and opportunities to participate in the decision-making process early on.
• Community benefits frameworks are predominantly challenged by capacity issues. At the workshop, community organizations, legal

• organizations, and community members advocated for (1) better funding opportunities for community-based organizations and community liaisons; (2) strengthening a community’s ability to access external expertise from academic, philanthropic, and legal organizations, especially in rural communities; and (3) shifting the power dynamic and leveling the playing field such that communities can enjoy organizing capacity, political capacity, research capacity, media capacity, capacity for legal representation, administrative capacity, and fundraising capacity.
• A community should not fit the project; instead, the project must fit the community. An equitable and just community benefits framework must recognize that a one-size-fits-all approach cannot be used, and local context must be prioritized. Furthermore, all stakeholders and actors matter, including community members, community advocates, local elected officials, federal agency program staff, and private entities like developers and manufacturers.
• Actionable ways for developers and other public entities to better engage and build relationships with communities exist. These include the following: stipends for community organizations and community liaisons; places to convene—outside of meetings organized by regulatory agencies; and consideration of the realities and costs of community participation in the project, including the costs of transportation and trade-offs with jobs, childcare, and elderly care.
• Communities must be engaged and included early on in a project’s process, and projects should prioritize building on the wealth of knowledge in their community. Community organizations with a regional and national footprint and networks and university consortia are effective avenues that can bring stakeholders together to share best practices and lessons learned.
• Trusted partners are needed to represent communities. In some cases, such partnerships have been led by universities. University-led coalitions typically, though not universally, engender trust among community members, allowing universities to convene diverse groups of stakeholders.
• Benefits must be designed, developed, negotiated, and enforced such that new projects are not extractive, do not perpetuate past harms, and equitably meet the needs of the community. A successful community benefits framework requires early and ongoing community engagement, as well as thorough documentation of the community’s goals, grievances, progress, successes, and failures relevant to the project. Projects have ripple effects not only through local communities but throughout the broader economy; a new infrastructure project can serve as an inflection point that changes the socioeconomic trajectory of a place for generations.

REFERENCES

This page intentionally left blank.