Along the edge of Morro Bay, on California’s central coast, soft green ridges break into cliffs and plunge into the ocean. White waves buffet the dark sand, and a chorus of marine life, from sea otters to double-crested cormorants, meets at the surface near the bay’s iconic Morro Rock.
In 2022, the Bureau of Ocean Energy Management began to lease sections of the ocean 20 miles from the coast to offshore wind developers. Unlike other regions with offshore wind, waters along the West Coast run thousands of feet deep, requiring companies to build floating platforms to stabilize the steel turbines. While the towers and platforms would be barely visible from shore, some residents are concerned that the construction of new ports, increased marine traffic and possible damage to hundreds of offshore structures could harm the coastal economy and ecosystem. They worry that even initial surveys, particularly if they use seismic technology, could be harmful.
Other locals believe in offshore wind’s potential as a climate solution. “We take the position that we want to work with the developer and improve the project from within,” said Sam Cohen, government affairs and legal officer for the Santa Ynez Band of Chumash Indians. Since 2018, the tribe has followed and commented on plans for offshore wind across the state, largely focusing on the need for tribal participation to identify sites of cultural importance. If the tribe is not able to monitor the surveys, Cohen wrote in one letter to the California Energy Commission, the tribe cannot approve future environmental assessments of any new projects.
But to participate effectively in the surveys, the tribe needs more funding and expertise. In November 2023, the Santa Ynez Band signed a formal community benefits agreement with Floventis Energy, an offshore wind developer that plans to build a smaller, four-turbine project some 60 miles south, near Point Conception, that will fund the tribe’s oceanographic research in exchange for its support of the project. It’s an agreement that offers a model for potential partnerships with developers in Morro Bay.
“We very much wanted a community benefit agreement — an example, a successful model,” Cohen said.
Community benefits agreements allow developers to offer tangible economic benefits to local communities — including jobs, wages and funds for environmental protection — in exchange for hosting a project. They are not a new concept in energy development, but they are still relatively rare among clean energy projects, particularly in the Western United States. Where local opposition remains a major barrier to renewable energy expansion, these formal agreements have the power to assuage community concerns and gain the approval of local people. They are also legally enforceable, ensuring that residents will benefit in the long run. At present, however, the shortage of active examples of these agreements makes it hard for either communities or developers to engage successfully in negotiations — negotiations that will become increasingly crucial as the energy transition expands across the country.
“There’s a lot that can be done that is not being done to honestly take on and meaningfully address community opposition.”
“There’s a lot that can be done that is not being done to honestly take on and meaningfully address community opposition,” said Ann Alexander, a consultant at Devonshire Strategies and former senior attorney at the Natural Resources Defense Council. Some developers are quick to blame regulations and laws such as the National Environmental Policy Act, which residents can use to block projects. But reforming these statutes would not resolve the underlying problem, which is that community concerns often prove to be well-founded, Alexander said.
One study conducted by researchers at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology reviewed more than 50 utility-scale solar, wind or geothermal projects between 2008 and 2021. It found that most community opposition reflects multiple related concerns, including a project’s impacts on property values, recreational sites, endangered species and local industries. Residents also worry that companies are not engaging them in a fair and open public process.
From the developers’ perspective, however, the U.S. has entered a critical stage in the clean energy transition. To achieve net-zero greenhouse gas emissions by 2050, the National Renewable Energy Lab estimates that the West, excluding Alaska, will need to quadruple its capacity for solar and wind energy over the next 20 years. California’s renewable energy plan expects offshore wind to provide a significant proportion of this new capacity, and companies fear that local opposition will cause project cancellations and costly delays.
ALL THIS HAS FORCED researchers and climate advocates to break down the reasons for local opposition and encourage bespoke community agreements. A community benefits agreement can improve transparency and boost the chances for approval of a company’s project. But the process is complex: It involves numerous variables, including who is representing the community and what fair compensation might look like, as well as how to monitor non-financial commitments, such as environmental protections, in the future.
Lance Collins, an attorney for the West Maui Preservation Association who worked with the solar developer Innergex on a community benefits agreement in 2021, said that public utilities commissions and other agencies can help oversee this process. Community groups, he said, are often navigating these discussions for the first time, while a large energy company often speaks to multiple groups about multiple projects, which creates an asymmetry in their experience. Requiring a standardized public process for new projects would open up these closed-door discussions and ensure that all community concerns are addressed in a meaningful fashion.
While Innergex eventually pulled out of the west Maui project, Collins believes that the agreement they co-signed can still serve as a precedent for Hawai‘i’s utilities commission. Community benefits agreements can be successful, he said, if their value reflects a fair exchange of the burden that the community is taking on.
Columbia University, the World Resources Institute and the U.S. Department of Energy have compiled databases of community benefits agreements, many of which are concentrated in the Northeast. Of the handful of cases in the West, successful examples tend to come from other industries, including a 2002 agreement between the fishermen of Morro Bay and a group of telecommunications companies that addressed the impacts of new subsea fiber-optic cables extending from the shore. Companies including AT&T committed to contribute $100,000 per year per undersea cable project to a fund to support the commercial fishing industry. They also paid for a liaison committee that has represented both industries in ongoing dialogue for more than 20 years.
In California, policymakers are already attempting to expand the use of community benefits agreements for renewable energy. A 2022 law on energy siting includes an option for expedited permitting if companies sign one or more such agreements tied to a new energy facility. The Bureau of Ocean Energy Management’s October 2022 notice for offshore wind lease sales in Morro Bay offered to reduce the price of a winning bid by 5% for developers who submitted signed agreements. One company had pursued a community benefits agreement with the city of Morro Bay in 2018, and though it did not win a lease, the agreement served as the template for the Santa Ynez Band and Floventis to develop their own.
Looking ahead, Cohen is keen not to overstate his optimism; he has tried speaking to some Morro Bay developers, but has yet to be as successful as he was in his conversations with Floventis. In any case, it will take another five years before any funds are transferred to the Santa Ynez Band for the project near Point Conception. After that, the tribe can begin to conduct more detailed research on the projects in Morro Bay.
“We’re trying not to overreach,” said Cohen, who still believes that a strong partnership among the stakeholders at Morro Bay is possible. In order to achieve it, however, the parties will need “more trust, and some good positive examples of projects” that they can make work.
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