CBA Toolkit
CBA Toolkit
Embedded Files
Leveraging Community Power in the Energy Transition
Leveraging Community Power in the Energy Transition
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Introduction
Introduction
As the world moves toward clean energy, many communities are finding themselves caught between the demand for energy from renewable sources and the impacts associated with constructing and maintaining the mining, equipment, transmission grids, and storage facilities.
If an energy project is proposed for your neighborhood and your community has concerns, this toolkit can provide the organizing tools and considerations to understand the basics of Community Benefits Agreements (CBAs).
Who the Toolkit Is For
Who the Toolkit Is For
This CBA toolkit is designed to support environmental justice (EJ) organizations, Tribes, labor unions, and fenceline community members in initiating and increasing their engagement and inclusion in the design and approval of projects in renewable energy, mineral extraction, battery manufacturing, and other economic activities that comprise the energy supply chain.
The toolkit provides practical guidance for navigating the various stages of the project development timeline; encompassing exploration; pilot projects; construction; operations; decommissioning; closure; and ultimately, the post-closure environment. Community groups can scale and adapt each of these tools to meet local conditions and the unique needs of your community.
While a CBA can provide a more equitable platform for fenceline communities to address the range of project decisions that may dramatically alter their quality of life, local environment, economic livelihoods, and cultural practices, this is not always the case. We have included exercises and tips to help you determine whether a CBA is the best path forward for you. We also suggest alternative strategies you can use to influence public opinion and government bodies that have discretionary approvals related to the project.
These tools are intended to assist organizations and community members in leveraging community power to:
Initiate conversations with local, state, and federal governments as well as energy transition mineral extraction and processing companies, renewable energy and infrastructure developers, manufacturing firms, activist institutional investors, Tribes, fenceline communities, and other impacted communities.
Build your coalition’s capacity and the local community to holistically engage in conversations around current community needs and priorities and how CBAs can support sustainable development at the local level.
Capitalize on CBAs’ potential to add social and economic value, redress historic inequities, recenter public investments to improve the quality of life of local residents and small businesses, and build pathways to community ownership.
Fenceline communities should not have to bear the environmental, health, and economic burdens of the clean energy transition. By working together, communities can build the power to halt the injustices of the industrial and post-industrial economy from being repeated in the name of climate change adaptation and mitigation. It does not have to be this way.
How to Use the Toolkit
How to Use the Toolkit
In this toolkit, we provide information and tools to help fenceline communities implement a process to prepare for, negotiate, and implement a CBA. Community coalitions may initially engage in a different order and revisit steps to refine strategies, learn more about project implications, and adapt to real-world situations.
What Each Section Contains
What Each Section Contains
CBA Phases
CBA Phases
Communities pursuing a CBA will typically go through at least some of the phases listed below:
1
Understand the CBA as a Potential Tool
2
Evaluate the Project and Its Impact on the Community
3
Build the Capacity to Engage and Negotiate
4
Design Your Negotiation Strategy
5
Negotiate!
6
Organize for Implementation Success
7
Implement, Monitor, and Enforce
8
The Closeout of the CBA
The toolkit addresses each of these phases while also including worksheets, templates, case studies, sample CBAs, and pathways to additional learning. Use the phase tracker at the start of each section to identify which phases the section will help you with.
The toolkit’s main focus is on phases 1 to 4 as critically important steps to prepare for phases 5 to 8 through effective negotiation of key CBA provisions. You might like to download the CBA Roadmap and Progress Tracker, which is a worksheet designed to accompany you through the CBA phases, help track progress and, ultimately, prepare to deploy a strategy that delivers a CBA that is representative of your community's needs and priorities.
You Got This!
You Got This!
Community Engagement + Strategic Action Can Make a Difference.
If you are reading this, you already possess one of the most important qualities for achieving success in this work: curiosity. You also recognize that justice is rarely freely given, and you care enough to explore and consider new ideas for building community power.
This toolkit offers a blueprint for creating a new pathway that departs from conventional extractive economic development projects. The checklists, worksheets, and templates included will help you design an action plan that moves away from these outdated extractive models, which harm the environment, concentrate resources in the hands of a privileged few, and exclude local workers and communities.
Authors
Toni Symonds, Reva Butensky
Contributing authors and editors
Emmett Hopkins, Tai Koester, James J. A. Blair, Thea Riofrancos, Kate Berry
Page updated
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