Sponsored by: Community Benefit – CalMatters

The construction of a new stadium or solar farm can raise both alarm and promise for local residents, and for good reason. Communities are often sidelined in decision-making about these projects, and the benefits of such large-scale developments are not always evenly distributed.

Historically, when these opportunities arise, local governments hold public hearings where residents can voice their concerns. However, this type of binding has its drawbacks. It tends to favor vocal residents with the time and resources to visit. Additionally, research shows that residents who attend these public hearings are disproportionately opposed to the project, rather than those pushing for more energy infrastructure or housing. And ultimately, there’s no guarantee that local elected officials will take community feedback into account.

Community Benefit Agreements (CBA) have emerged as one way of increasing local control over development decisions and ensuring that the economic and other benefits of new infrastructure are shared more widely.

What is a CBA?

A public benefit agreement is a legally binding contract between a developer and local governments or community groups such as labor unions, neighborhood associations or environmentalists.

In exchange for specific, tangible benefits, such as job training programs, affordable housing, local job guarantees, parks, reduced electricity rates, or direct financial payments, local organizations agree to support a proposed project—or at least not oppose it. In this way, CBAs may be able to help expedite approval processes and expedite development by addressing potential community opposition.

CBA to support clean energy development

As California moves toward its goal of 100 percent renewable energy by 2045, communities are starting to see a lot more wind and solar infrastructure projects — especially those in the interior and rural areas of the state. As of November 2025, there are 282 planned utility solar projects in California. Their total planned capacity is 59,721 megawatts (MW).

Historically, community benefit agreements have resulted from extensive advocacy and organizing by local community members. However, instead of insisting that communities self-organize for these benefits, California did began to demand clean energy developers to enter into legally binding agreements with local community organizations to benefit from streamlined permits at the state level.

Renewable energy CBAs are becoming increasingly prominent in politics, and some jurisdictions in both California and other states have institutionalized community benefits:

• Riverside County Policy B-29 requires large solar projects to pay approximately $150 per acre.
• The Imperial County Community Benefit Program collects fees from solar projects to award grants to improve infrastructure and create jobs.
• California’s AB 205 now requires developers seeking state-level permits for large solar and wind facilities to complete a CBA
• Recent Michigan legislation requires developers to enter into host community agreements with minimum payments of $2,000 per megawatt.
• New York City created a host community benefits program with annual megawatt fees issued as credits on the electric bills of residents of municipalities hosting renewable energy projects

Read the report: Rethinking Community Benefits: Industry-Specific Insights for a Transforming California

To help community groups looking to negotiate benefit agreements with developers, our Possibility Lab team—in partnership with CA FWD—built a database of energy project benefit agreements to identify common characteristics of successful agreements.

Browse our database of Energy Project Benefit Agreements

The promises and challenges of ARP

The promise of CBAs is that they give communities direct power to negotiate their needs and preferences. However, it may not be clear who actually constitutes the “community”. Because CBAs are often negotiated by selected community groups, they may lack democratic accountability. And just as residents attending a public hearing may not be representative of a given community’s demographics, with varying and unequal access to economic and political capital, the same may be true of community groups participating in ARP negotiations.

As a result, some critics believe that CBAs essentially allow developers to “buy off” opposition in order to streamline approvals. The importance of timing in these agreements does not improve the optics: offered too early, the benefits may feel like bribes; too late, they may seem like unfair compensation for negative impacts.

After all, CBAs are private contracts and the details of many agreements remain hidden. As a result, despite the many examples of CBAs in and outside of California, surprisingly little is known about their actual structure, benefits, and outcomes. Many important questions remain unanswered, including whether monetary advice accelerates or retards development. Which communities are successfully negotiating CBAs and which are not? What happens when negotiations fail? Who monitors to ensure commitments are met?

CBAs are a promising means of addressing potential tensions between the need to quickly build more infrastructure and the desire to involve communities in decision-making. However, more research is needed to understand their effectiveness in delivering real benefits to communities while enabling advances in housing, energy and other new developments.

To learn more, visit the UC Berkeley Possibility Lab’s People-Centered Policymaking site