Full Title: RMI’s Community Benefits Catalog
Author(s): Kristine Chan-Lizardo, Zach Clayton, and David Valdes
Publisher(s): RMI
Publication Date: July 1, 2024
Full Text: Download Resource
Description (excerpt):
Many federal programs now require applicants to develop Community Benefit Plans, or CBPs. These CBPs are a tool for supporting project developers in ensuring that communities, particularly those historically harmed by energy infrastructure projects, equitably benefit from federal grants and loans. For many applicants and host communities, the development of a CBP is a new process to navigate.
RMI’s Community Benefits Catalog connects community benefit examples both to federal funding program criteria and to stakeholder priorities. The searchable catalog allows users to find which types of benefits might meet federal policy guidelines from DOE and USDA and that also address particular community concerns.
Current funding awardees are in active negotiations about the parameters of CBP implementation, and future funding applicants are working to decipher what these new CBP requirements entail. The Community Benefits Catalog supports these efforts by showing where existing community benefits serve as precedents for advancing energy equity and justice. The catalog helps applicants and community leaders envision what is both possible and meaningful to accomplish within the constraints of federal program requirements and timelines.