 Aloha and welcome back to Energy Justice in Hawaii. I do not recall what episode number we're on, probably somewhere between episode five and episode 10 of talking to interesting humans, doing interesting equity-driven projects and work in Hawaii around energy. Today we are talking about community benefits packages with Leila Pilolu. Did I say, yeah, I've never said your last name out loud before, actually, that's funny. Leila and I are colleagues and friends for a few years now. We met when I was in grad school doing research and then now she is in grad school pursuing her PhD in the Department of Urban and Regional Planning as well as she is an economist at the Public Utilities Commission. And we most recently have worked closely together on a project with Houaku Energy Cooperative Molokai for her research team, Team Nene, for those of you who are avid subscribers to Energy Justice in Hawaii, probably two or three episodes ago, we talked to Sebastian Solark and Todd Yamashita about Team Nene's work for Houaku. But today we get to hear from Leila about some of her research and interesting community benefits packages. So welcome, Leila. Did I miss anything in your intro that you wanna share? No, you covered it all, even our Team Nene work together. And it was such a fantastic experience working with Houaku and we're looking forward to continuing that work. So thank you, thanks for having me. Oh, my pleasure, great. Well, let's just dive in to what are community benefits as they relate to energy? How would you describe them? Wow, Allie, I'm so glad you asked because community benefits didn't start off in energy. It started off actually in other contexts like waste such as landfills, toxic waste dumps like nuclear waste sites. They've also been used for mining, when communities are near a mine, a gold mine, maybe a copper lithium. But what's interesting about community benefits is that they're called all kinds of things. Like in the research, you will find them called benefit agreement, benefits sharing agreement, benefits sharing mechanism, community benefit scheme, community benefit agreement, community compensation. There's just like so many names to them, host community agreement, host community benefits. So actually during research in this field is part of it is just like looking for the right terminology because it's been used in so many different planning contexts. I think we're still trying to figure out what to call them but like for today, let's just call them community benefit packages. And I would say in a nutshell, in the energy space, the community benefits package is like a mechanism that is used to kind of address perceived imbalances with the impacts and benefits of a project. And ultimately I think the goal of a community benefits package is to obtain community acceptance of that project. So I always say like in the case of somewhere like Hawaii, developer will put together some sort of package that could include all kinds of things which I hope we get to talk about in more depth. And then in terms of community will, well, appreciate and accept that package in an ideal world and then the project gets built and then everyone is happy. So I think that's ultimately what community benefits packages are thought of conceptually but in terms of in practice it might be a little bit. Intriguing. So it sounds like they started more along the lines of like extractive developments that had like very obvious physical environmental impacts. It might impact the health or quality of life of people who live around it. So it's sort of like a balance of we're gonna do this bad thing in your neighborhood but here's a little bit of money or benefits to hopefully balance that scale so that you guys will say yes to our project. Yeah, exactly. And what's interesting is because now that I'm peeling the onion back if you will and looking at like the origins of these community benefits packages like when it came to landfills, there are all kinds of risks that people were experiencing on top of the health risks of living next to a landfill per se. But your house, your home value might decrease, right? And then there will be other sorts of issues relating to safety because of like road work and all these trucks coming in and out of your neighborhood and just the increased amount of traffic that you might experience living there and water quality issues, right? Because so what I saw in the research is that community benefits packages included things, not just maybe a reduction or just a complete elimination of your garbage bill, for example, but things like groundwater testing regularly, fire safety, safety around the perimeter to ensure that there's nothing risky happening during operations, road work, like road safety maintenance. I mean, it's really interesting to see like all the different ways in which communities have advocated for improved living conditions because of this burden that they've been carrying or for the greater good, if you will. In terms of energy, I would say that it's a little bit more gray because energy is not particularly renewable energy for some is not necessarily seen as a burden the same way that a landfill might be seen as a burden, right? And so for that reason, it's just being perceived a little bit differently, but I think there is still a lot of variation with regards to what is being put into these community benefit packages. Yeah, yeah. That point about energy projects having like not as obvious a detrimental monetary impact or otherwise, I think it's really interesting because I've definitely, I think the renewable energy industry has kind of blinders on when it comes to why community members would not want a large scale solar project or a large scale wind project in their immediate vicinity. And I think that is the thing. Developers definitely need to kind of come to terms with and acknowledge. It's true. And I think if you don't live next to a solar farm or a wind farm, you're like, what's the big deal? But again, I mean, it's someone jokes to me that, oh, well, the community benefits of a wind farm is if you live in Hawaii Kai and you don't have a wind farm. So like you're getting the benefit, but the community burden is elsewhere. So what we do have to think about, I think part of this as a community outreach or education not just for the affected communities but for people in general about the impacts that renewable energy does have, right? Because overall, I think the discourse around renewable energy is that it's good. And clearly it is good for some things like avoided emissions, right? Compared to a coal plant as an example. But there are risks and there are trade-offs and for people who have lived in certain in their neighborhoods, changing the landscape is a big deal, right? And we don't talk about that as much about the importance of place and how people, our identities are a lot of times tied to where we live and also the other impacts. Like we are not quite, I don't think people are quite clear on what the impacts of development of these projects mean for groundwater as an example or wildlife, or I mean, and still to this day, there's this huge controversy around like, oh, do wind farms really have adverse health impacts? And so I think there needs to be more clarity and scientific-based research that is shared with the wider community on what these impacts are to communities. Yeah, I definitely think reflecting on what I said earlier about communities not only renewable energy in their area, I think that feels like a black and white to me. I feel like I've more heard community members say like how they would like renewable energy or like how it's owned or how it's designed or certain design aspects of it. It's not like a we hate renewable energy, it's a this way works better for us than this way. Well, I love that you brought up the ownership case because, okay, I think this would be a good time to talk about the different types of community benefits that I've been seeing in the literature. The first one would be monetary, meaning like a straight up direct payment to an individual or household in the form of well, it could be cash or a check or it could be a bill credit, right? It's like, oh, well, you have this thing next to you. So we'll give you this as a discount on your electric bill. And there are also direct payments to communities through like, if there's like a community organization, the developer can write a check to that organization. But, okay, and then there's also the developer providing scholarships or grants to schools. There could be parks or community centers that are provided to the community. So it could be all sorts of tangible and less tangible things, it could be monetary, non-monetary. I think what's interesting is that there are also ownership models and that's what you were talking about and how communities, like how they want it, right? And so I think what's interesting about this research is looking at the ways in which communities are being involved in the conversation around these community benefits because it's one thing for a developer to just cut a check and say, here you go. And it's another thing for the community to be like, this is what we need. Can you help us with that, right? With your project, maybe we can be part owners of this or whatever. And so the research seems to suggest that communities don't like to be bribed. And that's not hard to imagine, I think. But there's a possibility that community benefits packages could be an opportunity and not a bribe, but it's all in the way that it's being done, right? So to your point, I think more conversations with the community at the beginning and not just like thinking that, you know, you can just give some thing that the community may or may not need, but they weren't a part of coming up with the idea. I don't necessarily think that's going to be as effective. But again, I'm still doing my research in this topic. And part of the reason why I wanted to do the research in this area is because not a lot of empirical studies have been done on community benefits. And what we're seeing is a lot of just case studies, right? So it's like, in this place, in that place, this is what they did. And then the researchers are trying to extrapolate based on those one-off or just a few case studies. And what I'm trying to do is look at it on a larger, broader scale and see if we can see any sort of pattern. I realize I didn't even get to add, I didn't ask you to introduce your research when I introduced you. So when you say your research, you are talking about your research for your PhD. Yes, correct. Yes, okay. Give us a little blurb of what the PhD is about so that we can track your outputs. Okay, well, thank you. I think I need to work on my elevator pitch for this because I am being asked this question quite often. And then I go off into like an hour-long tangent and bring my box away from me. And I'm like, why? What did I say? Okay, so what I'm trying to do is it's very ambitious. I want to create a database of community benefits packages in the United States. I might start off with just a few states if it just gets to be too much to do because I am a one-person show right now. But the goal is to catalog all the different community benefits packages and quantify them and then see if there are relationships between certain variables. So I'm not sure yet what I'm going to be measuring but I think ultimately what we're trying to see is if there's a relationship between the, is there a relationship between the type of compensation, whether it's monetary, non-monetary and community acceptance. And the reason why this research is significant is because it seems that community benefits packages are trending right now, right? Like people are like, oh yeah, just give them a community benefits package and they'll accept your project, right? But we're not really sure if that's true. We don't know really what the relationship is. So that is why I thought this was a great opportunity to dig deep and see empirically. What is that, what does it look like when we look at the data? Yeah, what a fascinating, you did a great job, a little elevator pitch. No one walked away from you there. Oh, thank you. Yeah, love that blur. I have a question about community benefits packages. How are they usually decided on? Like when is the format, who's talking to who and how do they get selected? Oh my gosh, that's a great question, Allie. And right now I don't have an answer for you because it's not easily found. Like that kind of information is what's taking me so long to do just one, looking at just one case study. So okay, some of the issues that I'm having are how do we quantify some of these benefits, right? I mean, some of them are gonna be straightforward. Others are not going to be. But in terms of this challenge, I downloaded like a data set from the EIA, which is Energy Information Administrator, EIA, right? Yeah, anyway, they have a bunch of data. And I found like 4,000 solar projects in the US. And I'm basically going down that list and seeing if there was a benefits package associated with that, right? And that means just kind of like combing through the internet and seeing like what was written in new sources. And then sometimes, not sometimes actually a lot, going in through these dockets, these dockets management systems of different states combing through those documents and so it's, that though is the question. It's like to what extent were communities involved in the process of putting this together? As I do believe I watched one of your previous shows with Ryan Hurley and Lance Collins and they were talking about the Maui project, the Kahana project. And I actually wasn't involved in that docket. So I don't want to act like a no and a all with that one. However, I do know that that particular project had mediation involved, right? So you had the West Maui Preservation Association, which is a community-based group and they actually went into mediation with the developer interjects. And they came out with an agreement and I'm not sure if that's common. I would like to say it's not. Obviously in the jurisdictions that have some sort of mandated law that says you must developer provide community benefits to the community. That will probably be more institutionalized, more formal. But in other cases, I would imagine that the developer creates this package. Maybe there's some involvement with the community. I'm not sure yet what that looks like. But the issue though, and I think Lance and Ryan talked about this is enforceability, is that who is going to hold the developer accountable if those community benefits are not being upheld? So that also is an issue when doing research in this because there may be community benefits that I find but how do I know that they're going to be enforced and should I then discount those? Unless we see that it did happen. So all this to say that this research is challenging for many reasons. And I was interested to see that no one had done this work yet, but now I see why. There's just so many gray areas and it's really hard to measure. Yeah, yeah, I definitely see that. And I would imagine that could also be a reason that some developers are hesitant to enter into a community benefits negotiation because they first have to identify who it is that they're negotiating with and what is a meaningful sum of money or a project or something that they're offering, which does not mean that they should not dive into that work, I think. Yeah, well, one of my mentors told me very aptly, she said, well, you can pay for it now or you pay for it later, right? And that's exactly what we see is that if the work isn't done on the front end then it comes back in the form of a lawsuit or just delays, just the project being canceled. So I think it is a best practice for developers to work closely with community so that the community feels that this project benefits them, you know, in some way, and aptly, right? We had, thank you for remembering the episode with Ryan Hurley and Lance Collins and their colleague Bianca Izaki. Yes, Bianca joined us too. And I think their sentiment was that this was kind of a precedent-setting event that now this shows that, you know, if a developer tries to avoid doing their homework early on they will eventually have a test later and it will be obvious evidence that they did not do their homework and they will be sent back to do their homework. So even if there is not like a law that says a community benefits package has to be X amount of money, hopefully they see the interjects and the West Mali case and say, oh, we should do our homework now. Yeah, well, you know, I think one thing that we learned, you know, with the communities here is that, well, we could be very surprised on what the communities actually want, right? Sometimes it's not about money. It's sometimes it's about ownership. It's sometimes it's about, you know, having their voices actually heard and taken into account in decision-making. You know, it's about sovereignty, if you will. So I think that that's, and this is actually probably getting away from my research, although it will probably manifest its way somewhere in there, but it comes down to trust. I think really you could have the best process, right? Let's say we find in the research that like, oh, if you, you know, if the developer does this with the community and the decisions are made in this way, shape or form, then everyone will be happy. But I think what it truly is, is like what is the level of trust between the developer and the community and the other parties involved? Because that's, you know, that's when things really move. That's when you come to agreements and people are actually willing to talk to each other and figure out like what it is that we want and what is it that we can give, you know? And when there's that kind of feeling and that sense of transparency and, you know, trust, again trust, then, you know, people are going to feel more willing to work together, not just in this context, but in future context, right? And I think particularly for Hawaii, that's really important because we live on islands where we're so connected and it's like, you can't avoid. You can't avoid people, right? So you got to do the right thing like at the beginning and continue to do the right thing because everyone's going to know if you don't. Yeah, yeah, that feels very true. I, your comment about community ownership made me think of the parallel of like with a movement that I have seen in the more philanthropy field about traditional philanthropy is about, I have lots of money and you don't have money, so I'm going to give you a chunk of money every year to do what I told you to do and then you will tell me that you did it and we'll like go back and forth and it kind of perpetuates the system of like, I have the thing and you don't have the thing and I will be very generous and give you the thing. That community ownership and community-driven philanthropy is like a movement within the philanthropy field that is like a little more radical. It's thinking about how do we kind of shift the power away from the traditional source of money and the people who need the money and that ownership that like, how do we include you in the decision-making process? How does the community benefits package move from $6,000 a year to you guys for the benefit of us getting to own and operate our project in your neighborhood to like, this is a project that you guys own and operate in your neighborhood because it serves you and we are the conduit to help you get there. And I think that is like, in my mind, the ultimate community benefits package is no need community benefits package because the whole project is for community benefit. But yeah, and there was actually, I mean, one example that I read is I think it was in Scotland. It was either Scotland or England, but that there was a wind farm and the developer gifted one of the turbine turbines to the community so that they owned it outright and were able to receive all the benefits from that one. So the profits and all that were from that one. And so I mean, I think that's like one example of how communities can be made owners, part owners. I think also when you think about the word equity, and I know this is what your show is about, equity in financial terms is ownership, right? And so it's interesting if you think about equity in those terms because then what's also great about ownership for communities if you're a developer is that the community feels accountable for that project as well, right? They feel a sense of pride, like, hey, that's my solar farm, you know, and we have to take care of this because it's our asset. So I think it is a more beneficial way of like seeing a project to the extent that developer can find ways that a community can really be part owners of a project in whatever way that makes sense for them and for the community. Absolutely. We're coming to the end of our show here. We just have a little less than a minute left. If you tell us a little bit about like, what are the future questions you're asking in your research about this that we can tune in maybe in a couple of months and hear more about? What's on your mind? Yeah, thank you. So what I'm interested to see is, you know, eventually is if there's a relationship between making a community benefits package mandatory and community acceptance, meaning should we make laws that make community benefits packages mandatory? Yeah, and yeah, and you know, we have such few examples, so it's kind of hard to do that empirically right now, but the research seems to suggest that when you do make community benefits packages mandatory, communities are more willing to accept it, but the caveat is that the community needs to feel that they were part of developing that package. What an interesting future question. I can't wait to have you back on the show so we can ask you about what you found in that research. Well, thank you for having me and I look forward to being in your future show. This is great. This is fun. Thank you, Rayla, and thank you, audience, for tuning in again. We'll see you in a couple of weeks, maybe. Aloha.