Reimagining benefits from climate infrastructure and investments

Policy discussions have focused on how clean energy and climate technologies can provide local or community benefits, but these discussions are often disconnected from research on what communities perceive to be benefits. This paper uses interviews (n = 113) in five regions of the United States to explore what local experts and community leaders perceive as the benefits of net zero technology development. It finds that people identify a wide range of benefits of interest beyond the types of benefits often packaged in transactional community benefit agreements. Respondents discussed economic, ecological, restorative, and resilience benefits, emotional and aesthetic benefits, sovereignty benefits, and more. The paper offers a typology of eight kinds of benefits to consider and discusses two potential frameworks for assessing benefits based on value analysis and standpoint analysis. In a shifting political landscape where net zero technologies can face local opposition and carbon reductions are no longer enough to motivate investment, reconceptualizing benefits and shaping policy for benefit delivery may be a way forward.