Community Benefits and Impacts from Offshore Wind Development

Project Results, Publications and Engagement

Project Description

Energy development projects can create both opportunities and challenges for host communities. New infrastructure may bring jobs, investment, and funding for local priorities while also raising concerns related to environmental change, existing industries, cultural resources, and local participation in decision making. 

This project examines how communities, developers, policymakers, and supporting organizations address questions of local impacts and community benefits associated with large-scale energy development. Offshore wind development serves as a case study for understanding how benefit arrangements emerge, how negotiations unfold, and how communities navigate complex energy infrastructure siting processes across U.S. coastal regions. Research activities included interviews, surveys, document analysis, and engagement with community members, local leaders, developers, nonprofit organizations and policy makers.

Project Team

• Hilary Boudet, Professor, School of Public Policy, Oregon State University
• Shawn Hazboun, Assistant Professor, School of Public Policy, Oregon State University
• Jeremy Firestone, Professor, School of Marine Science and Policy, University of Delaware
• Shana Hirsch, Co-Director, Pacific Marine Energy Center, University of Washington
• Arne Jacobson, Director, Schatz Energy Research Center, Cal Poly Humboldt
• Teresa Johnson, Associate Professor, School of Marine Sciences, University of Maine
• Caroline Noblet, Associate Professor, School of Economics, University of Maine
  
  

Project Locations: Gulf of Maine, Pacific (Northern California, Southern Oregon, Washington)

Primary Recipients

Subrecipients, Key Personnel & Partners