Searsport Residents Come Together to Learn about The Potential Community Benefits of Offshore Wind

About 30 people joined a community conversation Wednesday night to learn about community partnerships and benefits that can be negotiated as part of the development of offshore wind projects. The event‚ which was sponsored by Maine Climate Action Now, Maine Conservation Voters and Maine Labor Climate Council — featured Anxhela (Angela) Mile, staff attorney for the Conservation Law Foundation, and Suzanne MacDonald, senior researcher at the National Renewable Energy Laboratory.

The group primarily discussed how communities can use community benefits agreements to ensure that their voices are heard and that their needs are addressed during the development of offshore wind.

“Community benefit agreements are an incredible new opportunity for people across Maine to advance their priorities through the clean energy transition,” said Maine Conservation Voters Climate and Clean Energy Director Lucy Hochschartner, who moderated the event.

A community benefit agreement is a legal mechanism signed by community groups and a developer, identifying a range of benefits the developer agrees to provide as part of the development, in return for the community’s support of the project.

“It was so good to hear residents in the region engage so deeply and come up with excellent questions about the process of community partnership planning,” said Maine Climate Action Now Executive Director Amy Eshoo.

There was also space for discussion around homemade cookies about how communities in Maine can start to organize themselves to capture the benefits of development. In 2023, a coalition of environmental and labor groups including the Maine AFL-CIO helped pass legislation that will responsibly develop offshore wind in the Gulf of Maine and encourage new deep-water port construction while maintaining strong standards to ensure good-paying jobs for Maine workers, protections for wildlife, avoidance of important fishing grounds, broad stakeholder engagement, and inclusive community benefits.