Thank you for joining us for the first installation of a multi-chapter series to learn more about community benefit plans at the United States Department of Energy. This series is comprised of five chapters. In this chapter, we will introduce community benefits plans and how they are organized and describe how the DOE is implementing them across applicable funding. Chapters 2 through 5 address each of the four pillars of the community benefit plans in more depth. For more information on specific aspects of Community Benefit Plan sections or implementation, please see DOE's Community Benefit Plan website, where you can find answers to frequently asked questions and more.
As a reminder, this video is not a rule or regulation, and the recommendations it contains may not apply to a particular situation based upon the individual facts and circumstances. If you have specific Community Benefit Plan guidance questions, please refer to the funding opportunity announcement for each specific program. For additional information, please visit the About Community Benefits Plan page on the Department of Energy's website. During this chapter, we will cover why the Department of Energy requires community benefit plans, what is a community benefit plan, how community benefit plans are evaluated, the community benefit plan process and timeline, and the DOE Community Benefit Plan resources.
First, we'll discuss whether the Department of Energy has made Community Benefit Plans a major priority within many of its recent funding opportunities and grants. The role of Community Benefit Plans is to ensure that the once-in-a-generation investments passed by Congress result in benefits to people and communities, support quality job growth, and increase accessibility to new opportunities provided by the Clean Energy Transition. Successful implementation of Community Benefit Plans will maximize benefits to communities, labor, and tribes, ensure long-term success, and build durable support for implementation.
More specifically, the major objectives of Community Benefit Plans are to decrease project risks and delays due to community or labor opposition, decrease health and safety risks to workers and communities, increase participation of affected stakeholders in decision making, increase opportunities for two-way communication, increase accountability to affected workers and communities, and increase benefits and broadly shared prosperity from place-based projects. Through engaging stakeholders early and assessing how projects and programs will impact host communities, DOE seeks to ensure long-term success and broaden support for further action and development. Next, what are community benefit plans exactly?
How are they structured? And what impact do they have for DOE funding? The Department of Energy requires a community benefits plan as part of the technical merit review for most funding opportunity announcements and loan applications.
Most community benefit plans are based on these four policy priorities to help ensure broadly shared prosperity and the clean energy transition. These four priorities are community and labor engagement, investing in America's workers through quality jobs, advancing diversity, equity, and inclusion and accessibility through recruitment and training, and the Justice 40 initiative established by Executive Order 14008, which directs 40% of the overall benefits of certain federal investments flow to disadvantaged communities. In addition, to promote transparency and accountability, the DOE will strive to release CBP commitments to the public when available. In the next part of this presentation, we'll explain how competitive community benefit plans are typically evaluated by the United States Department of Energy. Please note, some community benefit plans may be evaluated differently depending on funding type or application.
Please see subsequent chapters for further details. The Community Benefits Plan will be evaluated as part of the technical review process, typically valued at 20% of the overall score. If the project is selected, DOE will incorporate the Community Benefits Plan into the award and the recipient will be required to implement the Community Benefits Plan it proposed. The applicant's Community Benefits Plan must include at least one specific measurable, achievable, realistic, and time-based milestone per budget period in order to measure progress on the proposed actions.
During the life of the DOE award, DOE will evaluate the recipient's progress on community benefits, including as part of the Go-No-Go review process. Additionally, the awardee will report on community benefits through standardized forms. These will be discussed in greater detail later in the presentation and in subsequent chapters.
Ultimately, it's a priority of the department that CBPs go well beyond high-level statements or promises. Applicants should strive to explain in detail how they will meet actionable goals, outcomes, and conduct implementation. Accordingly, effective CBPs typically use smart milestones with clear metrics to measure success, design specific commitments, that align with CBP templates and that respond to the specific FOA topic.
They also integrate with the project such that CBP outcomes can impact project decisions. They identify sufficient resources to achieve the tasks outlined in the CBP. They reach beyond a high level or vague vision to demonstrate actionable goals, outcomes, and implementation.
They make commitments that consider possible project impacts on impacted communities and workers, labor and workforce, and tribes. They clearly identify those communities that will be impacted by the project and where they are located. They offer substantive analysis on the volume of community benefits and when and how they are expected to flow. They provide specific details for what stakeholder groups will be engaged, including when, how, and to what purpose they're engaged. And last, they thoroughly model, monitor, or ameliorate environmental impacts.
In the next few slides, we'll cover how the CBP is incorporated into the federal award and what the process timeline entails. Please note, each DOE office or program may feature differing. processes or timelines or use different documents under different timelines when negotiating and completing their awards and identifying objectives.
Please refer to your funding opportunity or DOE office for specific direction. On the screen is the typical timeline for DOE competitive funding. First, the applicants will submit an application for funding. The awards are then scored and selectees determined.
DOE then works with the selectees to strengthen or clarify their CBP commitments if needed. The final Community Benefits commitments are incorporated as part of the final award through the Community Benefits Outcomes and Objectives form, or the CBU. Progress towards Community Benefits goals and milestones are monitored and enforced through the CBU and additionally monitored through the Community Benefits Reporting and of the required reporting. We'll go over these documents in more detail in the next few slides.
Once an applicant is selected for an award, the DOE will seek to ensure the selectee has completed the Community Benefits, Outcomes, and Objectives table in the provided CPP template, typically offered at time of application release. This table is intended to capture a high-level summary of the four sections addressed in the CBP and contain the major commitments, general time frames, and SMART milestones. This table, or the CBU, helps establish clear accountability for progress of CBP goals and milestones between the selectee and the Department of Energy.
The Community Benefits Report, or CBR, is a form where the selectee and Department of Energy can track specific dates, names, locations, and other metrics associated with the goals and milestones provided in the CEBU. This form offers a machine-readable format that can feed into a dashboard and track progress of planned and actual CBP commitments and metrics. The CEBU is a publicly releasable executive summary of the negotiated community and labor commitments that explains how the commitments milestones and metrics align with and contribute to the project objectives. The CEBU also contains high-level commitments, general timeframes, and smart milestones from the CBP. After award negotiations are complete, the CEBU is included in the award package.
The CEBU should not include specific details of the commitments, for example names and dates, to allow some flexibility during the project management phase or to allow some flexibility during the project management phase. without triggering an award modification. The purpose of the CBU as an award attachment is to establish clear accountability and enforceability for the progress towards CBP goals and milestones as part of the agreement with the selectee or awardee. The CBR is a standardized template intended to assist in tracking the progress of benefits and commitments during program management and reporting.
The CBR is used to track progress towards planned and actual commitments and their associated metrics and also facilitates data collection by the DOE. Here are helpful resources related to CBP development and implementation. Please feel free to pause on this slide to review the links.
Thank you for joining us for this Chapter 1 Introduction to CBPs. Please see the following chapters to learn more.