Renewable energy projects have experienced a recent surge in growth, potentially pouring millions of dollars into local communities thanks to their contracts with project developers.
Newly funded Texas Law research could help determine those projects’ future trajectory, helping them overcome the opposition to renewables that often stems from a lack of information.
Professor David Adelman, the Harry M. Reasoner Regents Chair in Law, was awarded a grant by major nonpartisan philanthropy the William and Flora Hewlett Foundation. The grant began in December 2024 and is funding an extension of empirical work on wind and solar project infrastructure permitting, a collaboration with colleagues at Columbia University tracking local opposition to renewables, and work on promoting public acceptance of renewables through community benefits agreements. Those CBAs—contracts between a project developer and the local community—ensure that such large projects, including renewable energy developments like wind or solar farms, provide positive social, economic, and environmental impacts for the communities where they are built.
The Hewlett Foundation, established in 1966, is one of the largest philanthropic organizations in the U.S., seeking to “promote constructive dialogue across difference,” according to its website. In 2022, the foundation awarded more than $560 million in grants.
Hewlett’s three-year, $345,000 grant will support both Adelman’s research and the sharing of his findings. An expert in environmental and administrative law as well as climate change and energy policy, his research focuses on how environmental laws are implemented. Adelman will use the Hewlett funding to hire research assistants, including up to two students from Texas Law. The grant will also fund an online platform housed at Columbia’s Sabin Center for Climate Change Law to share information collected by Adelman and his colleagues. In addition, Adelman will gain access to Hewlett’s extensive network.
Knowing how environmental permitting actually operates gives us a much more precise understanding of where it creates significant barriers to construction of infrastructure and where it doesn’t.
Professor David Adelman
“Knowing how environmental permitting actually operates gives us a much more precise understanding of where it creates significant barriers to construction of infrastructure and where it doesn’t,” says Adelman.
Robust demand continues for renewable energy. According to the industry’s American Clean Power Association, 93% of new energy capacity that came online in 2024 was clean energy, surpassing the prior five-year average of 75%. However, critics, including some environmentalists, worry that the need to quickly deploy new renewable infrastructure—such as new data centers for artificial intelligence or new transmission lines, wind, and solar projects to address climate change—may be outweighed by the environmental harm caused by executing those projects too hurriedly for full due diligence.
But Adelman’s research suggests that rather than an either-or between quick renewable project deployment or environmental protection, it’s possible to achieve both goals. “My work shows, while there are exceptions, that trade-off is not nearly as acute as people are presuming,” he says. “And the stories that it’s routinely holding up project development aren’t borne out.”
These renewable projects can bring millions of dollars to the communities where they are constructed. That happens through a combination of local taxes and CBAs that outline specific commitments by the developer to ensure that the community benefits from the project, such as their investments in community services like schools, health care, and infrastructure or support for local businesses. In small communities, those dollar amounts can increase school district budgets by as much as 20%, for example, Adelman explains. “Those are enormous local benefits to the communities,” he says. “A modest amount of money from a project developer’s perspective is a big amount of money from the community’s perspective.”
A modest amount of money from a project developer’s perspective is a big amount of money from the community’s perspective.
Professor David Adelman
That’s where another part of his grant-funded research comes in. Adelman will work to counter a lack of information at the community level that has prompted opposition to renewable infrastructure projects. “Our research aims to help project developers and communities mitigate what we’ve seen over the last decade—increasing local opposition, particularly to wind and solar development,” he says.
When communities are negotiating with renewable project developers, Adelman’s work can provide independent financial analysis. “There’s a huge information asymmetry and difference in sophistication,” he says. “So, the project tries to level the playing field, get communities better informed, and thinking a little bit more concretely about the impacts, but also the enormous potential benefits.”
Additionally, the grant will expand Adelman’s work at the federal level in collaboration with Columbia colleagues working at the local level. “We’re going to integrate all our research into a centralized database on different barriers to development of infrastructure,” he says. That website will make empirical information available to both the public and policy makers.
“There has to be broad community acceptance in order to build at the scale and rate that’s needed,” he says.
For more information about this story, please contact the Texas Law communications office at communications@law.utexas.edu.