During his first month as president of the University of Connecticut in 2019, Thomas Katsouleas had several hundred students visit his office, but they were not a welcome wagon. They were there to read him a list of demands as part of a student-led climate strike organized by the university’s Fridays for Future chapter. Katsouleas said one thing that stood out to him was the students’ command of climate issues.

“What impressed me the most was the nuanced understanding of the challenge ahead that those students showed and the commitment to meeting that challenge,” Katsouleas said during a webinar co-hosted by the sustainability offices at UConn and Southern Connecticut State University.

Katsouleas said he had made the university’s role in addressing the climate crisis “a focus of my presidency,” including campus carbon neutrality by 2040 and strategic planning that focuses on the existential threat of climate change and environmental justice through the lens of education, research and outreach.

The webinar was presented as part of the virtual, three-day Solve Climate by 2030 educational dialogue created through Bard College’s graduate programs in sustainability. Students joined sessions that were held in 50 countries and every U.S. state to learn about actions that can support a just energy transition.

Speaking during the webinar, SCSU President Joe Bertolino said he signed a climate emergency declaration by college and university presidents in July 2019 after 200 students implored him.

He said that colleges and universities like SCSU and UConn “are essentially small towns and cities.”

“We are a significant sector of buildings, acreage, jobs, transportation fleets and productivity,” Bertolino said. “Higher education institutions are testing grounds and learning labs for how sustainable communities can be built.”

At the state level, Connecticut Department of Energy and Environmental Protection Commissioner Katie Dykes said her agency is “laser focused” on passing a bill to support the Transportation and Climate Initiative Program (TCI-P), which aims to cut vehicles emissions by 26% from 2022 to 2032.

“It’s kind of a simple program … it requires the polluters to pay for their pollution,” Dykes said. “In this case, the polluters are those companies that sell gasoline and diesel fuel at wholesale.”

Bryan Garcia, president of the Connecticut Green Bank, said that his “one, bold solution” to address climate change would be a federal Green Liberty Bond, like one launched last year at the state level. Garcia said the bonds could finance the national fight against climate change in the same way that bonds raised money during World War II. Garcia said nearly $17 million in Green Liberty Bonds were sold during the inaugural offering in 2020.

Shanté Hanks, deputy commissioner of the Connecticut Department of Housing, said she considers herself a translator when explaining climate change’s impact on communities of color.

“We talk to members of the local communities and explain to them how these concepts affect people’s day-to-day lives or explain that what they do today will impact their grandchildren’s lives in the future,” Hanks said. “It’s so important that we connect with their values.”

Social Components of Policy

Lawmakers need to incorporate societal benefits in climate and energy policy, such as public health, job creation and environmental justice, to be successful in reaching net-zero goals, according to Jennie Stephens, director of the School of Public Policy and Urban Affairs at Northeastern University.

“We’ve placed too much emphasis on tech and not enough on social innovation,” Stephens said during a Solve Climate webinar hosted by Brandeis University.

Policies should connect the dots between renewable energy, economic development and clean air and water, and focus on “communities that have been under-invested in for far too long,” Stephens said.

Otherwise, renewable energy policies contribute to racial and economic disparities through incentives and subsidies that give the wealthy access to clean energy and leave low-income communities paying higher utility rates. As more high- and medium-income communities harness clean energy resources, it will increasingly fall on people who cannot afford to make the transition to renewable energy to provide the same revenue stream to utility giants, she said.

“One social movement that I think is really helpful here is the idea of energy democracy, which is about redistributing power literally and figuratively,” Stephens said.

Renewable energy policies can create a future with a handful of multinational solar and wind companies that dominate the industry, much like fossil fuel companies today, she said. Or policy can focus on intentionally distributing the right to have a heterogenous mix of different-size companies and different ownership models.

At the national level, President Biden’s infrastructure bill proposes economic recovery investments that are “integrated rather than separate,” Stephens said. The Biden administration also created a new role in the U.S. Department of Energy for implementing energy policies that align with energy justice goals.

Shalanda Baker, a professor of law and policy from Northeastern University, stepped into the position earlier this year. According to Baker, energy justice is the goal of achieving racial equity in participation with the energy system.

“It’s an opportunity to rethink our climate commitments in a more integrated and holistic way, and I think that’s essential for it to be effective,” Stephens said. Decarbonization policies should “acknowledge all the harm that has been done and how to make up for that.”

Building a Regenerative Economy

Solve Climate sessions in Rhode Island and New York characterized the ways people are reframing their thinking on climate and energy.

The Rhode Island Office of Energy Resources is working internally to raise awareness about how racism in the state has contributed to systems of oppression within the energy sector, according to Yasmin Yacoby, the agency’s program manager for energy justice.

There is a direct link, she said, between communities where lending was limited historically, often based solely on racial demographics, and communities today that have the highest energy burden in the state.

“We need to ensure that we have a solid understanding of these historic legacies so that we can actively undo them,” she said during a Solve Climate webinar hosted by the University of Rhode Island.

Achieving that goal, according Yacoby, requires state leaders to use a targeted approach to solving universal climate goals.

“If we only focus on climate solutions and not on the racial disparities that exist within that sphere, we’re going to continue to exacerbate the issues,” she said.

OER’s work focuses on increasing community engagement and building a just energy transition.

“We don’t have a lot of the knowledge that community members have, so we have to make sure that their voices are at the table and that the communities that have been historically oppressed have a way to shape their energy future,” Yacoby said.

Building up those oppressed communities will mean Rhode Islanders must transition away from an extractive economy and embrace a regenerative economy.

That process, Yacoby said, displaces the fossil fuel economy with a “new economy that provides democratic governance, ecological resilience and personal resilience.”

Current clean technologies like solar are starting to make a regenerative economy possible, said Simeon Banister, vice president of community programs at The Community Foundation.

If solar panel efficiency improves and costs come down further, solar can be a “game changer” for marginalized communities, Banister said during a Solve Climate webinar hosted by six New York institutions of higher education.

“If we start with those that have been historically excluded, it means that we can finally have the conversation about how we do things differently, and that’s what systems change is all about,” he said.

Regenerative thinking must consider how decisions are made, according to Jodi Smits Anderson, director of sustainability for the Dormitory Authority of New York. Historically, energy decisions have been short-term and do not consider co-benefits or co-burdens, she said during the New York webinar.

“We haven’t asked, ‘How does this decision affect the systems that are impacting this particular building or this particular policy?’ And we haven’t taken it to the next step to ask, ‘How does this decision affect nature’s systems?’” she said. “That is a regenerative practice mentality.”

Climate and energy decision-making must be centered around people, Banister said.

“It’s not a question of just how we can reduce emissions … it’s how do we do it for the folks that have suffered the most,” he said. “If we center them, if that’s our point of departure, then that gives us the chance to really make something that is sustainable in nature.”