About 60% of US greenhouse gas emissions come from the fossil fuels that power two things – buildings and vehicles. We have 6 years—until 2030—to cut our emissions in half to avoid the worst climate change scenarios. To make this happen, thousands of communities and millions of individuals across the country must upgrade their homes and vehicles – shifting to high-efficiency electric technologies that run on clean energy instead of fossil fuels. This requires a dramatic shift in local policies and individual decision-making nationwide.

The 2022 Inflation Reduction Act (IRA) has billions in financial incentives for individuals, businesses, nonprofits and municipalities to shift to clean energy. But 71% of Americans know little or nothing about the law (Washington Post/George Mason University, August 2023). Once they hear about the IRA incentives, most people will need advice and encouragement to follow through with upgrades. Let’s seize this window of opportunity and make real progress. 

Individuals have a critical role to play, but they need a sense of agency, hope and inspiration to act. Motivating individuals to act is a social and local process. We need to popularize clean energy technology in communities, with trusted messengers, so that people make home upgrades willingly and support local policies to promote wide adoption. We need neighbors talking about solar panels, heat pumps, electric vehicles and electrification policies, and we need local contractors sharing how clean energy technology helps their customers and their businesses.

The Clean Energy Communities Fund is a new philanthropic fund that will deliver seed grants quickly to 1,000 communities across the country to help jump start or accelerate their work on home and vehicle electrification and residential clean energy. The grant funding will be paired with significant investments in peer-learning cohorts and technical assistance – on program design and implementation, fundraising and grant writing support, and workforce development and contractor connections – to help make this work in each community successful and sustainable over time.