Faith and climate leaders convene in Charlotte this week, as the Southeast Climate and Energy Network and US Climate Action Network join forces.

They're asking the nation to pay its fair share to help communities feeling the worst effects of climate change.

Rev. Michael Malcom is the executive director of the Birmingham, Alabama-based People's Justice Council.

He pointed out that Black, Brown and other historically vulnerable communities are disproportionately experiencing loss and damage from climate disasters - and are the least likely to have the resources to rebuild.

"All of us in the South, I would say, are aware of the effects of climate change," said Malcom, "because we are the ones that are being hit - I would say the hardest - particularly in the gulf region."

Research shows warming global temperatures will likely make parts of the southern U.S. more tropical, fostering the spread of insect-borne diseases and invasive species, extreme temperatures and heavy rain events.

North Carolina ranks in the top five states that have experienced billion dollar weather disasters since 1980.

Susannah Tuttle is the director of the North Carolina Council of Churches Eco-Justice Connection Program, and is community liaison for the USCAN's Fair Share program.

She said as the second-highest emitter of carbon emissions in the world, the U.S. can make good on its promises and help ensure that financial assets are used to promote shared welfare in a changing climate.

"It is an absolute moral imperative to end investment in climate destruction," said Tuttle. "All people of faith and spirituality with a role in the financial system have a responsibility to create action immediately, to put the world on a path to a just and sustainable future."

Rev. Malcom said he believes religious groups have a role to play in educating the public on how climate change is affecting their lives.

"And I think communities of faith, that's where we can be most impactful, in helping to control that narrative," said Malcom. "If we can become hubs of resilience, hubs of restoration."

A Morning Consult poll released last year found nationwide, 60% of Christians and 79% of Buddhist, Hindu, Jewish and Muslim Americans believe passing legislation to address climate change and its effects should be a top priority for Congress.

By Elizabeth McGowan for Energy News Network.
Broadcast version by Kathryn Carley for Virginia News Connection reporting for the Solutions Journalism Network-Public News Service Collaboration

As warnings about escalating climate disasters proliferate, it's tempting to pull the bedcovers up - way high - and stay in the dark.

Aware of that urge to hide, a nimble Charlottesville nonprofit has an antidote for the disheartened. The Community Climate Collaborative, or C3, is inviting Virginians to peek at its early success in weaning local businesses from fossil fuels.

Together, 16 members of the Green Business Alliance pledged last spring to cut their carbon pollution by 45% by the end of 2025. Just a year in, the alliance is upward of halfway there - already achieving a 28% reduction.

Thus far, calculations reveal that members have stopped spewing the equivalent of 4,800 metric tons of carbon dioxide, which translates to removing 1,000 cars from roadways for a year.

"C3 is tiny, but we're trying to contribute," emphasized Coles Jennings, the nonprofit's director of corporate sustainability. "There's just too much urgency to the problem."

Alarmingly, business operations overlap with more than 65% of Virginia's greenhouse gas footprint via transportation, manufacturing or commercial building energy use, according to Jennings' review of state Department of Environmental Quality inventory numbers.

Jennings doesn't pretend that a relatively puny carbon curtailment in the foothills of the Blue Ridge Mountains will solve the global climate crisis. But, he noted, the alliance's esprit de corps can provide a glimmer of optimism.

That's why C3 aims to widen its regional reach and eventually duplicate its model statewide.

"These businesses are doing something that's really hard," said Jennings, who joined the C3 staff in December. "By taking action, members become a collective business voice for climate. Then they feel more comfortable speaking out.

"That's when they become influencers, pushing for climate measures."

Jennings, a professional engineer, said serving as a sustainability coach for alliance members has been the thrill of his energy consulting career because of their open-mindedness and commitment to progress.

For instance, he pointed to the willingness of InBio to follow through on recommendations suggested by an energy audit. By upgrading its heating and cooling systems, the professional laboratory services company trimmed its gas consumption by 40%.

"That was super validating for me," said Jennings, who conducted the InBio audit as a freelance contractor in 2019. "I know we're not reversing climate change with one company's gas usage, but it was a really cool personal moment."

He also boasted about how The Center at Belvedere, a nonprofit community gathering place for seniors, constructed a new airtight facility that's 2.5 times as large as its old one, with the same carbon footprint.

On the renewable energy front, half of the alliance members have added a total of 640 kilowatts of solar arrays to their properties.

One of Jennings' favorite tales entails Tiger Fuel, a family-owned fuel distribution company that has, perhaps counterintuitively, championed eco-values by announcing it had acquired a solar company at the alliance's May 2021 launch in Charlottesville.

It's an unlikely avenue for a company that distributes heating oil and propane gas and operates a network of gas stations, car washes and convenience stores.

"Lots of companies in their shoes would look at climate action as a threat to their business and actively resist it," Jennings said. "But instead, they're asking how they can get ahead of it."

'Busy as all get-out'

Life has been "busy as all get-out" in the year since Tiger Fuel purchased Charlottesville-based Altenergy and grew to 363 employees. The latter, rebranded as Tiger Solar in February, has offices in Virginia, Maryland, Washington, D.C, Idaho and Michigan.

"We are absolutely happy we did it and also proud," President Gordon Sutton said about branching into solar. "I don't see a lot of people scrambling to do what we've done. It's never been our intent to be a pioneer. It just felt right for us."

C3 first invited Tiger Fuel to the alliance table due to its decades of service in the region and its serious approach to reversing climate change.

As teens, Gordon and his younger brother, Taylor, had pumped gas, checked oil, and cleaned windshields as their father, David, guided the morphing of the company beyond service stations and fuel delivery. The sons both returned to Tiger Fuel after post-college adventures.

Six years ago, Gordon and Taylor, now chief operations officer, figured solar arrays would match Tiger Fuel's ideals when the price of panels and federal tax credits aligned to fit their finances.

By 2018, they hired neighboring Altenergy to install 17.5 kilowatts atop one store and two canopies sheltering gas pumps.

The brothers are in the midst of having Tiger Solar bedeck a mix of car washes, canopies, stores and one bulk facility with at least another 500 kW. Tiger Fuel would do 100% coverage, but not all canopies can support the weight of arrays and the company doesn't own the real estate at all 11 stores.

Gordon Sutton praised C3 for holding Tiger Fuel accountable for slicing its carbon footprint during a hectic year. The nonprofit deserves credit, he said, for strengthening bonds among enterprises that are secure enough to act quickly and ask one another for environmental advice.

For instance, Tiger Solar has completed a pair of solar installations - one 170 kW, the other 111 kW - at two Staunton dealerships owned by fellow alliance member Carter Myers Automotive.

"It's kind of fun to be engaged in an industry where there's so much tailwind," Sutton said about the solar side of his venture. "It feels like every time we do a project, it's received with a lot of fanfare.

"People are paying more attention because, as a company historically engaged in the distribution of fossil fuels, we're a bit of an outlier."

Still, while the laurels are welcome, the darts can sting. Sutton said he's aware some solar competitors have tried to undermine Tiger Fuel's newest venture as a green sheen exercise.

"This is not some sort of hocus-pocus greenwashing thing," Sutton said about the dedication of Tiger Solar's 50 or so employees nationwide. "This is real people doing real stuff in real time."

Altenergy, founded in 2004, had completed 1,700-plus solar projects totaling at least 42 megawatts. Tiger Solar has added 2.8 MW to that figure.

Sutton views that growth as a baby step. He is intent on extending Tiger's Virginia reach and also convincing owners of other competing fuel distributors, gas stations and convenience stores to join his solar fold.

"We are having conversations," he said. "None has yielded big results yet, but I'm confident they will."

Next? An appetite for more

C3 was adamant about crafting a program centered on smaller businesses because those with fewer than 500 employees are the backbone of Virginia's workforce.

The alliance also includes for-profits Red Light Management, WillowTree, Harvest Moon Catering, Quantitative Investment Management and accounting firm Hantzmon Wiebel; clean energy developers Apex Clean Energy, Sigora Solar and Sun Tribe Solar; Sentara Martha Jefferson Hospital and nonprofits Legal Aid Justice Center and CFA Institute.

Luring them to become the alliance's "freshman class" began with relationship-building because it's not every day businesses trust a climate organization with their utility bills.

Energy usage metrics mined from those bills guided the individualized "emissions diet" plan for each business. Each participant began with a different baseline so they wouldn't lose credit for pre-alliance improvements.

Jennings is C3's chief data collector and reviewer responsible for providing participants with reports and updates.

"What's really exciting and unique is the community focus and flavor that's missing in the Fortune 500," he said. "We're bringing in a whole range of businesses that otherwise wouldn't touch this stuff because they don't have the staff to do this type of analysis."

Jennings is fully aware some communities become hamstrung on climate action because well-intentioned and well-researched promises never evolve into doable plans. It can be an arduous and exasperating chore.

However, he figures his nonprofit's endeavor will only boost area efforts to curb emissions. Alliance members are crucial players if Charlottesville and surrounding Albemarle County are to slice planet-warming emissions by 45% (relative to 2011) by 2030.

With such an enthusiastic inaugural membership, Jennings is convinced the project will expand even after the final emissions measurements are released in spring 2026.

"They have such a common thread and an appetite," he said. "My hope is they'll ask 'What's next?' after outgrowing the core mission pledge."

Eventually, he envisions cracking tougher nuts, such as converting fleets to electric vehicles and forming overarching climate action plans that extend beyond carbon footprints.

In the meantime, he wants alliance members to buckle down on energy audits so they can maximize every electron of efficiency instead of leaping immediately to sexier solar.

"I came across this quote somewhere and use it all the time," he said. "'You have to eat your energy efficiency vegetables before you get your solar dessert.'"

New Mexico residents have two weeks to submit written comments to the Environmental Protection Agency about its proposal to implement stronger standards aimed at reducing methane emissions from oil and gas wells.

Sister Joan Brown, executive director of New Mexico's Interfaith Power and Light, has been advocating for tougher rules for decades. Along with others, she spoke at this month's EPA hearings, and said many speakers were confused by the government's inaction.

"It gets difficult when you're working with ordinary people, and ordinary people of faith, and they say, 'Well, we already did this - isn't that done yet? Why does this take so long?' We need to move on this and quickly," she said, "and we can't have any more delays."

The world's largest methane cloud hangs above Farmington and the Four Corners area of northwest New Mexico in the San Juan Basin. The state also is affected by methane from the Permian Basin, an oil-and-gas-producing area in the state's southeastern corner, on the border of West Texas.

Retired U.S. Army Brig. Gen. Steve Anderson said he thinks it's important for the EPA to do more to fight climate change as a national-security issue. He said the country's reliance on oil and carbon-based fuels could be reduced if more states turned to renewable forms of energy "that provide opportunities to develop a truly 'green' economy that'll put a lot of the people that are presently working in coal mines and in the oil industry, put them to work installing solar panels and wind turbines."

Brown said flaring - the process of burning, rather than capturing methane - is always a major concern, along with aging equipment.

"We go to the Southeast, the Permian Basin a lot, and we see storage tanks that are just corroding and tanks that had huge gaping holes in the top," he said, "and as we have more and more storage, and also older infrastructure, that's a huge problem."

Brown said her faith community would like to see approved monitoring technologies and subsequent data made available to the public, so more people know what's going on and can better engage.

By Marianne Dhenin for Prism.
Broadcast version by Eric Tegethoff for Oregon News Service reporting for the Solutions Journalism Network-Public News Service Collaboration

As local governments look to channel thriving climate justice youth movements toward civic engagement and policymaking, dozens of city governments around the country are establishing programs that give youth an opportunity to influence municipal decisions addressing climate issues. These programs—which have sprung up in San Antonio; Portland, Oregon; and elsewhere—also offer students training and networking opportunities, teach practical skills, and will hopefully open new career paths for the next generation of climate leaders. 

“It is not just giving youth a seat at the table; it’s about youth being active participants with the adults in the conversation [and] the action that comes after that conversation,” says Nancy Deutsch, director at Youth-Nex, an interdisciplinary center to promote effective youth development housed at the University of Virginia. 

It’s unclear, however, how much youth councils are actually affecting larger public policies implemented by adults in municipal government. While these programs are meant to encourage youth participation and investment in policymaking, Deutsch stresses that “the onus [is] on the adults to demonstrate that they have changed how they make decisions and to document how the system has changed as a result of the youth council.” The success of youth climate council programs ultimately depends on how they affect the skills and attitudes of participants, as well as whether the councils’ suggestions end up shaping city policies and practices. 

Success requires support and inclusion

Youth councils can take many forms, but organizers say that what makes them effective is transparency and clarity about the scope of their role as part of local government and the degree of autonomy and oversight they require. Deutsch says that the development stage is critical to organizing a successful youth council because it needs a solid foundation and clearly defined role and responsibilities from the outset. 

“Before starting a council, the city should have outlined what the council members will do, how their ideas will be put into practice, and what their power is within the city government and policymaking system,” Deutsch said. 

On the San Antonio Mayor’s Youth Engagement Council, Austin-based nonprofit EcoRise is responsible for much of this work. It facilitates the youth council with support from the mayor’s office, the Office of Sustainability, and the Hollomon Price Foundation. Administrators at EcoRise select council members through an application process, and councilors serve for one academic year and attend at least two monthly meetings. The major components of the San Antonio council are standardized and include a speaker series, student projects, and facetime with municipal leaders to give council members a chance to influence decision-making and hold leaders accountable for their action or inaction on climate change. 

“Students are being directly connected to not only professionals and organizations, but members of the Office of Sustainability and the mayor as well,” says Laura Fuller, communications and design manager at EcoRise. “It was really powerful to see last year. They were grilling [the mayor] and really wanting to know answers and see accountability.”

Over in Oregon, the Portland Youth Climate Council is much more diffuse. Members do not serve fixed terms, the recruitment process is informal, and access to municipal leaders is less direct. Since joining last year, 14-year-old Joel Guren says the group has discussed significant issues, including Portland’s pedestrian design guide update and the need to improve Portland’s urban tree canopy. Without a strong support structure however, Guren says that the youth council struggles to get through to city leadership. 

“It’s a group that was created to advise the city council, but they’ve kind of forgotten about us,” they said. 

Portland City Council did not respond to inquiries by press time. 

Detajha Woodson, Youth-Nex’s program and outreach associate, is establishing a youth council in Charlottesville, Virginia, to integrate the perspectives of young people in developing youth-oriented programs at Youth-Nex. She hopes to set a foundation for equity and inclusion of marginalized students, particularly students of color, that flows upward from the recruitment stage. Woodson has designed an application with open-ended demographic questions and questions about what issues applicants most want to address in their communities, which will help the Youth-Nex team select councilors who represent diverse communities and needs. 

“I want this to be very inclusive, very diverse,” she says. 

Deutsch and Woodson agree that compensating students for their time is essential to building an inclusive program because it shows students that their time is valued and makes serving on a council more feasible for participants from low-income backgrounds. But Woodson noted that it can be complicated to pay students when information like social security numbers or other forms of personal documents are required to do so—that kind of information requirement can exclude or deter students based on their immigration status. 

Students on the San Antonio council will be compensated for the first time during the 2022-23 school year. Brittany Jayroe, director of youth programs at EcoRise, says students will be paid stipends “in the way that best fits their needs to remove barriers to participation.” EcoRise also offers its youth council application materials in both English and Spanish to make them accessible to a greater number of potential applicants. 

After joining a youth council, students also need a solid mental and emotional support structure to facilitate their work. Accommodations such as flexibility for councilors who work part-time jobs, have caretaking responsibilities, or just need to take some time off to focus on coursework can encourage participation. Some youth council programs have built-in counseling services, but in San Antonio, staff at EcoRise often fill this role in a less official capacity. 

“When I felt really overwhelmed and just very stressed by the content of the program [or] just because of all the things going on in my life, when I’ve reached out to Sharon [Huerta] and other members, they’ve been really helpful and always there to support us,” said 16-year-old Caroline McGuire.

Youth councils are proactive, but do city officials pay attention?

While the structure of the San Antonio program allows youth council members direct access to municipal leaders, administrators at EcoRise say it has been hard to gauge the youth council’s influence on city decisions. During the program’s first year, students were tasked with developing policy proposals and presenting them to the city council. Fuller says it isn’t apparent whether the policymakers incorporated student ideas into their work. 

“I’ve reached out to the city myself to ask like, ‘What’s up? What happened?’ and haven’t gotten a response,” she said. 

San Antonio City Council did not respond to inquiries by press time. 

Portland’s youth council is facing similar struggles, particularly with its relationship to the rest of the city’s officials. Despite the Multnomah County and City of Portland’s 100% renewable energy by 2050 resolution including a clause to create the youth climate council, Guren says the council is treated like any other outside organization.

“I would like it if they treated us as more a part of things, instead of just another organization that’s helping against climate change,” they said.

Regardless of city officials’ lack of response to youth councils’ input, organizers are still moving forward and focusing on improvements. Before inaugurating its second cohort, program administrators at EcoRise decided to shift gears. Huerta, an EcoRise education specialist, says that this past academic year there was “more of a focus on research-based projects and doing more hands-on work.” 

This decision was partly in response to the ambiguous response of city officials to the previous year’s policy proposals. EcoRise also wanted to embrace Youth Participatory Action Research (YPAR), an “innovative approach to positive youth and community development based on social justice principles in which young people are trained to conduct systematic research to improve their lives, their communities, and the institutions intended to serve them.”

Deutsch says YPAR is an excellent tool for youth councils “because it both centers young people’s experiences and definitions of issues and engages them in not only researching the issues but in constructing potential solutions.”

The projects that San Antonio youth councilors developed and implemented this year followed this model. They were grouped under the themes of community health, biodiversity, food security, transportation, and recycling and waste management. McGuire worked with four other youth councilors on the community health team to develop a workshop to support vulnerable communities in Westside San Antonio. 

“The major thing that we did was to distribute a survey and then get data from that to understand what the community needs,” they said. “We asked mostly open-ended questions. We wanted people to really tell us their experiences living in the area and where they see their needs are not being met.” 

The food security team also tailored its project to support underserved communities in Westside and Southside San Antonio. Symphany Brietzke, 17, who worked on the project, says she understood the need for material support in the Southside because she lives there and has “seen [the need] firsthand.” For Brietzke, the resources made available through the youth council made it possible for her to support her vulnerable neighbors. After conducting research about community needs, the team collected food and hygiene product donations and built two “Little Free Pantries.” Modeled after Little Free Libraries, community members can take food or supplies from these stocked boxes in public parks that are maintained by local park staff. 

Going forward, Huerta says EcoRise is “looking at reflections and lessons learned of how we can merge the first year, where we really focused on policy proposals, and also this year, how more research-based action would work.”

The team also hopes to improve communication between youth councilors and city administrators by inviting administrators to council meetings and rolling out a mentorship program to partner students with administrators, allowing them to form stronger relationships. 

Guren says that in Portland, the path forward is less clear. Without an active link to city leadership or liaisons like those at EcoRise, the councilors have limited power. As Deutsch pointed out, adults must take an active role in making youth council programs work, and initiative to improve communication will need to come from the city.

Empowering the Next Generation

Despite challenges, youth climate councils in their various forms have significant effects on their student participants. Despite frustrations, Guren says they “really enjoy helping with the climate movement” and that the Portland Youth Climate Council has provided a space to engage with peers and work on issues that matter to them. McGuire also says the experience “has really opened my perspective of what environmental science can look like and my role in this whole climate crisis.” 

For Brietzke, who graduated this past summer, her time on the San Antonio youth council shaped her career trajectory. She has her mind set on a degree in biology and plans to continue educating people about climate change-related issues. She got some of her first experience as a public speaker on the topic at an energy and water event at the Tobin Center earlier this year, thanks to youth council connections. 

“This is the next generation,” says Fuller. “They’re going to continue to grow up and take on these projects, maybe with even more momentum than they would have if they had not been on the council, and that will bring about real change.”