By Zelda Hart MBA ’25
This article was written in response to a seminar given by Brian Janous, Former VP of Energy, Microsoft, in an EDGE Seminar at Duke University’s Fuqua School of Business in Fall 2023. This article voices one student’s perspective and does not necessarily represent the views of either Duke University or the seminar speaker.
Over the past decade, sustainability has shifted from an afterthought to an issue of indisputable importance for business’ success and long-term futures1, and major companies continue to announce ambitious Net Zero goals. Now for the real issue: implementation.
Brian Janous, retired VP of Energy at Microsoft, shared some of the lessons learned during his sustainability career in the first session of the EDGE Seminar. While Janous had an optimistic message of corporate prioritization of ESG, he also emphasized the problem of pacing. An 2022 Accenture report revealed that “nearly all companies (93%) will fail to achieve their goals if they don’t at least double the pace of emissions reduction by 2030.” Will we be able to make the necessary changes in our energy system fast enough? How will we be able to not only invent and deploy innovative energy technologies, but also build the infrastructure to manage and sustain them? Energy transition is slow and hard2, but our need to address climate change is urgent.
One of the answers, I believe, can be found in the social sector in the work of on-the-ground nonprofit and community leaders. Building a clean energy system quickly will require massive investments and quick, adaptive infrastructure creation. While large corporations must take on massive ESG goals—and governments must support and hold accountable corporations in the process—a top-down approach to energy innovation will not be enough. We need to also prioritize and fund bottom-up, grassroots approaches from nonprofits and local communities in driving forward change. It is through the combination of these approaches that I believe large-scale change is possible.
My perspective on this issue comes from my seven years of nonprofit work prior to attending Fuqua, and specifically my time collaborating with an incredible Black- and women-led food justice nonprofit Urban Growers Collective (UGC) as a fundraising and communications consultant with Women Unite!. I had the honor of designing communications to support their launch of an $11 million campaign converting an abandoned industrial site into a green technology campus and composting facility.
With their unique vantage point on social and environmental issues and holistic engagement of community members, UGC—and other similar community organizations—offer on-the ground lessons in creating climate resilience.
Grassroots leaders hold a unique vantage point on social and environmental issues
What does an urban farming and food access nonprofit have to do with transforming the energy sector? Well, while this group of urban farmers was working to expand urban farming in Chicago, they found a crucial roadblock: the lack of fresh, nutrient-dense soil. Without good quality soil, even the best-intentioned urban farmers will not succeed. And soil is expensive, creating a huge barrier to entry for low-income urban farmers.
But Urban Growers Collective, in partnership with other community organizations, developed an ingenious solution. The Green Era Campus addresses both food access and growing energy needs by diverting food waste into an anaerobic digester, resulting in two bi-products: biogas and nutrient-rich compost.3 They plan on providing the compost produced at their facility to urban farmers throughout Chicago and using it on their own on-campus farm, and they aim to produce “enough renewable natural gas for pipeline injection to replace over 1 million gallons of gasoline per year.”4 All of this is being done on a 9-acre brownfield site in a historically disinvested, primarily Black neighborhood on the South Side of Chicago, with an emphasis on youth involvement and economic opportunity.5
While anaerobic digestion technology isn’t new, its application in a community setting in this way is innovative—and it was all made possible because these community leaders were on the ground close to the problems of urban farming.
Community nonprofits can help create needed infrastructure by holistically engaging residents
In my experience working in grassroots nonprofits settings, I saw how community organizations by necessity address multiple issue areas, often developing multi-modal solutions. For many community nonprofits, education is not separate from food access, violence is not separate from housing, climate change is not separate from job access.
UGC’s Green Era Campus is no different. As part of their food justice programming, Urban Growers Collective trains young people and aspiring urban farmers, with 137 Youth Corps participants and 26 apprentices in 2022.6 Along with their community partners, UGC is applying this area of expertise in their Green Era Campus, making education, employment, and community involvement key components of this initiative. Their community-oriented design process included 30+ meetings and workshops at neighborhood schools engaging more than 1,500 local stakeholders.7 At full capacity, the Green Era Campus expects to create 300 green jobs for community members.8
Why does this matter? As Janous said in our EDGE seminar, “we underestimate how hard it to build really big things, especially when we don’t do it that often.” Radically shifting our energy system requires building new infrastructure, something that will take a lot of labor of all levels. A lack of skilled labor has the potential to hold back Net Zero timelines.9
Nonprofit community organizations are well-positioned to help with this issue, as they are often at the front lines of job skills development and comprehensive support for low-income, unemployed, and underemployed residents. By investing in and growing nonprofits’ existing workforce development infrastructure, we could solve dual problems of job access and labor needs for building green infrastructure.
To get to where we need to go, we need the voices and insights of community leaders. To build our climate resilience, I believe we should increase partnerships between grassroots environmental justice organizations and the private sector, giving community leaders a larger role in solving our energy challenges.
Imagine if all cities had their own Green Era Campus. Imagine if companies were purchasing renewable natural gas from these facilities, advancing both their own Net Zero goals and these community-led initiatives. And even more, imagine what other innovative solutions grassroots leaders have to build more climate resilience.
—
Footnotes:
- Hoffman, A. The next phase of business sustainability. Stanford Social Innovation Review. 2018. ↩︎
- Loe, C. Energy transition will move slowly over the next decade. Economist Intelligence Unit. December 1, 2022. ↩︎
- Green Era Chicago, www.greenerachicago.org. ↩︎
- Karidis, A. Chicago Green Campus plans to turn food waste to energy and grow more food. Waste360. December 2022. ↩︎
- Responsiveness Summary. Illinois Environmental Protection Agency. January 2023. ↩︎
- 2022 Impact Report. Urban Growers Collective ↩︎
- Responsiveness Summary. Illinois Environmental Protection Agency. January 2023. ↩︎
- Green Era Chicago. Our Progress page, accessed Dec. 2022. ↩︎
- Upgrade the grid: Speed is of the essence in the energy transition. McKinsey & Company. February 1, 2022. ↩︎
—