Green Canopy & Climate Solutions Host the First Empower Happy Hour

The inaugural Empower Happy Hour  this past Wednesday was an amazing success . Thank you for coming and helping to advance the discussion! And a special thanks to our co-host, Climate Solutions, for providing such a compelling topic to anchor the event! We had maybe 100 people attend and I spoke with several folks that were very appreciative for the opportunity to come together around the topic of the evening. We will certainly do this again.

Many conversations were held addressing the question, "How can clean energy gain broad support as an engine of shared prosperity and sustainable economic opportunity?" Many conversations spun out from this question to tackle neighboring themes. Here are some responses I heard from the evening:

“Democratizing capital to allow the non-wealthy to invest in clean tech companies and solutions."

“ Tie social welfare programatic funding to clean tech incentives or taxes or messages, etc. Create a ‘What's in it for me’ by connecting government programs to help the poor to our clean tech solutions of the future. "This program partially paid for by wind power wind falls..." you get the idea.

“ Educate, educate, educate... and start educating our children about our environmental challenges at the earliest ages possible."

“ Demonstrate through stories how the clean energy economy helps builds the middle class, and offers family-wage jobs and more sustainable livelihoods than those tied to fossil fuels."

“ Share and explore solution stories from oversees in the developing world that can inspire similar approaches here in the United States."

Green Canopy has a special mission to inspire resource efficiency in residential markets, and it certainly is an inspiration to us to see a crowd come together to advance the discussion around topics that align with our mission. Thanks again to everyone for coming – and please join the conversation on Facebook #EmpowerHappyHour.