Cookies help us run our site more efficiently.

By clicking “Accept”, you agree to the storing of cookies on your device to enhance site navigation, analyze site usage, and assist in our marketing efforts. View our Privacy Policy for more information or to customize your cookie preferences.

Accept Deny

GoGreenNation news

Chicago Teachers Union secures clean energy wins in new contract

News Feed
Monday, April 21, 2025

The Chicago Teachers Union expects its new, hard-fought contract to help drive clean energy investments and train the next generation of clean energy workers, even as the Trump administration attacks such priorities. The contract approved by 97% of union members this month represents the first time the union has bargained with school officials specifically around climate change and energy, said union Vice President Jackson Potter. The deal still needs to be approved by the Chicago Board of Education. If approved, the contract will result in new programs that prepare students for clean energy jobs, developed in collaboration with local labor unions. It mandates that district officials work with the teachers union to seek funding for clean energy investments and update a climate action plan by 2026. And it calls for installing heat pumps and outfitting 30 schools with solar panels — if funding can be secured. During almost a year of contentious negotiations, the more than 25,000-member union had also demanded paid climate-educator positions, an all-electric school bus fleet, and that all newly constructed schools be carbon-free. While those provisions did not end up in the final agreement, leaders say the four-year contract is a ​“transformative” victory that sets the stage for more ambitious demands next time. “This contract is setting the floor of what we hope we can accomplish,” said Lauren Bianchi, who taught social studies at George Washington High School on the city’s South Side for six years before becoming green schools organizer for the union. ​“It shows we can win on climate, even despite Trump.” The climate-related provisions are part of what the Chicago Teachers Union and an increasing number of unions nationwide refer to as ​“common good” demands, meant to benefit not only their members in the workplace but the entire community. In this and its 2019 contract, the Chicago union also won ​“common good” items such as protections for immigrant students and teachers, and affordable housing–related measures. The new contract also guarantees teachers academic freedom at a time when the federal government is trying to limit schools from teaching materials related to diversity, equity, and inclusion. “Black history, Indigenous history, climate science — that’s protected instruction now,” said Potter. Chicago Public Schools did not respond to emailed questions for this story, except to forward a press release that did not mention clean energy provisions. Training Chicago’s students for clean energy jobs The union crafted its proposals based on discussions with three environmental and community organizations, Bianchi said — the Southeast Environmental Task Force, People for Community Recovery, and ONE Northside. The Southeast Environmental Task Force led the successful fight to ban new petcoke storage in Chicago, and the group’s co-executive director Olga Bautista is also vice president of the 21-member school board. People for Community Recovery was founded by Hazel Johnson, who is often known as ​“the mother of the environmental justice movement.” And ONE Northside emphasizes the link between clean energy and affordable housing. Clean energy job training was a priority for all three of the organizations, Potter said. Under the contract, the union and district officials will work with other labor unions to create pre-apprenticeship programs for students, which are crucial to entering the union-dominated building trades to install solar, do energy-efficiency overhauls, and electrify homes with heat pumps and other technology. The contract demands the district create one specific new clean energy jobs pathway program during each year of the four-year contract. It also mandates renovating schools for energy efficiency and installing modern HVAC systems, and orders the school district to work with trade unions to create opportunities for Chicago Public Schools students and graduates to be hired for such work. “The people in the community have identified jobs and economic justice as being essential for environmental justice,” said Bianchi. ​“I’ve mostly taught juniors and seniors; a lot expressed frustration that college is not their plan. They wish they could learn job skills to enter a trade.” Chicago schools progress on solar, energy efficiency, and electrification Installing solar could help the district meet its clean energy goals, which include sourcing 100% of its electricity from renewables by this year. The district has invested more than $6 million in energy efficiency and efficient lighting since 2018, and cut its carbon dioxide emissions by more than 27,000 metric tons, school district spokesperson Evan Moore told Canary Media last fall as contract negotiations were proceeding. The schools are eligible for subsidized solar panels under the state Illinois Shines program, and they can tap the federal 30% investment tax credit for solar arrays, with a new direct-pay option tailored to tax-exempt organizations like schools.

The Chicago Teachers Union expects its new, hard-fought contract to help drive clean energy investments and train the next generation of clean energy workers, even as the Trump administration attacks such priorities. The contract approved by 97% of union members this month represents the first time the union has…

The Chicago Teachers Union expects its new, hard-fought contract to help drive clean energy investments and train the next generation of clean energy workers, even as the Trump administration attacks such priorities.

The contract approved by 97% of union members this month represents the first time the union has bargained with school officials specifically around climate change and energy, said union Vice President Jackson Potter. The deal still needs to be approved by the Chicago Board of Education.

If approved, the contract will result in new programs that prepare students for clean energy jobs, developed in collaboration with local labor unions. It mandates that district officials work with the teachers union to seek funding for clean energy investments and update a climate action plan by 2026. And it calls for installing heat pumps and outfitting 30 schools with solar panels — if funding can be secured.

During almost a year of contentious negotiations, the more than 25,000-member union had also demanded paid climate-educator positions, an all-electric school bus fleet, and that all newly constructed schools be carbon-free. While those provisions did not end up in the final agreement, leaders say the four-year contract is a ​“transformative” victory that sets the stage for more ambitious demands next time.

“This contract is setting the floor of what we hope we can accomplish,” said Lauren Bianchi, who taught social studies at George Washington High School on the city’s South Side for six years before becoming green schools organizer for the union. ​“It shows we can win on climate, even despite Trump.”

The climate-related provisions are part of what the Chicago Teachers Union and an increasing number of unions nationwide refer to as ​“common good” demands, meant to benefit not only their members in the workplace but the entire community. In this and its 2019 contract, the Chicago union also won ​“common good” items such as protections for immigrant students and teachers, and affordable housing–related measures. The new contract also guarantees teachers academic freedom at a time when the federal government is trying to limit schools from teaching materials related to diversity, equity, and inclusion.

“Black history, Indigenous history, climate science — that’s protected instruction now,” said Potter.

Chicago Public Schools did not respond to emailed questions for this story, except to forward a press release that did not mention clean energy provisions.

Training Chicago’s students for clean energy jobs

The union crafted its proposals based on discussions with three environmental and community organizations, Bianchi said — the Southeast Environmental Task Force, People for Community Recovery, and ONE Northside.

The Southeast Environmental Task Force led the successful fight to ban new petcoke storage in Chicago, and the group’s co-executive director Olga Bautista is also vice president of the 21-member school board. People for Community Recovery was founded by Hazel Johnson, who is often known as ​“the mother of the environmental justice movement.” And ONE Northside emphasizes the link between clean energy and affordable housing.

Clean energy job training was a priority for all three of the organizations, Potter said.

Under the contract, the union and district officials will work with other labor unions to create pre-apprenticeship programs for students, which are crucial to entering the union-dominated building trades to install solar, do energy-efficiency overhauls, and electrify homes with heat pumps and other technology. The contract demands the district create one specific new clean energy jobs pathway program during each year of the four-year contract.

It also mandates renovating schools for energy efficiency and installing modern HVAC systems, and orders the school district to work with trade unions to create opportunities for Chicago Public Schools students and graduates to be hired for such work.

“The people in the community have identified jobs and economic justice as being essential for environmental justice,” said Bianchi. ​“I’ve mostly taught juniors and seniors; a lot expressed frustration that college is not their plan. They wish they could learn job skills to enter a trade.”

Chicago schools progress on solar, energy efficiency, and electrification

Installing solar could help the district meet its clean energy goals, which include sourcing 100% of its electricity from renewables by this year.

The district has invested more than $6 million in energy efficiency and efficient lighting since 2018, and cut its carbon dioxide emissions by more than 27,000 metric tons, school district spokesperson Evan Moore told Canary Media last fall as contract negotiations were proceeding.

The schools are eligible for subsidized solar panels under the state Illinois Shines program, and they can tap the federal 30% investment tax credit for solar arrays, with a new direct-pay option tailored to tax-exempt organizations like schools.

Read the full story here.
Photos courtesy of

Related News

Making clean energy investments more successful

Tools for forecasting and modeling technological improvements and the impacts of policy decisions can result in more effective and impactful decision-making.

Governments and companies constantly face decisions about how to allocate finite amounts of money to clean energy technologies that can make a difference to the world’s climate, its economies, and to society as a whole. The process is inherently uncertain, but research has been shown to help predict which technologies will be most successful. Using data-driven bases for such decisions can have a significant impact on allowing more informed decisions that produce the desired results.The role of these predictive tools, and the areas where further research is needed, are addressed in a perspective article published Nov. 24 in Nature Energy, by professor Jessika Trancik of MIT’s Sociotechnical Systems Research Center and Institute of Data, Systems, and Society and 13 co-authors from institutions around the world.She and her co-authors span engineering and social science and share “a common interest in understanding how to best use data and models to inform decisions that influence how technology evolves,” Trancik says. They are interested in “analyzing many evolving technologies — rather than focusing on developing only one particular technology — to understand which ones can deliver.” Their paper is aimed at companies and governments, as well as researchers. “Increasingly, companies have as much agency as governments over these technology portfolio decisions,” she says, “although government policy can still do a lot because it can provide a sort of signal across the market.”The study looked at three stages of the process, starting with forecasting the actual technological changes that are likely to play important roles in coming years, then looking at how those changes could affect economic, social, and environmental conditions, and finally, how to apply these insights into the actual decision-making processes as they occur.Forecasting usually falls into two categories, either data-driven or expert-driven, or a combination of those. That provides an estimate of how technologies may be improving, as well as an estimate of the uncertainties in those predictions. Then in the next step, a variety of models are applied that are “very wide ranging,” Trancik says, “different models that cover energy systems, transportation systems, electricity, and also integrated assessment models that look at the impact of technology on the environment and on the economy.”And then, the third step is “finding structured ways to use the information from predictive models to interact with people that may be using that information to inform their decision-making process,” she says. “In all three of these steps, how you need to recognize the vast uncertainty and tease out the predictive aspects. How you deal with uncertainty is really important.”In the implementation of these decisions, “people may have different objectives, or they may have the same objective but different beliefs about how to get there. And so, part of the research is bringing in this quantitative analysis, these research results, into that process,” Trancik says. And a very important aspect of that third step, she adds, is “recognizing that it’s not just about presenting the model results and saying, ‘here you go, this is the right answer.’ Rather, you have to bring people into the process of designing the studies and interacting with the modeling results.”She adds that “the role of research is to provide information to, in this case, the decision-making processes. It’s not the role of the researchers to push for one outcome or another, in terms of balancing the trade-offs,” such as between economic, environmental, and social equity concerns. It’s about providing information, not just for the decision-makers themselves, but also for the public who may influence those decisions. “I do think it’s relevant for the public to think about this, and to think about the agency that actually they could have over how technology is evolving.”In the study, the team highlighted priorities for further research that needs to be done. Those priorities, Trancik says, include “streamlining and validating models, and also streamlining data collection,” because these days “we often have more data than we need, just tons of data,” and yet “there’s often a scarcity of data in certain key areas like technology performance and evolution. How technologies evolve is just so important in influencing our daily lives, yet it’s hard sometimes to access good representative data on what’s actually happening with this technology.” But she sees opportunities for concerted efforts to assemble large, comprehensive data on technology from publicly available sources.Trancik points out that many models are developed to represent some real-world process, and “it’s very important to test how well that model does against reality,” for example by using the model to “predict” some event whose outcome is already known and then “seeing how far off you are.” That’s easier to do with a more streamlined model, she says.“It’s tempting to develop a model that includes many, many parameters and lots of different detail. But often what you need to do is only include detail that’s relevant for the particular question you’re asking, and that allows you to make your model simpler.” Sometimes that means you can simplify the decision down to just solving an equation, and other times, “you need to simulate things, but you can still validate the model against real-world data that you have.”“The scale of energy and climate problems mean there is much more to do,” says Gregory Nemet, faculty chair in business and regulation at the University of Wisconsin at Madison, who was a co-author of the paper. He adds, “while we can’t accurately forecast individual technologies on their own, a variety of methods have been developed that in conjunction can enable decision-makers to make public dollars go much further, and enhance the likelihood that future investments create strong public benefits.”This work is perhaps particularly relevant now, Trancik says, in helping to address global challenges including climate change and meeting energy demand, which were in focus at the global climate conference COP 30 that just took place in Brazil. “I think with big societal challenges like climate change, always a key question is, ‘how do you make progress with limited time and limited financial resources?’” This research, she stresses, “is all about that. It’s about using data, using knowledge that’s out there, expertise that’s out there, drawing out the relevant parts of all of that, to allow people and society to be more deliberate and successful about how they’re making decisions about investing in technology.”As with other areas such as epidemiology, where the power of analytical forecasting may be more widely appreciated, she says, “in other areas of technology as well, there’s a lot we can do to anticipate where things are going, how technology is evolving at the global or at the national scale … There are these macro-level trends that you can steer in certain directions, that we actually have more agency over as a society than we might recognize.”The study included researchers in Massachusetts, Wisconsin, Colorado, Maryland, Maine, California, Austria, Norway, Mexico, Finland, Italy, the U.K., and the Netherlands. 

Energy
Business
Government

German Coalition Agrees to Fast-Track Infrastructure, Scrap Unpopular Heating Law

BERLIN, Dec 11 (Reuters) - Germany's ruling coalition has agreed ‌a ​new law to fast-track infrastructure projects ‌and to scrap clean-heating...

BERLIN, Dec 11 (Reuters) - Germany's ruling coalition has agreed ‌a ​new law to fast-track infrastructure projects ‌and to scrap clean-heating legislation in favour of a broader law ​on modernising buildings, Chancellor Friedrich Merz said on Thursday.Merz's government, which took power seven months ago, has ‍pledged to revive Germany's sluggish economy, ​Europe's largest, by accelerating projects to improve infrastructure.The conservative chancellor said a wide range of ​transport schemes ⁠would be classified as being of "overriding public interest" under the new law, giving them priority in planning and approval processes.All related administrative procedures will move to a "digital only" standard intended to shorten timelines, while electrifying rail lines of up to 60 kilometres (37 miles) will no longer require ‌an environmental impact assessment, he said."Environmental protection remains important but it can no longer block ​urgently ‌needed measures through endless procedures," ‍Merz told ⁠a press conference following Wednesday evening's cabinet meeting.Germany was long admired for the efficiency of its infrastructure but has been increasingly criticised for letting it decay due to successive governments' aversion to taking on new debt.Breaking with that fiscal tradition, Merz's government earlier this year pushed through debt reforms to borrow hundreds of billions of euros in a special fund, though critics say some of that fiscal firepower has ​been used to prop up day-to-day spending.MORE FLEXIBILITY ON TECHNOLOGY CHOICESOn heating, Merz confirmed the coalition would scrap a contested law that requires most newly installed systems to run largely on renewable energy.The measure, pushed through by the previous centre-left government, triggered a backlash from homeowners and opposition parties and was widely seen as contributing to a sharp slump in support for the coalition that eventually collapsed.The revamped Building Modernisation Act will keep the goal of cutting emissions from buildings but give households more flexibility over technology choices and timelines. The government plans to send it to parliament ​by next spring.With five state elections looming next year, Merz's conservatives and their junior coalition partner, the centre-left Social Democrats, need some wins after a series of political blunders.Support for both parties has dropped since February's federal election, while the far-right Alternative ​for Germany has shot into pole position in nationwide surveys.(Reporting by Sarah Marsh; editing by Matthias Williams and Gareth Jones)Copyright 2025 Thomson Reuters.Photos You Should See – December 2025

Energy
Government
Technology

Greenpeace Scrutinizes the Environmental Record of the Company That Sued the Group

The environmental nonprofit Greenpeace was under the microscope in a North Dakota trial this year. Now the organization is calling attention to the environmental impacts of the pipeline company that brought it to court and won a $345 million judgment.  A new report released Wednesday identifies oil spills, gas releases, air pollution and other incidents […]

The nonprofit said in a new report that pipeline company Energy Transfer reported hundreds of oil spills to federal regulators in recent years, among other incidents.By Martha PskowskiThe environmental nonprofit Greenpeace was under the microscope in a North Dakota trial this year. Now the organization is calling attention to the environmental impacts of the pipeline company that brought it to court and won a $345 million judgment. 

Energy
Pollution

The Navajo Nation said no to a hydropower project. Trump officials want to ensure tribes can’t do that again.

The U.S. Energy Secretary said allowing tribes to weigh in on energy projects on their land creates "unnecessary burdens to the development of critical infrastructure."

Early last year, the hydropower company Nature and People First set its sights on Black Mesa, a mountainous region on the Navajo Nation in northern Arizona. The mesa’s steep drop offered ideal terrain for gravity-based energy storage, and the company was interested in building pumped-storage projects that leveraged the elevation difference. Environmental groups and tribal community organizations, however, largely opposed the plan. Pumped-storage operations involve moving water in and out of reservoirs, which could affect the habitats of endangered fish and require massive groundwater withdrawals from an already-depleted aquifer.  The Federal Energy Regulatory Commission, which has authority over non-federal hydropower projects on the Colorado River and its tributaries, ultimately denied the project’s permit. The decision was among the first under a new policy: FERC would not approve projects on tribal land without the support of the affected tribe. Since the project was on Navajo land and the Navajo Nation opposed the project, FERC denied the permits. The Commission also denied similar permit requests from Rye Development, a Florida-based company, that also proposed pumped-water projects. Now, Department of Energy Secretary Chris Wright wants to reverse this policy. In October, Wright wrote to FERC, requesting that the commission return to its previous policy and that giving tribes veto power was hindering the development of hydropower projects. The commission’s policy has created an “untenable regime,” he noted, and “For America to continue dominating global energy markets, we must remove unnecessary burdens to the development of critical infrastructure, including hydropower projects.”  Wright also invoked a rarely used authority under the Federal Powers Act to request that the commission make a final decision no later than December 18. And instead of the 30 to 60 days generally reserved for proposed rule changes, the FERC comment period was open for only two weeks last month. If his effort proves successful, hydropower projects like the ones proposed by Nature and People First could make a return to the Navajo Nation regardless of tribal support.  More than 20 tribes and tribal associations largely in the Southwest and Pacific Northwest, environmental groups, and elected officials, including Representative Frank Pallone, a Democrat from New Jersey, sent letters urging FERC to continue its current policy. “Tribes are stewards of the land and associated resources, and understand best how to manage and preserve those resources, as they have done for centuries,” wrote Chairman William Iyall of the Cowlitz Indian Tribe in Washington in a letter submitted to the commission.  Tó Nizhóní Ání, or TNA, a Diné-led water rights organization based in Black Mesa on the Navajo Nation, also submitted comments opposing the proposed hydropower project. In the 1960s, after Peabody Coal broke up sections of the resource-rich region between the Hopi and Navajo tribes for mining, the company was accused of misrepresenting the conditions of its operations and the status of mineral rights to local communities. Environmental problems soon followed, as the company’s groundwater pumping exceeded legal limits, compromising the aquifer and access to drinking water. According to Nicole Horseherder, Diné, and TNA’s executive director, this led residents of Black Mesa to use community wells. “They were now starting to have to haul all their water needs in this way,” she said. “That really changed the lifestyle of the people on Black Mesa.”  After the coal mines closed 20 years later, Black Mesa communities have focused on protecting their water resources while building a sustainable economy. But when Nature and People First’s founder Denis Payre presented the company’s plans, he seemed unaware of the tribes’ history in the region. During these presentations, Payre also made promises that if the company’s hydropower project went forward, it would benefit residents. The project would generate 1,000 jobs during construction and 100 jobs permanently, he claimed, and would help locals readily access portable drinking water. “He wasn’t understanding that our region has a history of extraction, and that is coal mining and its impact on our groundwater,” said Adrian Herder, Diné, TNA’s media organizer. “It seemed like this individual was tugging at people’s heartstrings, [saying] things that people wanted to hear.” If the commission decides to retract tribes’ ability to veto hydropower projects, it will mark a shift in the relationship between Indigenous nations and the federal government. Horseherder described such a move as the “first step in eroding whatever’s left between [these] relationships.” She is pessimistic about the commission’s decision and expects it will retract the current policy.  “The only thing I’m optimistic about is that Indigenous people know that they need to continue to fight,” she said. “I don’t see this administration waking up to their own mistakes at all.”  This story was originally published by Grist with the headline The Navajo Nation said no to a hydropower project. Trump officials want to ensure tribes can’t do that again. on Dec 10, 2025.

Energy
Government
Mountains

Georgia hashes out plan to let data centers build their own clean energy

Big companies have spent years pushing Georgia to let them find and pay for new clean energy to add to the grid, in the hopes that they could then get data centers and other power-hungry facilities online faster. Now, that concept is tantalizingly close to becoming a reality, with regulators, utility Georgia Power,…

Big companies have spent years pushing Georgia to let them find and pay for new clean energy to add to the grid, in the hopes that they could then get data centers and other power-hungry facilities online faster. Now, that concept is tantalizingly close to becoming a reality, with regulators, utility Georgia Power, and others hammering out the details of a program that could be finalized sometime next year. If approved, the framework could not only benefit companies but also reduce the need for a massive buildout of gas-fired plants that Georgia Power is planning to satiate the artificial intelligence boom.Today, utilities are responsible for bringing the vast majority of new power projects online in the state. But over the past two years, the Clean Energy Buyers Association has negotiated to secure a commitment from Georgia Power that ​“will, for the first time, allow commercial and industrial customers to bring clean energy projects to the utility’s system,” said Katie Southworth, the deputy director for market and policy innovation in the South and Southeast at the trade group, which includes major hyperscalers like Amazon, Google, Meta, and Microsoft. The ​“customer-identified resource” (CIR) option will allow hyperscalers and other big commercial and industrial customers to secure gigawatts of solar, batteries, and other energy resources on their own, not just through the utility. The CIR option isn’t a done deal yet. Once Georgia Power, the Public Service Commission, and others work out how the program will function, the utility will file a final version in a separate docket next year. And the plan put forth by Georgia Power this summer lacks some key features that data center companies want. A big point of contention is that it doesn’t credit the solar and batteries that customers procure as a way to meet future peaks in power demand — the same peaks Georgia Power uses to justify its gas-plant buildout. But as it stands, CEBA sees ​“the approved CIR framework as a meaningful step toward the ​‘bring-your-own clean energy’ model,” Southworth said — a model that goes by the catchy acronym BYONCE in clean-energy social media circles. Opening up the playing field for clean energy The CIR option is technically an addition to Georgia Power’s existing Clean and Renewable Energy Subscription (CARES) program, which requires the utility to secure up to 4 gigawatts of new renewable resources by 2035. CARES is a more standard ​“green tariff” program that leaves the utility in control of contracting for resources and making them available to customers under set terms, Southworth explained. Under the CIR option, by contrast, large customers will be able to seek out their own projects directly with a developer and the utility. Georgia Power will analyze the projects and subject them to tests to establish whether they are cost-effective. Once projects are approved by Georgia Power, built, and online, customers can take credit for the power generated, both on their energy bills and in the form of renewable energy certificates. Georgia Power’s current plan allows the procurement of up to 3 gigawatts of customer-identified resources through 2035. Letting big companies contract their own clean power is far from a new idea. Since 2014, corporate clean-energy procurements have surpassed 100 gigawatts in the United States, equal to 41% of all clean energy added to the nation’s grid over that time, according to CEBA. Tech giants have made up the lion’s share of that growth and have continued to add more capacity in 2025, despite the headwinds created by the Trump administration and Republicans in Congress. But most of that investment has happened in parts of the country that operate under competitive energy markets, in which independent developers can build power plants and solar, wind, and battery farms. The Southeast lacks these markets, leaving large, vertically integrated utilities like Georgia Power in control of what gets built. Perhaps not coincidentally, Southeast utilities also have some of the country’s biggest gas-plant expansion plans. A lot of clean energy projects could use a boost from power-hungry companies. According to the latest data from the Southern Energy Renewable Association trade group, more than 20 gigawatts of solar, battery, and hybrid solar-battery projects are now seeking grid interconnection in Georgia. “The idea that a large customer can buy down the cost of a clean energy resource to make sure it’s brought onto the grid to benefit them and everybody else, because that’s of value to them — that’s theoretically a great concept,” said Jennifer Whitfield, senior attorney at the Southern Environmental Law Center, a nonprofit that’s pushing Georgia regulators to find cleaner, lower-cost alternatives to Georgia Power’s proposed gas-plant expansion. ​“We’re very supportive of the process because it has the potential to be a great asset to everyone else on the grid.” Isabella Ariza, staff attorney at the Sierra Club’s Beyond Coal Campaign, said CEBA deserves credit for working to secure this option for big customers in Georgia. In fact, she identified it as one of the rare bright spots offsetting a series of decisions from Georgia Power and the Public Service Commission that environmental and consumer advocates fear will raise energy costs and climate pollution.

Energy
Climate
Pollution

Suggested Viewing

The Heart Whisperer

A childhood discovery inspires a woman to push the boundaries of our compassion in this true story. The esteemed Earthlings creator, Shaun Monson, weaves together archived news clips, never seen before arrest footage, and current interviews to tell this tale that crosses countries and decades. Cameo appearances by Joaquin Phoenix and other famous animal advocates.

Water
Energy
Waste

In Pursuit of Passive

Follows the construction of the first net-zero, passive house built in the Greater Tetons-Yellowstone region near Jackson, WY, while explaining the Passive House building approach for designing and constructing more sustainable buildings and exploring the many associated climate and energy performance benefits. Features the home’s designers – Lindsey Love and Lindsay Schack, co-founders of a sustainable architecture and design firm based out of Bozeman, MT and Driggs, ID – along with building and climate experts.

Energy
Solutions
Climate

Resilience

In 1998, a vast power grid serving 5 million people in Canada was destroyed by an ice storm. Twenty years later researchers of that disaster are developing a new kind of resilient power grid. Based in part on the book The Grid and the Village, the film explores how to protect grids and the people they serve from war, terrorist attack, and extreme weather.

Energy
Climate
Crisis

Total Disaster

Armed with realistic bird puppets, trickster environmental activists pretend to be oil company Total—staging a satirical press conference to introduce "RéHabitat," a program to rescue animals from the East African Oil Pipeline by relocating them to “more sustainable” habitats. Using humor and mischief, they expose a deadly ecological disaster in a zany effort to help #StopEACOP.

Activism
Energy
Animals

A Low Carbon Future for China’s Furnace Cities

China’s economic development and rapid urbanization has led to a dramatic rise in energy consumption due to excessive heating and air-conditioning causing carbon emissions of immense proportions. China’s government has set the ambitious target of reducing CO2 emissions by 40–45% by 2020 against the 2005 baseline. A UK/China-funded team working on how to solve the problem in some of the most extreme climate regions in China. The team discovers groundbreaking solutions using computational-fluid-dynamics simulations.

CO2
Energy
Climate

Join us to forge
a sustainable future

Our team is always growing.
Become a partner, volunteer, sponsor, or intern today.
Let us know how you would like to get involved!

CONTACT US

sign up for our mailing list to stay informed on the latest films and environmental headlines.

Subscribers receive a free day pass for streaming Cinema Verde.
Thank you! Your submission has been received!
Oops! Something went wrong while submitting the form.