Our Work
& Initiatives
PEOPLE
Bringing people together is an essential task to accelerate climate action. We work with government, non-profits, and businesses to build bridges to new ideas, new approaches and to establish strategic pathways to achieve deep change. We focus on regional, cross-sector convenings - RAPID Forums.
FUNDING
Unprecedented funding from the Federal Government and the State of California will begin flowing in 2023. Will these funds be used to the level of impact needed? Will projects go beyond business as usual and incremental change? We are working to scale both public funding and private capital to accelerate change.
PEOPLE
RAPID
Forums
Inspiring Action
Catalyzing impact-oriented thinking, shifting from siloed and slow solutions to speed and scale.
What is a RAPID Forum and why is it different?
A RAPID Forum is a daylong event for professionals in a range of industries to come together to identify real, implementable solutions that directly impact the climate crisis - within five years.
Forums are designed to catalyze interdisciplinarily, focused thinking, shifting from siloed and slow solutions we are currently using today to fast, impactful action.
Forums focus on climate change strategies and are tailored to the participant's location and specific circumstances.
Local partners work with us to create the invitation list, plan the day and desired outcomes, co-facilitate at key points, and help coordinate implementation.
Forum Format
RAPID Forums do not have PowerPoints or long-winded speeches! It is interactive and engaging at each step.
The first half of a RAPID forum focuses on ideation and what it means to be in a climate emergency and the questions we need to ask before we start creating solutions.
The second half of the Forum engages all participants in establishing multi-benefit, implementable strategies within a specific five-year framework.
The day will wrap up with the identification of the most impactful and promising strategies to refine and implement within five years.
What comes after?
While we call it the Forum, it is much more impactful than a single day. The major benefit of our approach is the laser focus on what happens after the event. We will help to cement the teams to work on the actions developed at the Forum and help to develop a 90-day sprint action plan.
The Playbook for the
RAPID Climate Action
This RAPID Climate Action Playbook was developed by climate and business professionals who work daily with local governments and recognize the lack of action and frustration in trying to make a difference. The strategies are based on best practices, science, and countless studies that detail what needs to be done today. The first step is to declare a Climate Emergency, and once complete, the other 5 Core Strategies are the focus of regional action.
ACTION
Climate Communications
Hackathon
Building Urgency!
Based on data gathered from recent RAPID’s climate action climate communication "Hackathon," workshops, and independent sources we have identified a consistent theme and often-stated barrier to achieving these goals: a “lack of social and political will.” A recent study by Yale University found that there is a high and increasing social awareness and concern about climate change. But this concern has not and is not being clearly and consistently expressed in ways that generate sufficient political commitment to make the needed changes.
There is a critical need for a strategically coordinated campaign to drive political will to rapidly reduce fossil fuel use in California. RAPID created a pilot Climate Truth Telling Campaign to test messages and ideas that could help move from incremental, low-impact activities to high-impact, systemic change.
Pilots for the Five Truths into Communications!
FUNDING
“I feel like the 2025 headlines are about to write themselves. ‘After three years, experts report that America’s $350 billion IRA investment has failed to reduce carbon emissions – while low Income communities say they’ve been left behind.’"
- Bay Area Climate Leader
RAPID is committed to ensuring that the Bay Area RAPID Accelerator will model effective implementation of the IRA – and serve as a national model for regional, state, and national scale-up. To drive this outcome, likely challenges to effective IRA implementation have been identified below, along with proposed solutions already integrated into the RAPID program design.
Challenge | Solution |
|---|---|
1. Inter-jurisdictional competition leading to ineffectual program design | 1.1. Convene regional collaborative leadership teams dedicated to a shared regional vision, goals, and strategies for achieving Paris-aligned climate objectives |
1.2. Coordinate resource development strategies at the regional level — to limit self-defeating competition, focus on highest-impact strategies, and build capacity for effective regional program delivery across siloes and sectors | |
2. Marginalization of low-income communities | 2.1. Convene a unified and diverse consortium of community based organization leaders and organizations to advance the interests of disadvantaged and marginalized communities. |
2.2. Provide resources and technical support for equity-focused consortia to effectively advocate for, plan, and implement programs in disadvantaged communities. | |
3. Inability to deliver bold and impactful projects | 3.1. Establish regional portfolios of catalytic and impactful projects based on the RAPID key strategy sector areas. |
3.2. Provide strategic guidance across jurisdictions to align and amplify current activities. | |
4. Lack of capacity to develop winning grants & effective plans | 4.1 Provide capacity-building funding to enable regional and local public agencies and solution providers to collaborate across jurisdictions and sectors. |
4.2 Engage top consultants & experts to provide surge capacity and staff training in grant development, public-private finance, and effective program design. | |
5. Failure to leverage private finance | 5.1 Convene Finance Task Force to ensure that public funds are leveraged 3x or more with private finance with access to least-cost funds for smaller contractors and lower income residents. |
5.2 Ensure access to lowest cost capital by developing scaled-up project portfolios (focusing on the $500M+ range) needed to attract “disintermediated” capital (e.g. pensions funds rather than hedge funds). | |
5.3 Utilize the balance sheets and capacity of the best-positioned organizations (e.g. mature Community Choice Energy providers) to act as finance hubs where appropriate (e.g. in DER & EE deployment contexts). | |
6. Failure to pursue market transformation and policy innovation | 6.1 Engage thought leadership organizations to identify proven market transformation and policy innovations for deployment at regional and state levels. |
6.2 Provide technical assistance on market transformation and policy innovation to scale deployment of important innovations (e.g. on-bill repayment, shared EV programs, community microgrids and solar). | |
7. Failure to reduce complexity and other barriers to customer adoption | 7.1 Convene stakeholders via a holistic “system in a room” approach to identify barriers to customer adoption of clean energy and efficiency innovations. |
7.2 Collaboratively develop strategies to overcome market barriers and boost customer adoption, program efficiency, and positive impact. | |
7.3 Develop clear & compelling dashboards of key results – updated in real time. | |
7.4 Convene stakeholders to regularly review results and drive continuous improvement of program strategy using leading project management approaches. | |
7.5. Support program deployment across jurisdictions with state of the art communications that engage customers in diverse communities. | |
8. Failure to address workforce training needs | 8.1 Assess workforce needs for all RAPID Core Actions where labor shortages or skill limitations might otherwise limit goal achievement. |
8.2 Convene workforce institutions to develop innovate approaches to scaling and expanding the workforce – including builders, community colleges, workforce boards, labor unions, and corporate training programs. | |
9. Insufficient attention to apartments, rentals, and affordable housing | 9.1 Convene key stakeholders to set and achieve robust goals for customer adoption & program deployment in apartments and affordable housing. |
9.2 Design programs and incentives that address the needs of ALL core stakeholders — owners, renters, mangers, builders, etc. | |
10.Failure to focus on the most efficient and effective GHG measures | 10.1 Convene regional Climate Assembly & Advisory Groups to identify measures that most efficiently mitigate GHGs (measured in $/ton of CO2e). |
10.2 Deploy best-in-class tools to track regional GHG results and correlate program and policy initiatives to impacts. | |
11. Lack of transformational transportation project support | 11.1 Convene national and regional leaders to establish aggressive and feasible regional approaches to address the “wicked” problem of transportation emissions – with a special emphasis on modal shift. |
12. Failure to scale innovations & best practices | 12.1 Create a RAPID Practitioners Learning Network (starting with the Bay Area and LA area) that includes policy makers, community leaders, program implementers, and solution providers. |
12.2 Utilize fast-cycle program assessment to capture and broadly disseminate program results and innovations at least on an annual basis. |