The Place Where It Happens: Building the Clean Energy Economy
Decarbonizing energy use is critical to addressing climate catastrophe and ensuring a livable future for all life on Earth. Although we have the technologies and know-how to create an equitable clean energy economy, what will it take to address the practical, real-world operational and implementation challenges needed to make it happen? For those working to accelerate the just transition to clean energy, or who want to be inspired by what’s actually already possible including a shift to renewable public power systems, this panel of entrepreneurs and innovators explores the on-the-ground opportunities to overcome the powerful, entrenched structural barriers to a clean energy future. From overcoming dominant market players, to overhauling systems, to increasing community capacities for clean energy and economic self-determination, the next wave of energy innovation is underway and is close to home! With: Denise Rushing, Managing Director-California for New Energy Nexus; Mariel Nanasi, Executive Director and President of New Energy Economy; Brandi Mack, the Board Chair for People Power Solar Cooperative.
Marina Theater
May 14th | 4:30 pm to 6:00 pm
Panelists
Denise Rushing
Managing Director-California
New Energy Nexus
Denise Rushing, a pioneer in clean energy implementation, is Managing Director-California for New Energy Nexus, a global non-profit whose mission is to accelerate an equitable clean energy future. Her team manages the California Clean Energy Fund. Denise also served two terms on the Lake County Board of Supervisors where she was best known for her environmental leadership and her permaculture-inspired approach to community revitalization.
Mariel Nanasi
Executive Director
New Energy Economy
Mariel Nanasi, Executive Director and President of New Mexico’s New Energy Economy, which uses legal interventions, public policy advocacy and grassroots action to fight for a fossil-fuel and nuclear-free economy that stewards the health of the environment and communities (especially vulnerable and historically disenfranchised ones),.has a long track record as a civil rights and criminal defense attorney. Legal cases she has won and settled have been featured in major national media, including in a PBS documentary, “End of the Nightstick”. When Mariel, a zealous organizer, realized the urgency of climate change, she came to work for New Energy Economy and became its highly effective executive director.
Brandi Mack
Co-Founding Director
People Power Solar Cooperative
Brandi Mack, co-founding Director of People Power Solar Cooperative, and the National Director of the Butterfly Movement (dedicated to providing personal/professional development for black women and girls), is also Director of Community Engagement with Designing Justice+Designing Spaces (an Oakland-based architecture and real estate development non-profit working to end mass incarceration), and on the faculty of Biomimicry for Social Innovation’s “Living Systems Leadership” retreat for women, is also a holistic health educator, therapeutic massage therapist, permaculture designer, living systems thought leader, and mother of three daughters.
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