This series brings together leaders and policymakers from municipalities, communities, and urban planning groups to discuss their efforts to build climate change resilience, with a focus on how climatetech startups can get involved.

Many municipalities embrace a “not early adopter” stance, focusing their resources on studies and consultants to navigate the climate crises for their constituencies. Then there are those cities and towns who are learning by doing. This includes specific endeavors to decarbonize, electrify, enhance mobility, bolster resilience and “districtize” heating & cooling. Many such efforts are weaving equity and climate justice into the fabric of these measures. These municipalities are the climate change leaders.

This event brings two authors who have recently published extensive works on municipal climate leadership. They will discuss the stories that they have researched, their findings – including COVID’s impact on plans – and how things might change under the Biden administration. This discussion is guaranteed to be a source of ideas, target customers and inspiration for the Greentown community and beyond.

This event will be hosted on Zoom.

Speakers:

• Dr. Jacqueline Ashmore, Executive Director for Boston University’s Institute for Sustainable Energy and a Research Associate Professor in the Departments of Earth & Environment and of Mechanical Engineering
• Joan Fitzgerald, Professor of Urban and Public Policy at Northeastern University

About Our Speakers:

Dr. Jacqueline Ashmore is the Executive Director for Boston University’s Institute for Sustainable Energy and a Research Associate Professor in the Departments of Earth & Environment and of Mechanical Engineering. She is a clean energy and sustainability expert with fifteen years of experience in technology, business, and policy spheres. Her research covers the topics of integrated water management to support sustainable and affordable water supplies, and city actions to drive equitable climate mitigation, adaptation, and resilience. Ashmore has spoken at national conferences on topics that include public-private partnership opportunities for the water sector and the water utility of the future with a business model focused on efficiency. Previously, Ashmore was Engineering Program Manager at the Fraunhofer Center for Sustainable Energy Systems, where she oversaw an $8MM U.S. Department of Energy funded program focused on the development and prototyping of an innovative residential solar system that can be installed quickly and safely to reduce soft costs.

Ashmore is a Board member of New England Women in Energy and the Environment (NEWIEE), Browning the Green Space, and the Northeast Clean Energy Council (NECEC). She was awarded the American Physical Society’s Andreas Acrivos Dissertation Award in Fluid Dynamics for her doctoral thesis.

Joan Fitzgerald is a Professor of Urban and Public Policy at Northeastern University. She focuses on urban climate action and strategies for linking it to equity, economic development, and innovation. In her fourth book, Greenovation: Urban Leadership on Climate Change (Oxford Univ. Press, 2020), she argues that the climate strategies of too many cities represent random acts of greenness rather than integrated and aggressive action. She points to leading cities in North America and Europe and offers strategies for lagging cities to accelerate their action. Her ongoing Climate Just Cities Project examines strategies for post-Covid urban climate action to place equity at the forefront. She blogs on inequality and urban climate action on Planetizen.