Scaling Clean Energy from the Ground Up
When federal climate action stalled in 2025, a lot of clean energy work slowed down with it. Building Power Resource Center didn’t have that experience because its model was never built around waiting for Washington.
Founded in late 2023, BPRC provides hands-on strategy and technical assistance to community organizations, unions and local governments working to pass and implement clean energy policies at the local level. The approach is straightforward: help grassroots coalitions build the political support to win popular programs, then help government partners actually execute them. BPRC calls it an “inside-outside” strategy, and in 2025, it worked.
Two partnerships illustrate what this looks like in practice.
In Chicago, BPRC supported the Healthy Green Schools Coalition, a collaboration between the Chicago Teachers Union’s Children & Teachers Foundation and three environmental justice organizations, as they organized parents, students, and educators around detoxifying and decarbonizing the city’s 600-plus school buildings.
In June 2025, the coalition won unanimous passage of a resolution directing Chicago Public Schools to launch a Green Schools Pilot: 12 clean energy projects at schools in environmental justice communities by the end of 2026, with paid student internships in green construction built into the program. BPRC provided weekly strategic support, drafted reports and project-managed the solar feasibility studies that fed the pre-development process.
In Columbus, Ohio, BPRC partnered closely with the Ohio Organizing Collaborative as it worked with Columbus City Schools to decarbonize more than 130 buildings in the district. OOC and school board champions passed a carbon-free-by-2050 resolution in February 2025, followed by an ambitious Safe Green Schools policy that set benchmarks, required all new construction to be electric, and created a sustainability director position.
By early 2026, the district had publicly approved a budget for its first solar project. BPRC was in the room throughout, joining weekly meetings with school board members and district staff, drafting resolutions, managing feasibility studies, and helping OOC tell the story at national convenings.
“The work ahead is about doing more of what’s already proven:” said Yong Jung Cho, executive director, Building Power Resource Center, “practical policy, real projects, and coalitions strong enough to carry them forward.”
Today, demand had outpaced expectations. BPRC now has accepted 26 partners working across 13 states and Washington, D.C. to replicate public school decarbonization practices in their communities. Three models in four states, including public school decarbonization in Ohio and Utah, and two residential neighborhood-scale approaches in California and Maine, are now ready to replicate.
“The work ahead is about doing more of what’s already proven: practical policy, real projects, and coalitions strong enough to carry them forward.”
Yong Jung Cho, Executive Director, , Building Power Resource Center
