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Wednesday, Nov 5, 1:00 – 4:00 PM
P2 – Community-Led Decarbonization: Behavioral Opportunities and Barriers
Goals: Global, national, and state policy and strategies feel too slow to meet our climate goals; fortunately, cities and communities can drive the process. What are the lessons learned from cities and communities across the world in their efforts to drive decarbonization? This workshop provides a forum from city representatives, consultants, researchers, and others to share their strategies and experiences through pilot and case studies.
Who should attend?
Practitioners, policymakers, community organizers, researchers, students, and anyone interested in local climate leadership, behavioral insights, and equity in the energy transition.
In the context of an uncertain or even regressive environmental policy in many countries, local initiatives can act as a lever for advancing decarbonization, through small-scale experiments. A wide scholarship on “grassroots initiatives”, “local energy transitions” and/or “intentional communities” show that local-level action has been flourishing in the past 20 years[i] and have been advancing the issue of decarbonization. Community foster trust and social support, which facilitates the appropriation of new social practices[i]. Communities create common “energy cultures”[ii] : “similar patterns of norms, practices and/or material culture – [can be used] as a tool for understanding the potentials and possibilities for sites of action to achieve behaviour change” (ibid). Middle actors such as cities and local communities have more agency than individuals who are caught in the constraints of the consumer system[ii], and superstructures such as states, that are dependent on domestic politics[iii]. The “MOP” (middle-out perspective) shows that middle actors play a crucial role in “overcoming barriers to energy transition, and in promoting and enabling actions”[iv]. Cities’ prerogatives include key aspects of the transition (e.g., local mobility, housing…), that have allowed some of them to be considered as ‘frontrunners’ of the energy transition.
This interactive workshop convenes city officials, researchers, community leaders, and policy practitioners to exchange strategies, explore case studies, and collaboratively identify behavioral opportunities and barriers to community-led climate action. In this workshop we will foster a discussion around communities’ experience from the global North and South as well as from Indigenous communities and lessons learned around energy democracy and design of energy policy at the local level to discuss best practices around empirical evidence. Together, we will co-create a white paper to document cross-regional lessons and behavioral strategies for enabling decarbonization at the community scale.
Facilitators
Therese Peffer, PhD, Associate Director, CIEE/CITRIS UC Berkeley
Miriam Aczel, Researcher, UNU-INWEH
Nathalie Ortar, PhD, Director of Research, LAET/ENTPE
Aurore Flipo, PhD, Researcher, EVS/ENTPE
P3: Designing With, Not For: Leveraging Human-Centered Design and Power Awareness for Meaningful Community Engagement
Authentic engagement requires more than showing up. It requires a shift in mindset, power, and process. In this three-hour interactive workshop, participants will explore how their own identities, assumptions, and positional power shape the way they build relationships and engage with communities. From there, they will learn how to apply principles of human-centered design (HCD) to create inclusive, responsive, and trust-based approaches that elevate lived experience and share power.
This session blends personal reflection, systems thinking, and hands-on practice. Participants will engage in guided activities, small group dialogue, and real-time design exercises to reimagine engagement through the lens of equity, humility, and co-creation. Whether you work in programs, planning, policy, or partnerships, this workshop offers practical tools for centering people (especially those most impacted) at every stage of your work.
By the end of this workshop, participants will be able to:
- Recognize and describe how their own identities, power, and privilege influence engagement practices.
- Apply core human-centered design principles to make engagement more equitable and collaborative.
- Design engagement strategies that reflect the values of equity, empathy, and shared power.
Who Should Attend
This workshop is designed for practitioners—including government agencies, regulatory bodies, nonprofits, utilities, academics, educators, and consultants—who want to deepen their approach to engagement, build stronger community relationships, and center lived experience in decision-making.
Facilitators
QUINN PARKER
Quinn Parker is the Founder and CEO of Encolor, a strategic consulting firm dedicated to helping its clients to operationalize equity. Quinn is responsible for the growth of Encolor. She specializes in helping clients develop actionable equity frameworks with metrics and indicators to measure their impact. Quinn has over 16 years of professional experience in regulatory finance and analytics, program research, design, implementation, and strategic planning. She is also an experienced trainer and facilitator who has delivered workshops and keynotes virtually and in person around the country. Quinn is a Certified Diversity Professional, a Lean Six Sigma Green Belt and a qualified administrator of the Intercultural Development Inventory. Quinn holds a master’s degree in business administration from California State University, Dominguez Hills, and a bachelor’s degree from Loyola Marymount University.
RACHEL DORTIN
Rachel Dortin is the Director of Community Organizing & Ownership for The Shared Space Project, where she leads community-based participatory research projects and delivers workshops on stakeholder engagement, power sharing, and co-creation with communities. Bringing over a decade of experience crossing industries, including higher education, climate, and energy, Rachel melds a variety of perspectives to help ensure that people are able to claim their rightful seats at tables where decisions are being made about them. Rachel sits on the Midwest Energy Efficiency Alliance’s Diversity, Equity and Inclusion committee. Rachel holds a Ph.D. from Wayne State University, where she developed a community-based research methodology to assess relationships between universities and community-based organizations. She also holds a master’s degree from the University of Findlay and a bachelor’s degree from Ohio Northern University.