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The U.S. Department of Agriculture is making a massive investment of almost $11 billion in clean energy for rural communities, with funding from the Inflation Reduction Act of 2022. That should come as no surprise. From the hydropower dams of the Great Depression to the present day, clean energy has been a running theme in federal efforts to support rural economic development. The new USDA effort takes it to the next level by scaling up new zero- and low-carbon technologies.

The roots of federal clean energy policy for rural communities 

The USDA announced $11 billion in new funding for rural clean energy projects on May 16, with part of the program described as “the single largest investment in rural electrification since President Franklin D. Roosevelt signed the Rural Electrification Act into law in 1936.”

The relation of the new USDA initiative to the Roosevelt administration of the 20th century is much closer than a simple comparison suggests. In fact, Roosevelt laid the groundwork for the USDA's efforts.

The Tennessee Valley Authority Act of 1933 authorized the construction of hydropower dams, with the goal of electrifying rural communities at affordable rates. However, private utilities were not interested in serving thinly populated areas.

In 1933, many cities had been electrified for years, while rural populations were left in the dark. Kerosene lamps and wood stoves were the order of the day for most farming communities, making it difficult if not impossible for other businesses and factories to set up shop. Nine out of 10 rural households had no access to electricity.

President Roosevelt’s Executive Order 7037 of 1935 established the Rural Electrification Administration, with the aim of attracting private utilities to invest in new transmission lines. Private takers were few, but the new agency did attract an outpouring of applications from local farmer cooperatives.

$11 billion for another rural clean power revolution

Those electric cooperatives continue to serve their communities to this day, and they are a major force in the U.S. energy industry. Collectively, cooperatives serve 42 million people across almost every U.S. state, including 92 percent of counties that are classified as "persistent poverty counties," and they count more than 21.5 million businesses, homes and other facilities on their collective rosters.

Some cooperatives are encumbered with fossil energy obligations, partly due to their public benefit mission of preserving jobs. On the plus side, the public mission also provides cooperatives with the flexibility to explore solar power, agrivoltaics and other new energy technologies. With 900 members organized under NRECA, the National Rural Electric Cooperative Association, cooperatives have also been working with the U.S. Department of Energy on the transition to renewable energy.

The new $11 billion in USDA funding turbo-boosts that progress with a focus on rural electric cooperatives. Of the total, $9.7 billion is set aside for the New Empowering Rural America (New ERA) program, which provides funding to eligible cooperatives for renewable energy systems as well as carbon capture and other zero-emission technologies. 

The New ERA program stipulates that eligible cooperatives serve predominantly rural areas, defined as having at least 50 percent rural consumers. Eligible cooperatives can apply for a loan, grant, or loan-grant combination for a wide range of clean power projects that reduce greenhouse gases, partly by retiring older, obsolete or expensive infrastructure.

“You can also change your purchased-power mixes to support cleaner portfolios, manage stranded assets, and boost your transition to clean energy,” the USDA advises.

Even more clean energy for rural communities

The remaining $1 billion will go to provide partially forgivable loans for utilities under a program called PACE (Powering Affordable Clean Energy). Created by the Inflation Reduction Act, the wide-ranging program makes funding available to government jurisdictions as well as public and private utilities, tribal entities and cooperatives.

The aim is to scale up the implementation of existing renewable energy resources in underserved communities, described as “designated energy communities, disadvantaged communities, distressed communities, and Tribal communities.” That includes Puerto Rico, Micronesia, the Marshall Islands and Palau.

“The goal of the PACE program is to make clean energy affordable for vulnerable, disadvantaged, Tribal and energy communities to heat their homes, run their businesses and power their cars, schools, hospitals and more,” USDA explained. 

Who’s afraid of rural solar?

Until New ERA and PACE, much of the USDA's sustainable energy programming has focused on assistance for individual farmers and other rural businesses. The Inflation Reduction Act also provides funding for these individual assistance programs. The USDA anticipates that the rural clean energy and energy-efficiency provisions will assist 41,500 farms and small businesses. Biofuel production is also getting an additional assist from the Inflation Reduction Act. And last year, the USDA also began working with individual farmers to promote carbon sequestration as a marketing opportunity.

One sign of a broader approach to rural clean energy emerged in 2021 when the USDA launched the relatively modest $10 million Rural Energy Pilot Program. The program provided a pathway for nonprofits and other public bodies to apply for community-wide energy efficiency and clean power projects. Government and tribal entities were also eligible to apply.

Applications for the program closed last year, and apparently the USDA did not wait around for the results. The new $11 billion in funding sends the potential for new rural energy investments into the stratosphere. The USDA expects to leverage almost $3 billion in new energy projects through the PACE program alone.

If all goes according to plan, both the New ERA and the PACE program will bring more large-scale solar power plants to rural communities.
That is sure to set off fireworks in communities where the opposition to new solar projects has begun to heat up, partly fueled by organized disinformation about climate change. 

Nevertheless, the economic benefits of solar power and other new clean energy technologies are coming into view. The $11 billion in new funding through the Inflation Reduction Act will motivate more businesses and investors to seek new, scaled-up clean energy opportunities in rural areas, despite the opposition. 

This story was originally published by Grist. Sign up for Grist’s weekly newsletter here.

The global food system is a climate mess, from the widespread use of greenhouse gas-emitting fertilizers to the methane-spewing livestock to all the food that gets tossed into the trash. In the United States, a staggering one-third of all food — something like 130 billion meals annually — gets thrown out. Each year, that discarded stuff represents an estimated 170 million metric tons of carbon emissions — the equivalent of 42 coal-fired power plants. 

But there’s a simple solution, beyond simply reducing waste. According to a new study in the Nature journal Scientific Reports, composting food scraps results in 38 percent to 84 percent fewer greenhouse gas emissions than tossing them in landfills. Unlike trash in landfills, compost heaps are watered and turned, which aerates the decomposing waste and prevents bacteria from churning out as much methane, a powerful greenhouse gas. 

“Composting still has some methane emissions, but it’s much, much lower because most landfills aren’t turned as frequently,” said Whendee Silver, an ecologist at the University of California Berkeley and a co-author on the study. 

Landfills are a big climate culprit. Garbage dumps generate one-third of all methane emissions in the U.S., in part because the most common item in them is food. The organic matter in landfills breaks down through a process called anaerobic decomposition, in which bacteria feast on it and burp out methane. Food scraps often end up at the bottom of landfills, where it gets compacted and “creates the perfect storm for methane emissions,” Silver said. 

Silver’s group measured emissions of three greenhouse gasses — carbon dioxide, nitrous oxide and methane — at a commercial compost facility in California. They continuously tracked emissions over the course of the composting process. Although other studies have done similar landfill-compost emissions comparisons, Silver said this one stands out because it used a new method that “allowed us to figure out exactly when and where and under what conditions the greenhouse gas emissions were occurring” and didn’t alter the conditions of the compost while taking measurements.

The big range in the findings — an emissions reduction of 38 percent to 84 percent — is a result of uncertainty around estimates of greenhouse gas pollution from landfills, which is “a really difficult thing to measure,” Silver said.

The researchers wrote that “fine tuning” the composting process, like turning the pile more and adding water more frequently but in lower quantities, could further lower emissions. Silver said that new tools like aeration tubes below compost heaps could also help slash methane emissions. 

The study didn’t account for the climate benefits of applying compost as fertilizer. Other research has shown that laying compost on agricultural fields is key to storing carbon in soil. Some estimates suggest that adding compost to an acre of land can sequester enough carbon to offset 75 percent of a car’s annual emissions. 

A handful of states and cities have passed laws to mandate curbside compost pickups and to prevent food scraps from entering landfills. Two years ago, U.S. President Joe Biden set a target of capturing 70 percent of methane emissions from landfills nationwide through a voluntary program. In 2015, the Department of Agriculture and the Environmental Protection Agency announced a goal of cutting food waste in half by 2030. But the country hasn’t tacked toward that target. Between 2016 and 2019, the amount generated in the U.S. actually increased by 6 percent, from 328 pounds to 349 pounds per person each year. And only about 5 percent of that waste gets composted.  

This article originally appeared in Grist. Grist is a nonprofit, independent media organization dedicated to telling stories of climate solutions and a just future. Learn more at Grist.org.

Per- and polyfluorinated substances (PFAS) have been getting a lot of negative publicity. And with good reason. Classified as “forever chemicals,” they’ve been found in food, water, soil, animals and even our blood. Although the extent of their effects is not fully understood, they are known to negatively impact human health in a variety of ways. But while many are calling for an overall ban on the chemicals, pushback from the industry seeks to simply switch out the PFAS we already know are harmful with lesser-known ones that likely have the same — or possibly even worse — effects.

Although PFAS proponents argue that the chemicals are necessary for every aspect of modern life, innovators in chemistry are working hard to develop newer, safer compounds. Impermea Materials is one such company. Its water-based solutions can be used in place of PFAS in a variety of products — including packaging, apparel, upholstery, and technical textiles such as those worn by firefighters and military.

 “We use different types of particles that are all inherently safe, they're amorphous,” David Zamarin, founder and CEO of Impermea Materials, told TriplePundit. “What we do is very different than the traditional chemical companies that are out there. We synthesize our own material and, by doing so, we can control a lot of the polymers and their functionality, which is very different because a lot of companies are just formulators.”

PFAS are everywhere 

PFAS, or fluorinated chemicals, are ubiquitous in modern life. They are used in everyday items we all depend on, from cleaning and personal care products to non-stick cookware, touchscreens, batteries and fuel cells. They also appear in waterproof, flame-retardant and stain-resistant coatings on food packaging, upholsteries and textiles, among many more uses. As such, these chemicals have found their way into just about every part of our lives, down to the soil that grows our food, the water we drink, and sometimes even the air we breathe.

PFAS exposure is not equally distributed across the country. Those working in the industry’s manufacturing plants have the highest amounts of the forever chemicals in their blood, followed by people who live in areas with high levels of groundwater contamination, according to the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC). But that doesn’t mean anyone is free and clear of the stuff — it’s in just about everyone’s blood in the U.S.

But what does that mean for our health? While not enough is known about the consequences of PFAS — especially at low levels — we do know that some levels of exposure increase the risk of various cancers, reproductive problems, developmental delays, compromised immunity, hormonal issues, obesity and elevated cholesterol.

Can alternative materials replace PFAS?

Some manufacturers argue that the most dangerous PFAS — those with smaller molecules — can be replaced by safer, larger-molecule versions. But a study out of Canada found that is simply not the case, at least when it comes to food packaging. 

“As some legacy PFAS are withdrawn from the market or regulated, alternative compounds are introduced as replacements. The idea behind this process, sometimes called ‘whack-a-mole,’ is that the alternative is safer than the compound it replaces,” one of the study’s authors, Marta Venier, a professor at Indiana University, told the industry publication PackagingInsights. “In reality, the result is a regretful substitution since the newly introduced compound has similar properties to the compound it replaces. The replacement is considered ‘safer’ because less is known about that specific chemical.”

Instead of just switching out one type of PFAS for another, Impermea Materials has developed its own molecule — dubbed siloalkoxyurylsilane. “The molecule that we believe we've invented is a combination of a variety of different types of chemistry,” Zamarin said. “A lot of it is bio-based. There are reactive chemistries, resin technology, urethane technology and, of course, silica and some silanes. So it's a combination of a few things. And we make it in a very unique way, which is what allows us to combine all of these chemistries together, which normally don't like to be together.”

Third-party testing is an important part of the process, especially with food packaging that has been approved by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA), as is consistent in-house quality assurance. “We regularly test for fluorine content in both our water and then our finished goods,” he said. “We test for a variety of other chemicals as well in the entire gambit of PFAS. From a third-party perspective, we try to get any of our claims that we make like non-toxicity or PFAS-free tested independently.”

Understanding how PFAS replacements work

Impermea Materials works with producers to provide coatings for a variety of products. But not all of them have a thorough understanding of how to properly cure the chemicals after application, which has led to some using the same process as they would with PFAS.

“We have a lot of clients that are used to applying the traditional C6 based fluorochemicals, and they're used to curing it at 170 degrees Celsius, for example,” Zamarin said. “Well, if you cure ours at 170 degrees Celsius for the same amount of time, you're actually going to burn the coating. If you put it under a microscope, you'll see literal blisters, so you want to avoid doing that.”

Other clients have tried to bypass the curing process and allow the coating to air-dry instead. “It does air dry, it dries within a minute,” he said. “But you do need to heat cure it because the chemistry specifically has what's called crosslinking mechanisms. Heat specifically activates certain molecules to bond together and get to that performance."

Unlike PFAS, which can take thousands of years to degrade, Impermea Materials' coatings are compostable. As such, they also offer potential to address packaging waste — if they're used on a compostable package, of course, which is by no means a given. Even then, it's often hard to tell if a piece of packaging can really break down in a home compost pile or if it's only suited for industrial-scale composting, which is not available in most of the U.S. 

“As of now, they have not been tested for home composability. That's what we mean is they’re industrially compostable," Zamarin said. "But the caveat here is we're not saying that it isn't home compostable. We just haven't done the testing."

“Generally speaking, it's the substrate that matters more than the coating," he explained. "That's a general statement. It's not entirely true with all of our competitors, unfortunately, but with our coatings, we don't impact the sustainability metrics of the substrate. So, if the food packaging itself is home compostable, it hasn't been tested yet, but we would assume from a technical background that it would also be home compostable for the coating.”

Chemicals and protective coatings are an invaluable part of modern life. However, as we become more aware of the consequences surrounding a variety of chemicals, the hunt for safer alternatives cannot be underestimated. Impermea Materials is one company that is working hard to find a solution, with applications in food packaging and textiles already in use. 

Image credits: Kampus Production/Pexels and Impermea Materials

Industries beyond the tech world are utilizing data and technology more and more these days to improve efficiency, find solutions to problems, and create new opportunities for greater transparency and innovation. The agricultural and food sectors utilize data and digitalization as a means for improvement, but few have used blockchain, the digital ledger technology that enables cryptocurrencies like Bitcoin to pass from hand to hand.

Enter Merge Impact, which bills itself as the first and only blockchain-powered agricultural measurement and data solution to help farmers, food manufacturers, and brands better understand the impact of their practices and purchases down to the field level.

From the ground up

Merge Impact co-founders Ben Adolph and Beth Robertson-Martin both come from agricultural backgrounds. But they have professional perspectives from different sides of the industry — Adolph in soil health and fertilizer sales and Robertson-Martin in commodity sourcing, most recently for General Mills. 

Each realized the limitations of their respective fields and set out to solve them with their new agri-tech company powered by blockchain. "I had a thesis that there are lots of food companies that actually need regenerative supply chain problems solved," Robertson-Martin explained.

"We saw an opportunity to connect the climate impacts at the farm level and bring value to food companies," Adolph added. "She has the solutions from the brand side. I have them from the farm side.”

Blockchain for transparency

Using data as a means of analyzing and improving systems is commonplace in the modern digital age, but blockchain takes these processes one step further. “I think about blockchain as a tool in the toolbox, but it's one that makes things quicker and easier for us. Blockchain really helps prevent data corruption and data loss,” Robertston-Martin said.

Merge Impact’s use of blockchain allows it to serve as a software solution for transparent supply chains, as raw materials are digitally logged from the field to the customer and everywhere in between. This type of information is increasingly crucial as companies aim to provide their clients with transparent, accurate and easily accessible data.

Transparency for brands, consumers and farmers

Major food manufacturing companies have made public commitments to regenerative sourcing worth trillions of dollars. But many of these commitments have been based upon dubious data, resulting in shaky and unsubstantiated sustainability action plans.

As a company that operates on the integrity and security of data, Merge Impact remains a neutral party in the collection of information on its platform. Third-party partners like EarthOptics — which specializes in soil data measurement, including how much carbon is being stored by the soil — allow the company to provide more detailed information to clients while remaining impartial. 

Merge Impact’s use of third-party data collection and blockchain technology allows food companies to understand the impact of their supply chains and make reliable claims about their products. In turn, customers can rely upon these claims to make better choices about the products they support. 

From the farmer’s perspective, data platforms like Merge Impact’s make it easier for brands to find and connect with organic and regenerative farmers. It also helps farmers advocate for their services as a premium, as brands see how sustainable practices translate into improved soil health metrics like carbon storage and water retention. 

Merge Impact also ensures that farmers can retain ownership of their data, which can be shared, transferred or monetized at their discretion. 

“What blockchain allows us to do at the farm level is monetize data for farmers," Adolph said. "We never claim ownership of data. If you go into any other ag-tech platform, when data comes into that platform, that's the platform's data. But in our case, the producer creates the data, and that producer ultimately owns all the data. It is truly the only system where the producer has an account in the product."

More simply, Merge Impact serves to simply facilitate the movement of data, while giving the producers and brands total ownership of the data that the company and its partners help to collect and store.

"If it can be measured, we can measure it."

Merge Impact data has shown to be effective in helping companies to measure and manage their greenhouse gas emissions. It also serves to inform other key indicators of mission-based food systems, such as biodiversity and water usage. 

“If it can be measured, we can measure it and we can track it," Robertson-Martin said. "Not only will you know where your oats came from, you'll know where your carbon, your biodiversity, your pollinator habitat metrics came from down to the field level, down to the subfield level. We make it really easy to get to that level of granularity."

With producer and brand ownership of their own data, coupled with the security and integrity of blockchain technology, Merge Impact’s platform serves as an end-to-end solution for traceable supply chains for regenerative, organic, and any other kind of mission-based food systems. 

“Ultimately, Merge Impact uses blockchain to turn ag-tech into a solution for the industry and not just a product for the industry,” Adolph said. 

Image credits: PHÚC LONG and Marc Kleen via Unsplash 

Job growth remains strong in the United States as the COVID-19 pandemic enters its fourth year. At the same time, higher interest rates have cooled the economy. American workers are worried about a potential recession, even as many continue to seek higher pay or are dissatisfied with their current roles or work environment, according to Morning Consult's annual State of Workers report. 

Job search growth was flat from March to April but remains in a broad uptrend since the start of the year, the data intelligence firm found. The prospect of higher wages continues to pull people back into the job hunt, with elevated search activity suggesting quit rates could tick back up. So, what are workers really thinking out there? Let's take a closer look at the survey of more than 6,000 employed and unemployed Americans to find out. 

Demand 'whiplash' rocks sectors like tech

Demand for workers has “whiplashed” since the start of the pandemic — first to tech, transportation and warehousing jobs, and then back to in-person services as consumers started dining out again and traveling more often, said Jesse Wheeler, senior economist for Morning Consult.

All of this represents a “huge reallocation of workers” from some sectors to others, he said. Meanwhile, economic and job growth are beginning to slow down. In an early warning sign, the share of U.S. adults reporting income losses increased considerably over recent weeks, according to Morning Consult.  

“Overall, the U.S. economy is clearly slowing as the Federal Reserve’s rapid tightening of monetary policy takes its toll,” Wheeler explained. “We could really start to see the shedding of jobs potentially in the coming months and an increase in unemployment, but we’re not seeing it yet.”

Morning Consult’s Lost Pay and Income Tracker rose 1.2 percentage points from March to April, with the sharp rise driven primarily by adults from higher-income households, reflecting the sweeping layoffs announced by tech companies like Meta, Shopify, Dropbox, Lenovo, Lyft, Roku and others.

“This is really a potential warning sign for the U.S. economy,” Wheeler said. “These high-paying tech and financial service companies have really been prioritizing projects and shedding workers to prepare for a potential lower-growth environment.”

Where are laid off workers now?

Despite shakeups in the tech industry, there are some indications that laid-off workers are finding new jobs fairly quickly. About 75 percent of those laid off in December and January were rehired or had a job offer within two months, according to polling from the hiring company ZipRecruiter.

Laid-off workers in the advertising, auto and transportation industries were most likely to land a new job quickly, according to the study. Somewhat surprisingly, 80 percent of the workers who found new employment after getting laid off said they didn’t have to take a pay cut.

People are still job-switching, and many find it to pay off 

A rising share of employed U.S. adults are being drawn into an active job search, with the prospect of higher pay as the prime motivator. Many are finding exactly that, with nominal wage growth higher among job-switchers than those who stay put. 

“Morning Consult data shows that by far the largest reason for job-seekers going out there and looking for a new job is the potential for higher pay, with 60 percent of U.S. adults who had looked for work in the past four weeks citing more money as the primary reason,” Wheeler said. “This impetus really aligns with the data out there that shows that job-switchers are still being rewarded over job stayers.”

As the U.S. economy heated up in 2021 and 2022, workers enjoyed a high degree of bargaining power they had not experienced in decades, demanding workplace flexibility and other perks. But the tables have turned, and many workers are now less picky about what they need from employers, according to Morning Consult's research. 

Although the upper hand seems to be shifting back to employers in many cases, they are still very much in need of workers, with nearly 10 million job openings according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics’ latest numbers.

Of those who are interested in leaving their jobs, Morning Consult found the top reason why is feeling underpaid, and that has not changed. It was also the top-ranked reason in 2022, followed by workers wanting a better work-life balance and feeling burnt out.

Add this to existing research from the job-search company Monster: 34 percent of job-switchers said there is no room for growth in their current role, and 26 percent are looking to escape a toxic work environment, compared to 40 percent in search of higher pay. This tells us that fewer demands around specific perks like childcare or remote work options doesn't mean employers should ignore company culture and employee morale. 

“The broad takeaway here is that while we’re seeing people be more cautious about wanting to leave their jobs, the underlying motivations why they would do so remain the same,” said Amy He, industry analyst team lead for Morning Consult.

Image credit: Flow Clark/Unsplash

Investing in viable solutions to social and environmental problems can turn a profit — and the most lucrative ideas may not come from where you'd expect. That's the philosophy behind Village Capital. The nonprofit launched in 2009 under the tagline "democratizing entrepreneurship." Though it's based in Washington, D.C., its founding mission centers on identifying and supporting innovators outside the big coastal cities that receive the lion's share of venture funding. 

Over the past 14 years, Village Capital has supported nearly 1,000 such startups through 45 U.S.-based accelerator programs — which provide funding and mentoring to entrepreneurs with smart ideas to solve big problems. 

One of its most recent accelerators squares in on the crucial issue of climate justice, with a call for innovators on the front lines of climate change to submit locally-driven solutions for backing from Village Capital. 

What is climate justice? 

For the uninitiated, climate justice refers to the imbalanced nature of the real-world impacts caused by climate change: Those who fare the worst amidst natural disasters and sea-level rise tend to be poor and underserved, and as such have contributed least to the greenhouse gas emissions that cause climate change. For context, a billionaire will produce a million times more greenhouse gas emissions in their lifetime than the average person, according to research from Oxfam. 

The related cause of environmental justice refers not only to the impacts of climate change, but also the sources of climate-inducing pollution — and where they're located. In the U.S. in particular, years of segregation has created a situation in which communities of color are far more likely to be in the direct vicinity of polluting sites like oil refineries and chemical plants. A bombshell 2021 study from the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency found that people of color are exposed to far higher levels of air pollution during their lifetimes than white people, regardless of income level. 

Again, people living in communities that have faced chronic disinvestment for decades are more likely to be poor, and as such consume far fewer of the goods and services that these polluting industries provide. Yet they're still saddled with the impact, whether that's long-term air pollution exposure that can lead to preventable illness, or catastrophic events like leaks and explosions. 

Impacted communities have sounded the alarm about environmental and climate justice for decades, but the issues are only more recently gaining attention on the global stage. A global loss and damage fund to help developing countries cope with the impacts of climate change was finally pushed across the finish line at the COP27 climate talks in 2022, although it will be years before it's up and running. U.S. President Joe Biden has also made justice a central pillar of his climate plan, with billions in new investments going toward efforts to reduce emissions and pollution in underserved communities. 

Still, government investments have by no means reached the scale of the challenge — making private-sector interventions like Village Capital's accelerator essential to creating the widespread changes needed to cut the problem down to size. 

Inside Village Capital's climate justice accelerator 

Announced last month, Village Capital's accelerator is seeking early-stage startups that support immigrants, refugees and communities of color on the front lines of climate change in the U.S. In partnership with the WES Mariam Assefa Fund, Village Capital will provide grants and coaching to 10 to 12 startups with promising solutions that help their communities prepare for and adapt to climate impacts. The accelerator is fairly industry-agnostic, with startups across the climate tech, financial tech and property tech spaces encouraged to apply. 

"We are looking for impact-driven startups that are solving critical challenges for people and communities who are disproportionately impacted by climate change," Elizabeth Nguyen, economic opportunity practice lead for Village Capital, told TriplePundit. "We’ve been very intentional about identifying the solution types, which thematically fall into: disaster preparedness, public action and civic response, resilient housing and cities, and overall support for immigrants and refugees. Each one of these solution types prioritizes supporting people and communities and enables them the ability to respond to the impact of climate change." 

Along with grant funding, the selected entrepreneurs will receive invaluable training on how to further scale their businesses and attract investors, including help with a development plan to chart the course for growth. Through Village Capital's unique peer-selected investment model, the cohort of entrepreneurs will decide which two climate justice solutions will be eligible to receive an additional $100,000 in investments from WES Mariam Assefa, Nguyen said. 

"This investment, especially at an early stage, has the potential to change the trajectory of a company, considering many immigrant and refugee founders often don’t have strong social networks or support systems that founders who may have been born in the U.S. have," she explained. "We also can’t stress enough how important social capital, mentorship, and connections are to early-stage companies. Village Capital provides not just training and financial support, but introductions to relevant mentors who are in the refugee and immigrant space and climate tech space. Our support enables our founders to walk away with tangible ways to speak to investors." 

Championing locally-driven solutions to climate challenges

Importantly, Village Capital aims to support locally-led solutions driven by the people and organizations that experience climate impacts in their communities firsthand. 

"We’ve seen time and again that top-down solutions will not be sustainable or effective because they don’t have a full understanding of the needs in a community," Nguyen said. "Locally-led startups also ensure that the solutions elevate the communities collectively so they are not left behind in the wave of innovation, a challenge that has unfortunately already been reflected in the history of climate tech solutions." 

The company's accelerator model is proven to work, with over 150 accelerators supporting more than 1,400 startups globally. Entrepreneurs graduating from Village Capital accelerators raised three times more capital and earned 2.3 times more revenue compared to a control group, according to an impact study commissioned by the company. 

The company's separate venture capital fund, VilCap Investments, has invested in over 100 peer-selected startups from across these accelerators — again, with a focus on founders who are often overlooked. Nearly half (46 percent) of startups in the fund are led by women, and 30 percent are led by people of color. A stunning 80 percent are based in states outside New York, California and Massachusetts, which together receive about half of all global VC funding, according to Village Capital. 

"By catalyzing locally-led startups and strengthening the ecosystem for these entrepreneurs to succeed, we can create the biggest and most sustainable impact, one that improves and increases services and resources for the communities who need it the most," Nguyen said.  

Applications for the accelerator close on May 25, 2023. Full details and eligibility criteria can be found here.