** We take a moment here to remember Pope Francis and call attention to his incredible leadership and legacy on climate change, particularly through his 2015 Encyclical Letter Laudato Si’ (Praise Be To You) On Care For Our Common Home.**

HAPPY EARTH DAY 🌎 While it’s challenging times for climate policy here in the U.S., we think it’s more important than ever to showcase the amazing work taking place across the globe. This year, we’re highlighting stories about the people and projects accelerating climate change solutions, often through local action, across our OKRs. From electric vehicle dealers shaking up the auto market to surfers restoring oceans and Colombian farmers sequestering carbon with coffee waste, this issue of Zeroing In brings together inspiring stories from across the climate action spectrum.

As for what Speed & Scale is doing, we’ve teamed up with GitHub to bring climate action tools to the fingertips of the 150 million developers in GitHub’s global network. As the builders of our digital future, software engineers have enormous potential to activate climate solutions and cut the 24 GT of emissions generated from the grid. The Climate Action Plan for Developers helps coders reduce emissions in their products, practices, and platforms. It’s also designed to contribute to open source projects tackling climate change. Check out the plan, explore its repositories, and help spread the word. The world needs your smarts and ingenuity!

More things to do on Earth Day and resources for all year long:

1. Nat Geo Kids: Get Outside Challenges

2. EarthDay.org 2025

3. The Old Farmers Almanac: Earth Day 2025: How to Celebrate Earth Day

4. Ideas for Earth Day this year

5. New York Times: 50 States, 50 Fixes

OKR Local Spotlights

🚗 1.0 – Electrify Transportation

Amping Up Adoption⚡: EVAuto, a Utah-based dealership founded by entrepreneur Alex Lawrence, exclusively sells used electric vehicles, offering a cleaner alternative to traditional car buying while helping reduce emissions and extend the life of EVs. Lawrence helps customers navigate range anxiety and charging access, encouraging more people to consider EVs as a practical, everyday solution for greener transportation.

Why it matters: EVAuto’s focus on educating prospective EV-buyers and building trust helps give more consumers the confidence to switch from gas-powered cars to EVs and serves as a successful model for other dealers looking to enter the used EV market.

Source: Business Insider

   💡 2.0 – Decarbonize the Grid

Cool Schools, Hot Savings🧊: The City School District of New Rochelle used Logical Buildings‘ SmartKit AI to cut nearly a megawatt of electricity across 10 schools during peak demand hours—equivalent to taking 1,000 homes off the grid—with simple changes like adjusting cooling schedules and temperature setpoints. The effort earned the district more than $70,000 to reinvest in its students–and inspired those students to lead community outreach for others to do the same.

Why it matters: As New York’s first school district to adopt this smart energy strategy, New Rochelle is modeling how simple, tech-enabled actions can help schools and offices cut carbon, reduce costs, and reinvest savings into communities—critical steps toward net zero, since buildings account for nearly 40 percent of global CO₂ emissions.

🐄 3.0 – Fix Food

No Scrap Left Behind🍌: In 2010, entrepreneur Eric Walter founded Black Bear Composting in Crozet, Va., without knowing much about composting. By defraying the costs of on-site compost production with sales of finished compost to consumers, he grew the business from a small startup into a leading organics recycling partner for hundreds of local households, businesses, and the University of Virginia. Today, Black Bear Composting diverts an average of 2,000 tons of food waste from landfills each year, with UVA accounting for 25 percent of that total. Eric takes pride in educating hundreds of students annually through on-site tours and presentations, and donates finished compost to school systems across the region for use in their gardens.

Why it matters: You don’t need to be an expert to help scale your community’s composting efforts, whether it’s by starting a composting business, getting involved in waste minimization, or accelerating initiatives already underway.

Source: UVA Sustainability Blog

🌳 4.0 – Protect Nature

From Surf to Stewardship 🤙: Surfers are deeply connected to the ocean. They witness firsthand the growing threat of climate change—and often lead efforts to protect local ecosystems. In Dakar, Senegal, surfer Babacar Thiaw turned his concern into action by founding the Copacabana Surf Village, a surf shop, zero-waste restaurant, and community hub that conducts beach clean-ups and youth surf camps. Bali’s Sungai Watch, a nonprofit founded in 2020 by three surfers, has diverted over five million pounds of plastic from rivers. These efforts are part of a rising global movement to safeguard beloved surf breaks and ocean health through stewardship, innovation, and policy change.

Why it matters: Climate change is already affecting surf conditions, from rising sea levels to polluted breaks and dying coral reefs.These surfers are translating their passion for their hobby into positive action for the environment, making waves of impact that ripple far beyond the shoreline.

Source: Conde Nast Traveler

🧱 5.0 – Clean Up Industry

Breaking Bottles, Building Change🍷: Frustrated by the lack of glass recycling in the Big Easy, two college seniors in New Orleans launched their own grassroots recycling program. With strong community support, they scaled their operation to divert tens of thousands of pounds of glass each week. The recycled glass is turned into sand for coastal restoration, disaster relief, flooring, and even new glass products.

Why it matters: This initiative shows the importance of individuals stepping up in the absence of government action. It proves that grassroots activism not only fills critical gaps, but also drives meaningful progress on climate and environmental resilience.

Source: Glass Half Full

🧹 6.0 – Remove Carbon

Now Brewing…CO2 Removal☕: In Colombia’s coffee-growing heartland, a community-led carbon removal solution is taking root. Climate tech company Planboo launched The Coffee Biochar Project to equip small-scale farmers to turn pruned coffee waste into biochar, a carbon-rich soil enhancer that locks away CO2 for centuries. Through hands-on training and Planboo’s real-time measurement, reporting, and verification (MRV) technology, farmers transform agricultural waste into high-quality carbon removal credits while boosting soil health and earning new income. In just under a year since its launch, the project has already engaged about 300 farms and sold its first 1,500 carbon removal credits. By 2029, it hopes to scale to 20,000 farmers and remove 100,000 tons of CO2.

Why it matters: In addition to helping to sequester carbon, the project generates revenue from carbon credits and provides farmers with cash stipends while allowing them to keep the biochar for their own land. This is the virtuous cycle of climate adaptation in action: investing in coffee farmers (OKR 10.4) supports soil health (OKR 3.1) and builds resilience in a region hit hard by climate change (OKR 4.0).

🏛️ 7.0 – Win Politics And Policy

The Windy City’s Power Shift🍃: Chicago has flipped the switch on one of the largest municipal renewable energy transitions in U.S. history. It takes approximately 700,000 megawatt hours of electricity to power the city’s 400-plus public buildings. As of January 1, every one of them now runs on 100 percent clean energy. This was made possible by the city’s landmark deal for the largest solar installation east of the Mississippi River—the 3,800-acre, 593-megawatt, Double Black Diamond solar farm. Almost a decade in the making, the project sets the stage for a citywide clean energy transition by 2035 by cutting an estimated 290,000 metric tons of CO2 per year, the equivalent of taking 62,000 cars off the road.

Why it matters: Chicago’s clean energy milestone proves that local governments can wield serious climate influence—even when federal policy may falter—by using their purchasing power to shift markets, slash emissions, and spark equitable economic growth.

🏃 8.0 – Turn Movements Into Action

Solar in a Soda Bottle🥤: Born in Brazil, Liter of Light is an organization bringing solar-powered street lights, lanterns, and fixed indoor systems to communities lacking reliable energy access. Using ultra-affordable, DIY technology made from PET bottles, LED circuits, and solar panels, Liter of Light has helped illuminate over 30 countries, reaching 1.5 million people. The products are built by community women and youth, helping to empower local communities by boosting safety, health, education, and economic activity.

Why it matters: With over 600 million people still living without electricity, Liter of Light transforms waste into light. It replaces traditional kerosene lamps with safe, solar-powered solutions built by the community, for the community. It cuts CO2 emissions, reduces fire risk and respiratory illness, and sparks a grassroots circular economy movement.

🌟 Fun fact: Liter of Light holds the Guinness World Record for the largest solar power light bulb display! Students at the Al-Futtaim Education Foundation created 3,000 solar lights for the display.

Source: Liter of Light

⚡ 9.0 – Innovate!

Forecasting the Future with Teen Tech🌊: A group of North Carolina high school students is redefining climate resilience with FloodGate, an AI-powered tool designed to forecast floods more quickly, cheaply, and accurately, even in underserved or remote regions. Motivated by personal experiences with flood disasters, the team of students built a system that uses real-time satellite data to bypass the limitations of traditional models—no costly gauges or dense datasets required. FloodGate has already won The Earth Prize, the world’s largest environmental competition for teens, and the students now aim to create an app that predicts floods for global regions and can warn users at risk.

Why it matters: FloodGate demonstrates how bold innovation—sparked by lived experience and powered by AI—can revolutionize climate disaster predictions. The technology has the potential to transform emergency preparedness for the 1.8 billion people worldwide at risk of climate-driven flooding.

💰 10.0 – Invest!

Solar-Powered Sisterhood☀️: Solar Sister is an NGO proving that investing in women’s economic empowerment can supercharge climate progress. The organization has trained over 10,000 women entrepreneurs across Africa who deliver clean cookstoves and solar products to their communities. These women have reached more than 4.3 million people, generated over $300 million in economic benefit, and helped avert more than 1.4 million metric tons of CO2 emissions—all while boosting their communities’ income, health, education, and agency.

Why it matters: Small investments can spark a chain reaction. Each woman in Solar Sister becomes an engine of local investment, unlocking change at scale by spreading climate solutions, economic opportunity, and empowerment into underserved communities.

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