People have returned from summer travel and school has started. With everyone home, September is often the busiest climate month of the year! We found 25 events so far, and we’ll be keeping you up to date with our 📅 Live Calendar 📅.

Events This Month

• 🔋 Webinar: Solar Energy: Basics to Batteries: Sep 1, Tue Online

• 🧱 Building Community Energy Resilience in Boulder: A Small Business Case Study: Sep 3, Thu Online

• 🌻 Public Tour at Jack’s Solar Garden: Sep 5, Sat in Longmont

• ⚡️ 2026 PowerUp International Power Systems Conference: Sep 9 to Sep 11 in Boulder

• 👩‍🌾 Crestone Energy Fair: Sep 11, Fri in Crestone

• 💧 Green Drinks & Trees Water and People Parking Lot Party: Sep 11, Fri in Fort Collins

• 🤝 Cleantech Investor Office Hours at Future of Energy Day: Sep 14, Mon in Denver

• 🎂 Colorado Cleantech’s 18th Birthday Celebration: Sep 14, Mon in Denver

• 🍺 Building Science (BS) & Beer Denver Metro: Sep 15, Tue in Denver

• 🍷 Wine Tasting & Free Headshots: Sep 15, Tue in Arvada

• ⚡️ Sparking Connections: Volts & Vino Tickets: Sep 16, Wed in Arvada

• 🔌 SoCo Charging Meet-Up: Sep 17, Thu in Pueblo

• 🏆 2026 Colorado Green Business Network Recognition: Sep 18, Fri in Denver

• 🌻 Public Tour at Jack’s Solar Garden: Sep 19, Sat in Longmont

• 🏡 CGBG’s 10th Annual Green Home Tour: Sep 19, Sat

• 🚘 Montbello ALive - Ride and Drive: Sep 19, Sat in Denver

• 👋 NoCo Climate Meet-up: Sep 19, Sat in Fort Collins

• ✈️ New York Climate Week: Sep 20 to Sep 27 in NY

• 🧘‍♀️ WRISE CO Yoga and Happy Hour: Sep 20, Sun in Boulder

• 🗺️ Southwest Power Pool Western Expansion: Progress Update: Sep 22, Tue Online

• 📊 Set Energy Data Free! : Sep 24, Thu in Golden

• 🚗 United Power’s 2nd Annual EV Showcase: Sep 26, Sat in Longmont

• 3️⃣0️⃣ CRES 30th Anniversary Celebration: Sep 27, Sun in Lakewood

• 🎤 E Source Forum: Sep 29 to Oct 1 in Denver

• 📈 Ascend Summit 2026: Sep 30 to Oct 2 in Boulder

Read on for more details about this month’s upcoming events.

Sneak Peak at the Following Month

• ✊ ECOR Summit for Action: Oct 1 to Oct 2 in Denver

• 🌻 Public Tour at Jack’s Solar Garden: Oct 3 + Oct 17, Sat in Longmont

• 🍺 Building Science (BS) & Beer Denver Metro: Oct 20, Tue in Denver

• 🎤 Switch Colorado - Boulder: Oct 29, Thu in Boulder

There will be more! These are just a few that I know about if you like to plan ahead.

Submit an Event

Know an upcoming event that we should include? Submit it here.

Climate News in CO

Something a bit fluffier this week. SPOILER ALERT Fat Marmot Week just ended.

And less fun, Colorado’s coal troubles are expected to continue until 2028. Good ole’ reliable coal power has not been so reliable at Comanche 3, Xcel’s newest coal plant.

Colorado Spotlight

In case you missed it, check out our latest spotlight.

Event Details

Webinar: Solar Energy: Basics to Batteries

🕔 WHEN: Tuesday, September 1, 2026 from 1:00 PM to 12:00 PM

📍WHERE: Virtual

Solar technology is changing all the time, and it can be hard to keep up. Join a free solar energy webinar with a panel of experts from Solar United Neighbors (SUN), the Colorado Renewable Energy Society (CRES), and Clean Energy Credit Union as they demystify what you need to know to add solar panels to your home, what to consider when comparing battery storage options, how plug-in solar works for renters, and how to finance the solar setup that fits your budget. Whether you are just starting to research home solar or you are ready to install, this session will help you take the next step with confidence

Building Community Energy Resilience in Boulder: A Small Business Case Study

🕔 WHEN: Thursday, September 3, 2026 from 6:30 PM to 8:30 PM

📍WHERE: Virtual

Boulder County has been rated among the least energy resilience-prepared counties in the state according to a recent national study. Solar-plus-storage deployment as a complement to other energy efficiency measures represents a pivotal strategy for enhancing community energy resilience while offsetting rising grid instability and utility costs.

Public Tour at Jack’s Solar Garden

🕔 WHEN: Saturday, September 5, 2026 from 10:00 AM to 11:30 AM

📍WHERE: Jack’s Solar Garden, Longmont, CO

Join a guide from the Colorado Agrivoltaic Learning Center on an interpretive tour of Jack's Solar Garden, the premier agrivoltaic research site in the nation. During this family friendly tour, attendees will be introduced to agrivoltaics, the combination of solar and agriculture, and learn about its potential benefits to farmers, biodiversity and local communities. Attendees will walk among solar panels and observe different plots dedicated to agrivoltaic research. When you leave we hope you have an understanding of the benefits of agrivoltaics and become an advocate for agrivoltaic practices. The money from your admission ticket directly funds us bringing local students to Jack's Solar Garden so that we can introduce our next generations to clean energy, local food and sustainable land-use practices. So, thank you!

2026 PowerUp International Power Systems Conference

🕔 WHEN: Wednesday, September 9, 2026 thru Sep 11

📍WHERE: UC Boulder Sustainability, Energy, and Environment Community (SEEC)

Join us for the first biannual PowerUp conference in Boulder, Colorado, nestled in the beautiful Rocky Mountains. This conference offers a single-track format, focusing on novel, breakthrough topics in the field of power systems. We offer a fully transparent, high-quality paper review process, with double-blind submissions and publicly displayed reviews of accepted papers.

Crestone Energy Fair

🕔 WHEN: Friday, September 11, 2026 from 12:00 AM to 12:00 AM

📍WHERE: Crestone Town Park, Crestone, CO

Founded in 1990, The Crestone Energy Fair is a non-profit organization that provides education in regenerative ways of living by sharing skills, ideas, and experiences rooted in land, building, and community. We approach energy as something that flows through our homes, ecosystems, and relationships, and we aim to support practices that sustain both people and place over the long haul.

Green Drinks & Trees Water and People Parking Lot Party

🕔 WHEN: Friday, September 11, 2026 from 5:30 PM to 8:30 PM

📍WHERE: Fort Collins, CO

​Join Trees, Water & People and Green Drinks NoCo for a night of community, culture, and love for our environment. Come to our Parking Lot Party to bond over a mutual dedication to safeguarding the planet, while enjoying food from local vendors, drinks, and a special cultural presentation. Thank you to Compost Queen for sponsoring the food from Colorado Room and providing compost service at this event! More details coming soon at twp.org/twp-fiesta.

Cleantech Investor Office Hours at Future of Energy Day

🕔 WHEN: Monday, September 14, 2026 from 12:00 AM to 12:00 AM

📍WHERE: Denver, CO

Join Colorado Cleantech for Future of Energy Day at Colorado Startup Week on Monday, September 14 in Denver, where seed and pre-seed cleantech founders will have the opportunity to connect directly with investors through investor office hours and speed networking.

Colorado Cleantech’s 18th Birthday Celebration

🕔 WHEN: Monday, September 14, 2026 from 4:30 PM to 4:30 PM

📍WHERE: INDUSTRY RiNo Station, Denver, CO

​For nearly two decades, Colorado Cleantech has worked to connect innovators, industry leaders, investors and partners to help grow Colorado's cleantech ecosystem. We're excited to celebrate how far this community has come — and look ahead to what's next.

Building Science (BS) & Beer Denver Metro

🕔 WHEN: Tuesday, September 15, 2026 from 5:00 PM to 8:00 PM

📍WHERE: Tradecraft Industries, Denver, CO

A casual conversation about building science

Wine Tasting & Free Headshots

🕔 WHEN: Tuesday, September 15, 2026 from 5:00 PM to 7:30 PM

📍WHERE: Silver Vines Winery - Arvada, Arvada, CO

Join WRISE and WEN (Women's Energy Network) at Silver Vines Winery in Olde Town Arvada for a complimentary glass of wine, light appetizers, and an opportunity to participate in an on-site professional headshot photo session. The headshot photo session is free of charge for participants.

Sparking Connections: Volts & Vino Tickets

🕔 WHEN: Wednesday, September 16, 2026 from 5:30 PM to 5:30 PM

📍WHERE: Silver Vines Winery - Arvada, Arvada, CO

Join us for an evening of networking with women and allies working across clean transportation, energy, charging infrastructure, and mobility. It’s a chance to meet new people, reconnect with colleagues, and build relationships across Colorado’s growing electrification ecosystem.

SoCo Charging Meet-Up

🕔 WHEN: Thursday, September 17, 2026 from 3:00 PM to 6:00 PM

📍WHERE: See event page for details

Whether you’re EV-curious or already driving electric, there’s something for everyone! This meet-up is a great opportunity to enjoy free food, connect with experts, explore charging solutions, and get your charging questions answered.

2026 Colorado Green Business Network Recognition

🕔 WHEN: Friday, September 18, 2026 from 9:00 AM to 12:00 PM

📍WHERE: Denver Zoo, Denver, CO

Join us at the Denver Zoo’s Zoo Gardens Pavilion and Plaza as we recognize and celebrate our 2026 Colorado Green Business Network (CGBN) Certified Members! This year’s event honors not only those who have earned certification, but also the many businesses, organizations, and partners—whether certified or not, members or not—who are taking steps toward sustainability and supporting this work at the local, state, and federal levels.

Public Tour at Jack’s Solar Garden

🕔 WHEN: Saturday, September 19, 2026 from 10:00 AM to 11:30 AM

📍WHERE: Jack’s Solar Garden, Longmont, CO

Join a guide from the Colorado Agrivoltaic Learning Center on an interpretive tour of Jack's Solar Garden, the premier agrivoltaic research site in the nation. During this family friendly tour, attendees will be introduced to agrivoltaics, the combination of solar and agriculture, and learn about its potential benefits to farmers, biodiversity and local communities. Attendees will walk among solar panels and observe different plots dedicated to agrivoltaic research. When you leave we hope you have an understanding of the benefits of agrivoltaics and become an advocate for agrivoltaic practices. The money from your admission ticket directly funds us bringing local students to Jack's Solar Garden so that we can introduce our next generations to clean energy, local food and sustainable land-use practices. So, thank you!

CGBG’s 10th Annual Green Home Tour

🕔 WHEN: Saturday, September 19, 2026 from 10:00 AM to 7:00 PM

📍WHERE: See event page for details

The Green Home Tour is a self-guided experience spanning homes in Boulder, Denver, and Fort Collins. 
Each home is selected for its exemplary approach to sustainability, performance, and design, and each tells a story about the people who built it and the choices that make it exceptional. 
The event is open to curious homeowners, design enthusiasts, and building professionals alike, offering inspiration and practical insights.

Montbello ALive - Ride and Drive

🕔 WHEN: Saturday, September 19, 2026 from 11:00 AM to 11:00 AM

📍WHERE: Parkfield Lake Park, Denver, CO

The Montbello Alive EV Ride & Drive, hosted by Women Who Charge in partnership with the Colorado Branch of EVA, will give community members an opportunity to experience electric vehicles firsthand in a fun, family-friendly setting.

NoCo Climate Meet-up

🕔 WHEN: Saturday, September 19, 2026 from 1:00 PM to 5:00 PM

📍WHERE: Edora Park, Fort Collins, CO

Bring a friend or two to come meet your local climate organizations and activists and find out more about the climate crisis and how you can help!

New York Climate Week

🕔 WHEN: Sunday, September 20, 2026 thru Sep 27

📍WHERE: New York City

Good to be aware as many people may be traveling for this

WRISE CO Yoga and Happy Hour

🕔 WHEN: Sunday, September 20, 2026 from 4:00 PM to 6:00 PM

📍WHERE: Boulder, CO

Join WRISE for an evening of yoga and connection. A 1-hour all-levels class will be held at Yoga Pod, with apps/drinks after!

Southwest Power Pool Western Expansion: Progress Update

🕔 WHEN: Tuesday, September 22, 2026 from 6:00 PM to 7:30 PM

📍WHERE: Virtual

We'll be joined by Steve Johnson, Senior Director, Markets Administration, of the Southwest Power Pool (SPP), to receive an update on their western expansion via their RTO and Markets + initiatives. Colorado Utilities are required by law to join an organized wholesale market by 2030, which should enhance efficiencies, lower wholesale energy costs, and provide for coordinated transmission development. It should also help better integrate renewable energy resources. Join us to learn how the market has worked as it has moved from the initial energy imbalance market to a full wholesale market (RTO) and what the future holds.

Set Energy Data Free!

🕔 WHEN: Thursday, September 24, 2026 from 7:00 PM to 9:00 PM

📍WHERE: Jefferson Unitarian Church, Golden, CO

The state of public energy data is a mess – utilities like it that way, and government isn't exactly helping. If you're trying to understand the US energy system, you're going to have a hell of a time stitching together information from disparate sources, paying exorbitant amounts for data, or getting trapped in endless FOIA requests. Making this information more accessible allows us to hold utilities accountable for decisions and assumptions that shape our energy system—from the continued operation of fossil fuel plants to the underestimation of renewable energy potential. Utilities operate as a black box, and it's time for transparency.

United Power’s 2nd Annual EV Showcase

🕔 WHEN: Saturday, September 26, 2026 from 9:00 AM to 11:00 AM

📍WHERE: United Power, Longmont, CO

Explore some of the newest electric vehicles, meet EV owners, and learn about the benefits of driving electric. Test drives will be available on select EV models, and attendees can tour United Power’s innovative battery energy storage facility located on-site. Whether you’re considering your first EV or already own one, this event is a great opportunity to ask questions and experience the latest in electric transportation.

CRES 30th Anniversary Celebration

🕔 WHEN: Sunday, September 27, 2026 from 1:00 PM to 6:00 PM

📍WHERE: The Retreat at Solterra, Lakewood, CO

Celebrate 30 years of renewable energy advocacy and education with the Colorado Renewable Energy Society! Join us on 9/27 at Solterra!

E Source Forum

🕔 WHEN: Tuesday, September 29, 2026 thru Oct 1

📍WHERE: Sheraton Denver Downtown Hotel, Denver, CO

For more than 35 years, E Source Forum has facilitated learning, networking, and collaboration among utility professionals from across the US and Canada. Our agenda features topics that matter to you, with thought-provoking keynote speakers, market research and data-driven content, customer panels, and insights from your utility peers. In recent years we’ve hosted more than 500 utility professionals over the course of three days in downtown Denver.

Ascend Summit 2026

🕔 WHEN: Wednesday, September 30, 2026 thru Oct 2

📍WHERE: Limelight Boulder, Boulder, CO

The pace of structural change in the power sector has accelerated—driven by surging load growth, data center demand, market volatility, and the need for clean, reliable, and cost-effective electricity. The Ascend Summit convenes more than 350 industry leaders to explore how to create long-term value and resilience in a rapidly evolving energy development and procurement landscape.

Want to make sure you don’t miss anything? There are a few ways to stay in the loop.

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For now, I hope you will share this with a friend. Or better yet, attend a local upcoming event!

Cheers,
William Greenbohl

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He is also Executive in Residence and adjunct professor at CU, where he co-leads Boulder Climate Ventures that helps spin clean tech out of the university.

In this conversation, Trent discusses why the U.S. grid finally has a clear demand signal for long-duration storage, the “missing middle” of climate finance, and what twenty years of building, investing, and teaching has taught him about which levers actually move climate outcomes.

Hannah Davis conducted this interview on May 1st, 2026. It has been edited for length and clarity. Since conducting the interview, Trent has moved to California, but we wanted to include in our spotlight since he has been such a big part of the Colorado climate ecosystem for so long.

How did you first get into climate work?

I actually learned about climate change at MIT. I went there for grad school in 2000, and about a semester in, I discovered this program called Technology Management and Policy which is a third MBA, a third public policy, a third engineering. A lot of my friends were in it, so I looked into it more. One of the things they were doing at the time, and I think the only program in the world doing it, was integrating an economic model with a climate model to look at how climate change would affect economies. I’d never heard the words “climate” and “change” together before. It was eye-opening. I ended up writing my thesis there, and it became the first chapter of the first European compendium on climate change.

You grew up in Boulder, left for MIT, and have spent most of your career in Colorado since. A lot of people with your résumé would have stayed in Boston or moved to San Francisco. Why come back?

My family moved to Boulder when I was in third grade, so I grew up here. I went to Fairview, then CU for undergrad. In addition to MIT, I spent ten years on the East Coast: Boston, DC, back to Boston. I came back at the end of 2009 mostly for family reasons, but it turned out to be exactly the right moment. This was the tail end of Cleantech 1.0, and Colorado’s ecosystem was just taking shape. The Colorado Cleantech Industry Association had been set up a year earlier. The Renewable And Sustainable Energy Institute (RASEI) that connected the three research universities and NREL was just starting. There was a lot to build, and it was a great time to be part of it.

One of the first things you did when you came back was build a clean tech commercialization program out of CU. Tell me about that work.

When I came back I was still running my first startup, a water technology company I’d started in Boston, but I wanted to plug into the community here. So I joined the business school and the Deming Center as executive in residence and helped build a cross-campus commercialization program that pulled together the business school, the tech transfer office, and the engineering school. CU’s tech transfer office is doing extraordinary things now. It’s ranked number one in the country last year for spinouts, but a lot of that infrastructure was laid in the late 2000s. Dave Allen was the director then, and Bryn Reese was working in the office with him. We ran the program for two and a half years, then folded it into RASEI. It was a great experience, and in many ways it was an early prototype of what Boulder Climate Ventures is doing today.

Now you’re the CFO at Energy Dome. For people who haven’t heard of it, what does the company do, and why did you take the role?

In my twenty years in this space, the one thing I’ve learned investing in and starting companies is that nothing beats market demand. For a long time, a lot of climate tech has been solutions looking for markets. We think this is the right thing to do, but there’s no clear market signal. That’s why this space is hard. You need policy to come in and drive demand.

What’s happening right now, finally, is that the extraordinary energy demand in the U.S. is producing very clear market signals in the power markets. And within power, I’m a huge believer that storage will play an ever-expanding role. Particularly storage that provides capacity for the grid. The U.S. grid is vastly underutilized. On any given day we’re only using 40 to 50 percent of the power the grid could produce, because it’s built for one or two random peak days. With this surge in demand and a focus on affordability, utilities are saying: the best thing to do is to utilize the power that’s already on our grid. For the first time ever, we have a real demand signal for long-duration energy storage.

That’s the market Energy Dome squarely plays in. Some people might take a little offense to this, but I’ll be bold: Energy Dome is the only non-lithium-ion solution that’s fully commercially deployed and proven, that’s eight-plus hours, can be deployed anywhere, cost-competitive with lithium ion, and does not require a Chinese supply chain. We’re getting pulled into the market by hyperscalers and utilities looking for exactly this solution. I joined because we need this solution in the market, and because I think we have a chance to build a very significant company in the next three to five years.

Energy Dome is headquartered in Milan as an Italian company. I’ve known the founding team for a dozen years, since their prior company, which is another reason I joined. It’s so hard to build and scale hard tech in this space, and these guys have done it before. We currently have an office in Boston, and we’re about to open another one in Boulder.

You’re also co-leading Boulder Climate Ventures at CU. Tell me about it.

Boulder Climate Ventures is modeled after the Stanford and MIT climate ventures classes that have been running for over a decade. The focus is helping students start venture-backable companies out of the university, focused on climate. We’re backed by Breakthrough Energy, which funds both Stanford and MIT. Last year they decided to expand the program, and CU was selected as one of the additional universities, the first public one. The timing was perfect for me. I’d just negotiated my exit from Galway and was in Europe with my family when CU called. I actually missed their emails and phone calls for a whole month. After we finally connected in July, we kicked off in September. Wednesdays have become my favorite day of the week.

Year one was 100 percent backed by Breakthrough, and because it was the first year, we ran everything as non-credit. We didn’t know what to expect, and we were amazed by the demand. In the fall, we had 80 to 100 people coming to our seminars every week, two- to three-hour sessions on specific topics from nuclear to adaptation to power demand. In the spring, I co-led a full class with Mike Magee helping students develop their own ventures. Even non-credit, we had 30 students and six teams formed, many of which I expect will keep going. The class is renewed for next year.

You’ve been a founder, an investor, and now an operator at a scaling hardware company. What have you learned about which levers actually move climate outcomes?

My number one lesson to the Boulder Climate Ventures students is: figure out who’s going to buy your solution. It’s the number one thing for any business, but it bears repeating in climate because the field is full of solutions in search of a market. Climate touches almost every industry, so there are a lot of ways to have an impact. But if you want to do it from a business perspective, it’s not enough that something makes sense from a climate perspective. It has to make sense from a market demand perspective. The climate companies that have been successful, which unfortunately hasn’t been that many beyond solar, wind, and storage developers, are successful because they’re putting out solutions where there’s real demand.

Governments can play a huge role in getting solutions into the market faster, particularly because climate startups tend to be hard tech and capital-intensive. Government financing support is invaluable. But the best companies build their businesses without depending on it.

At Galway you helped raise nearly $700 million in four years to address what you call the “missing middle” of climate finance. What is the missing middle, and what did you learn deploying that capital?

The missing middle is early commercialization capital, the first $10 to $50 to $100 million of capital deployment for capex-intensive projects. Ironically, if you don’t need hundreds of millions of dollars, it’s actually harder to raise. Our traditional infrastructure capital markets are all large-scale. The infrastructure funds deploying capital into the market are at minimum several billion dollars in size, and many are tens of billions. They don’t roll out of bed for anything smaller than what we were doing.

Generate Capital was the pioneer of cross-technology missing-middle investing, and as all good companies do, we stood on the shoulders of others. Galway was, if you will, the next version of Generate. And it’s hard work. You’re playing in a space where you still have venture risk, but you’re trying to deploy capital with mid-teens returns. How you do that in a way that’s thoughtful, risk-adjusted, downside-protected, but still useful capital in the market, is something everyone in the space, including Generate which is now billions of dollars in, is still learning. We need more capital, and we need more collaboration between venture investors, transition investors, and infrastructure investors. There’s a lot more of that today than there was even five years ago, but very few people have seen the full progression.

What climate solutions are you most excited about right now, beyond what you’re doing at Energy Dome?

I’ll give you the obvious answer and then a not-so-obvious one. The obvious answer is AI and data center capex. It’s driving such a huge part of investment and economic growth that it’s impossible to do anything in climate without thinking about how to participate. I think it was Apollo that published a study at the beginning of this year looking at where U.S. GDP growth is going to come from, and it was basically 50 percent AI data center capex and 50 percent top-decile consumer spending. That’s it. So every climate company even adjacent to AI is trying to figure out their angle. SPAN just announced a solution that lets homeowners route their power for compute. Virtual power plants are getting interesting. A company that came out of Boulder Climate Ventures this year is working on small containerized data centers that partner with residential and commercial sites. Lots of capital and innovation will come out of that space.

The less obvious answer is recycling and circular economy. There’s clear market interest from government, corporates, and the climate perspective, and you’ll keep seeing interesting business models emerge. Here in Colorado, we have AMP Robotics and a number of other recycling companies coming up.

Is there something climate or sustainability-related that you do outside of work that you’re passionate about?

A couple of things. First, being in Colorado, there’s so much great outdoor activity, and the amazing thing about the climate community is that climate people are naturally outdoorsy people. So skiing, biking, hiking is a great way to connect with others in the field.

The other is that I’m on the board of my kids’ school. A lot of us are at the age where we have young kids, and I’ve found it really rewarding to understand how schools work, how to make them sustainable, and how the various stakeholders are involved. From a macro perspective, there are huge changes coming in education, demographic, technological, pedagogical. If anyone reading this is interested in that area, schools and school districts can really use people from outside traditional education backgrounds.

To learn more about Energy Dome’s CO2 battery technology and grid-scale storage platform, visit energydome.com. To learn more about Boulder Climate Ventures at CU’s Deming Center, or to get involved as a mentor, investor, or seminar attendee, visit their website.

Follow Trent on LinkedIn.

The weather is still hot, and so are the climate events. We found 19 events so far (plus a few late July ones this week), and we’ll be keeping you up to date with our 📅 Live Calendar 📅.

Events This Month

• 🌲 Nature x Solutions - Denver Happy Hour: Jul 29, Wed in Edgewater

• 🥾 New Energy Economic Opportunity Bootcamp: Jul 30, Thu in Boulder

• 🥗 WRISE Lunch n Learn: Building a Sustainable Future: Jul 30, Thu in Denver

• 🔌 State of Charge 2026: Jul 31 to Aug 1 in Golden

• 💨 Colorado Heat Pump Week 2026: Aug 1 to Aug 8

• 🔌 EV Charging Meet-Up: Aug 6, Thu in Brighton

• ♻️ Women in Waste Happy Hour: Aug 6, Thu in Denver

• 🌻 Public Tour at Jack’s Solar Garden: Aug 8, Sat in Longmont

• 👩‍🌾 WRISE Colorado x Denver Botanic Gardens at Chatfield Farms: Aug 11, Tue in Littleton

• 🔌 CGBG Happy Hour: Aug 13, Thu in Arvada

• 🔘 NSS 3rd Annual Conference: Aug 17 to Aug 19 in Denver

• 🍺 Building Science (BS) & Beer Denver Metro: Aug 18, Tue in Denver

• 🍻 Boulder Climate HappyHour: Aug 19, Wed in Boulder

• 🌲 Nature x Solutions - Boulder Happy Hour: Aug 19, Wed in Boulder

• 🍸 WRISE Networking, cocktail hour & game night at Scout Clean Energy!: Aug 20, Thu in Boulder

• ↔️ An Alternative Approach to Colorado Policy for Data Centers: Aug 20, Thu in Denver

• 🌵 City of Boulder 2026 Climate Resilient Landscape Showcase: Aug 22, Sat in Boulder

• 🌻 Public Tour at Jack’s Solar Garden: Aug 22, Sat in Longmont

• 🏃 Rebel Run 5k: Aug 23, Sun in Denver

• 🔌 Fleet-Con 2026: Aug 24 to Aug 26 in Loveland

• 🍻 Denver Green Drinks August Meetup: Aug 26, Wed in Denver

• ⛳️ 2026 COSSA Topgolf Networking Event: Aug 27, Thu in Thornton

• ✈️ Airports’ Next Frontier: Decarbonization & Electrification: Aug 27, Thu in Golden

Read on for more details about this month’s upcoming events.

Sneak Peak at the Following Month

• 🌻 Public Tour at Jack’s Solar Garden: Sep 5, Sat in Longmont

• 🍺 Building Science (BS) & Beer Denver Metro: Sep 15, Tue in Denver

• 🔌 SoCo Charging Meet-Up: Sep 17, Thu in Pueblo

• 🌻 Public Tour at Jack’s Solar Garden: Sep 19, Sat in Longmont

• 🗺️ Southwest Power Pool Western Expansion: Progress Update: Sep 22, Tue online

• 3️⃣0️⃣ CRES 30th Anniversary Celebration: Sep 27, Sun in Lakewood

There will be more! These are just a few that I know about if you like to plan ahead.

Submit an Event

Know an upcoming event that we should include? Submit it here.

Climate News in CO

Even MORE heat pump rebates if you live in Denver. There has never been more financial support for heat pumps in Colorado, so now’s the time to switch! One of the first major initiatives from the Power Ahead Colorado program is Colorado’s Heat Pump Week - Starts on August 1, 2026.

Colorado Spotlight

In case you missed it, check out our latest spotlight.

Event Details

Colorado Heat Pump Week 2026

🕔 WHEN: Saturday, August 1, 2026 thru Aug 8

📍WHERE: See event page for details

Heat pumps are for heating and cooling! To raise awareness about heat pumps and their benefits, Power Ahead Colorado is sponsoring the first ever Colorado Heat Pump Week from August 1-8, 2026. 
Colorado Heat Pump Week will celebrate and engage homeowners, contractors, local experts and heat pump enthusiasts through events, resources and activations.

EV Charging Meet-Up

🕔 WHEN: Thursday, August 6, 2026 from 8:45 AM to 10:30 AM

📍WHERE: Adams County Conference Center, Brighton, CO

Join us for an EV Charging Meet-Up on Thursday, August 6th, 2026, at the Adams County Conference Center in room Platte River C. This interactive session will bring together charging experts, local leaders, and industry partners to share best practices for EV charging deployment. This event is made possible by our Champion Members at Xcel Energy and our local Stakeholder, Adams County. Registration is required for this event.

Women in Waste Happy Hour

🕔 WHEN: Thursday, August 6, 2026 from 5:30 PM to 7:30 PM

📍WHERE: Odell Brewing Sloan’s Lake Brewhouse & Pizzeria, Denver, CO

​Whether you’re in the field, behind the scenes, or leading the charge, this is your space to step away from the day-to-day and build meaningful connections with others who understand your work. Expect relaxed conversation, new introductions, and a chance to expand your network in a supportive, no-pressure environment. 

Public Tour at Jack’s Solar Garden

🕔 WHEN: Saturday, August 8, 2026 from 10:00 AM to 11:30 AM

📍WHERE: Jack’s Solar Garden, Longmont, CO

Join a guide from the Colorado Agrivoltaic Learning Center on an interpretive tour of Jack's Solar Garden, the premier agrivoltaic research site in the nation. During this family friendly tour, attendees will be introduced to agrivoltaics, the combination of solar and agriculture, and learn about its potential benefits to farmers, biodiversity and local communities. Attendees will walk among solar panels and observe different plots dedicated to agrivoltaic research. When you leave we hope you have an understanding of the benefits of agrivoltaics and become an advocate for agrivoltaic practices. The money from your admission ticket directly funds us bringing local students to Jack's Solar Garden so that we can introduce our next generations to clean energy, local food and sustainable land-use practices. So, thank you!

WRISE Colorado x Denver Botanic Gardens at Chatfield Farms

🕔 WHEN: Tuesday, August 11, 2026 from 3:00 PM to 6:00 PM

📍WHERE: Denver Botanic Gardens Chatfield Farms, Littleton, CO

Begin the evening with a guided tour of the Chatfield Farms solar array and pollinator gardens, led by experts from Denver Botanic Gardens and McKinstry, the team behind the design and construction of the solar installation. Learn how clean energy and habitat restoration can work hand-in-hand to support a more sustainable future.

CGBG Happy Hour

🕔 WHEN: Thursday, August 13, 2026 from 6:00 PM to 9:00 PM

📍WHERE: Hilton Garden Inn Arvada Denver, Arvada, CO

Join us for a free Passive House get together event in Collaboration with CGBG. Meet like-minded people, and expand your professional circle.

Network, talk shop about Passive House and building science, and have fun!

NSS 3rd Annual Conference

🕔 WHEN: Monday, August 17, 2026 thru Aug 19

📍WHERE: CSU Spur, Denver, CO

National Sustainability Society's 3rd Annual Conference held at CSU Spur in Denver in partnership with the School for Sustainable Futures (formerly School of Global Environmental Sustainability) and the CSU Climate Hub

Building Science (BS) & Beer Denver Metro

🕔 WHEN: Tuesday, August 18, 2026 from 5:00 PM to 8:00 PM

📍WHERE: Tradecraft Industries, Denver, CO

A casual conversation about building science

Boulder Climate HappyHour

🕔 WHEN: Wednesday, August 19, 2026 from 5:30 PM to 7:30 PM

📍WHERE: Rayback Collective, Boulder, CO

Boulder is full of interesting people working on solutions to the climate crisis. Our goal is to bring people with diverse backgrounds together to share ideas, connect, and learn from one another.

Nature x Solutions - Boulder Happy Hour

🕔 WHEN: Wednesday, August 19, 2026 from 5:30 PM to 7:00 PM

📍WHERE: Rayback Collective, Boulder, CO

​Colorado is a hub for professionals working to protect and restore nature on a global and local scale. Starting in 2023, Nature x Solutions has been convening this community for special evenings of exchanging ideas and connections with fellow practitioners, with local co-hosts including Earthshot Labs, Pachama, Regrow Ag, Nature Tech Collective, Terra Nexus, Vaisala, and Perennial.

WRISE Networking, cocktail hour & game night at Scout Clean Energy!

🕔 WHEN: Thursday, August 20, 2026 from 5:00 PM to 7:30 PM

📍WHERE: Scout Clean Energy, Boulder, CO

Enjoy an evening of meaningful conversation and games in a relaxed setting at the Scout office, where you can share insights, build relationships, and strengthen you networks. Whether you’re new to the industry or a seasoned leader, this is an opportunity to foster connections, exchange ideas, relax, and support one another’s growth. 

An Alternative Approach to Colorado Policy for Data Centers

🕔 WHEN: Thursday, August 20, 2026 from 6:30 PM to 7:30 PM

📍WHERE: Odell Brewing Five Points Brewhouse, Denver, CO

Colorado has struggled with data center policy for the last three legislative sessions. In this free CRES Speaker Series event, Dr. David Hurlbut will explain a new policy approach for Colorado that would take advantage of wholesale power markets, accelerate renewable energy development, establish meaningful policy guardrails to protect the state’s scarce water resources and other policy priorities, and avoid the use of state tax breaks as a means to attract data centers. 

City of Boulder 2026 Climate Resilient Landscape Showcase

🕔 WHEN: Saturday, August 22, 2026 from 9:00 AM to 9:00 AM

📍WHERE: Boulder, CO

Join a self-guided tour of some of the most inspiring climate-resilient landscapes in Boulder!

Public Tour at Jack’s Solar Garden

🕔 WHEN: Saturday, August 22, 2026 from 10:00 AM to 11:30 AM

📍WHERE: Jack’s Solar Garden, Longmont, CO

Join a guide from the Colorado Agrivoltaic Learning Center on an interpretive tour of Jack's Solar Garden, the premier agrivoltaic research site in the nation. During this family friendly tour, attendees will be introduced to agrivoltaics, the combination of solar and agriculture, and learn about its potential benefits to farmers, biodiversity and local communities. Attendees will walk among solar panels and observe different plots dedicated to agrivoltaic research. When you leave we hope you have an understanding of the benefits of agrivoltaics and become an advocate for agrivoltaic practices. The money from your admission ticket directly funds us bringing local students to Jack's Solar Garden so that we can introduce our next generations to clean energy, local food and sustainable land-use practices. So, thank you!

Rebel Run 5k

🕔 WHEN: Sunday, August 23, 2026 from 8:00 AM to 12:00 PM

📍WHERE: Great Lawn Park, Denver, CO

Be part of something bigger at Conservation Colorado’s second annual Rebel Run 5K — where movement meets momentum for our climate, air, land, water and communities. Last year, more than 230 rebels showed up strong — rocking matching team shirts, rallying friends and family, and proving that protecting Colorado is a team sport. This year, we’re building on that energy and inviting you to help make it our biggest, boldest run yet.

Fleet-Con 2026

🕔 WHEN: Monday, August 24, 2026 thru Aug 26

📍WHERE: Embassy Suites by Hilton Loveland Conference Center, Loveland, CO

Attending Fleet-Con? Connect with the Drive Clean Colorado team there to discuss your fleet’s sustainability goals, learn about the latest clean vehicle technologies and funding opportunities available in Colorado, and explore ways to reduce emissions—whether through electrification or the use of cleaner alternative fuels.

Denver Green Drinks August Meetup

🕔 WHEN: Wednesday, August 26, 2026 from 6:00 PM to 8:00 PM

📍WHERE: Cerebral Brewing - West Highland, Denver, CO

​This month’s meetup is sponsored by the Colorado Green Business Network!

​Join us at Cerebral Brewing, a CGBN Certified Silver Member, to beat the summer heat with drinks, free pizza, and green conversation.

2026 COSSA Topgolf Networking Event

🕔 WHEN: Thursday, August 27, 2026 from 11:00 AM to 5:00 PM

📍WHERE: Topgolf Thornton, Thornton, CO

Join COSSA, industry colleagues, and political champions for an afternoon of fun networking, delicious food, and exciting golf games. Secure a sponsorship and register now to make sure you have a spot at this highly anticipated event!
No special golf skills are required to have fun at Topgolf. Clubs are provided by the venue or you may bring your own set.

Airports’ Next Frontier: Decarbonization & Electrification

🕔 WHEN: Thursday, August 27, 2026 from 7:00 PM to 9:00 PM

📍WHERE: Jefferson Unitarian Church, Golden, CO

Several airports in the US and globally are taking measures to reduce their environmental impact. We'll hear about concrete examples from Renée Azerbegi, an engineering expert who has been on the forefront of sustainable architecture and building design for decades, including with Denver International Airport.

Want to make sure you don’t miss anything? There are a few ways to stay in the loop.

1. Follow Colorado Climatetech on LinkedIn to see the latest on new events

2. Subscribe to this newsletter for monthly summary emails

Subscribe now

Want to contribute or share through the newsletter? Submit an event with the button at the top or share your news directly here:

Submit your Announcement

For now, I hope you will share this with a friend. Or better yet, attend a local upcoming event!

Cheers,
William Greenbohl

Share Colorado Climatetech Newsletter

Interview conducted May 5, 2025 by Hannah Davis. Edited for length and clarity.

Tell me about your background and how you got into climate work.

I have worked in nature-based climate solutions my entire career. The impetus was a family trip to Peru when I was 14. I went to the Amazon rainforest, fell in love with it, and then turned a corner and saw completely stripped bare mountains as far as the eye could see. It was the first time I realized that nature could not exist if we didn’t take care of it. I came back to the U.S. committed to protecting our natural world, in part for climate, but also for the stability of our life support systems.

I went to Cornell to figure out how to protect the rainforest and came to understand the connections between forests, climate, water, and biodiversity. I saw that policy was slow to move and often influenced by the private sector, so I thought the private sector should have a stake in maintaining the resources they depend on. That’s how I ended up at the intersection of reshaping markets to better steward nature.

I started in advocacy, leading a global investor coalition that pressured corporate boards to set their first no-deforestation sourcing agreements, securing commitments from the biggest food and ag companies globally. Then I moved to D.C. to work for former Congressman Henry Waxman, where, under the first Trump administration, we focused on keeping private sector climate ambition alive. I led a nationwide campaign pushing food and ag companies on regenerative agriculture domestically, because most of their commitments were international.

What I eventually realized was that all these companies had great policies, but weren’t really implementing them. The advocacy had created a demand signal for new investment in technology to support actual implementation. So I joined Earthshot Labs, a startup scaling reforestation projects, and co-founded their reforestation division, originating projects mostly in East Africa. Then I moved to Regrow Ag, which works with the same big food and ag brands I’d secured sustainability policies from, helping them implement their regenerative agriculture commitments. I founded the carbon protocol and policy team there, figuring out how to ensure those commitments were executed with high integrity, in line with global carbon standards.

It’s been an arc from advocacy to implementation.

For people who aren’t familiar with Regrow, can you explain what the company does and what is a carbon protocol?

Carbon is an invisible attribute that’s extremely hard to measure but is core to securing climate financing. Proving that a reduction or removal actually happened requires understanding the methodologies behind the claim. A carbon protocol essentially establishes what it means to make a credible carbon claim: what data is valid, what measurement methods are acceptable, how you prove that a project was additional (meaning the reduction or removal wouldn’t have happened without financing from carbon markets). This enables companies and their stakeholders to know that their climate investments are having an impact on greenhouse gas emissions.

These protocols aren’t standardized. There are multiple competing methodologies, internationally and domestically, and my role is to translate those technical documents into internal data collection systems, scientific quantification methods, and project design.

Companies care deeply about this because there’s been significant backlash around poor-quality carbon projects, where independent evaluators looked under the hood and found that the claims weren’t real, or were highly inflated. At Regrow, companies come to us saying: we want to make carbon claims, but we’re not experts, can you ensure our investment generates real reductions and removals? A client like Mars or Cargill has scope 3 decarbonization goals, meaning they want to hit net zero in their supply chains. We help them figure out what practices, such as cover crops, no-till, nutrient management, rice methane reduction, etc, to implement over what timeline, using what measurement methods.

Have you seen corporate climate commitments shift under the current administration?

Unfortunately, yes. Company ambition was never really driven by policy or regulation. It was driven by consumer, investor, and employee pressure that made companies realize climate was a risk. But tariffs and general economic contraction have shrunk sustainability budgets. Companies haven’t necessarily pulled out entirely, but they’ve stopped growing their programs. And they’ve gone much quieter, shifting language away from “climate” toward “resilience” or “farmer livelihoods” to avoid drawing attention from the administration.

The underlying knowledge hasn’t changed. Companies understand how at-risk their supply chains are. They recognize that these practices build resilience. Their budgets have just shrunk for the time being.

What’s your honest assessment of where the science and standards are right now?

The biggest issue is lack of standardization and excessive bureaucracy. There are just too many competing methodologies. Verra is the dominant international standard but notoriously understaffed and slow. The Climate Action Reserve came out of California’s regulatory framework. Isometric emerged partly to compete with Verra. Everyone has a little standard fatigue.

My broader concern is that carbon is a one-size-fits-all metric for a very diverse planet and it’s invisible, which makes it extraordinarily difficult to prove. When I talk to sustainability professionals at big food and ag companies, many of them wish they could just pay for practices. Invest in things we generally know are directionally good for soil and water and climate, rather than spending enormous resources proving the exact carbon outcome.

The practices companies are trying to implement aren’t super complicated: no-till, cover crops, nutrient management. But modeling exactly what’s happening at the field level is computationally expensive, data-intensive, and full of room for error. And all that complexity has actually stopped a lot of companies from investing at all. They’d rather do nothing than risk getting it wrong. So the rigor of carbon protocols ends up draining budgets that could otherwise go directly to changing farmer practices. It’s a bit of dancing with the devil. All the money for nature currently flows through carbon budgets, but carbon as a framework may not be the right tool for the diversity of nature.

Are there any organizations doing work you admire right now?

Blue Forest is doing nature restoration in the U.S. structured around multiple outcomes, including water and wildfire risk, and working directly with beneficiaries like state governments and utilities to pay for those benefits. I find that model really compelling. Chestnut Carbon is doing interesting work on purchasing and leasing land for forest restoration. And Mars has consistently been a leader in investing in nature-based solutions, being privately held gives them more budget and leeway to continue even when markets tighten.

Colorado in general is a remarkable hub for nature-based companies. The challenge right now is that many of them use carbon as their primary funding mechanism, and carbon markets are constricting, and also very narrowly focused on carbon as an outcome. A lot of them are struggling to pull through.

Tell me about NatureX, the events you organize. Why did you start them, and what do you hope comes from them?

The vision is to build a space where nature professionals can genuinely learn from and collaborate with each other. I started NatureX events because Colorado is such a hub for people who have made nature both their profession and their lifestyle. Coming from D.C. and the East Coast, I noticed that people there worked on nature but didn’t necessarily spend much time in it. Here, those things are integrated, and I found that really compelling.

I was also frustrated with traditional networking events. You walk in, don’t know anyone, feel like you only connect with a fraction of the room. I wanted to create something bottom-up, where everyone’s intelligence and experience gets shared with the group, collaborative and discussion-based, not self-promotional.

We started in 2023. I thought we’d have maybe 15 people. Within the first week we maxed out at 25, raised the cap to 50, maxed out, raised it to 75, maxed out, raised it to 100, maxed out. Eighty people showed up and stayed for the full three hours. People said it was their favorite networking event because they actually felt like they connected with everyone relevant to them, they learned something, and they left feeling part of a community. We host these larger events every 3-6 months, and have started a monthly happy hour that rotates between Denver and Boulder.

What gives you optimism in climate right now?

We have more global understanding, more commitments from powerful players, better technology, and more skilled professionals in this space than ever. That’s not going away, regardless of what this administration is doing. And I think people are waking up. Climate change is no longer abstract. There’s no snowpack in Colorado. Water is at risk. Those realities are impossible to ignore, even for people who thought they were insulated from them.

You’ve talked about nature-based solutions throughout. Is that still where your heart is?

Absolutely. We were born on a planet that has always provided everything we need: food, water, shelter, a stable climate. If we invest in maintaining and regenerating those systems, we can have a livable planet. Everything else tends to deal with one problem at a time, for example carbon dioxide removal only addresses carbon. But the reason we care about climate change in the first place is because it’s destabilizing our life support systems. If we fix the carbon issue without addressing those underlying systems, we’ve missed the point of why we made all these commitments to begin with.

How did you end up in Colorado, and has being here shaped your work?

My existential crisis was that I’d built a career in nature because I love nature and then I was living in big cities, feeling disconnected from it. My work was becoming an intellectual exercise, divorced from the reality of being in these systems and seeing how they interact. When COVID hit, I took the opportunity to move to Colorado and align my life more fully with my profession. Being here has given me a deeper sense of commitment and urgency. There’s this beautiful ecosystem I love, that I play in, and that I can see at risk.

I’m starting to think about how to shift my career, which has been very internationally focused, toward something more place-based, investing more directly in Colorado’s landscapes. I haven’t quite figured out what that looks like yet. But Boulder and Colorado have such a deep commitment to their landscape. It’s a source of economic vitality. People live, work, and play here, so they care more deeply. The opportunity feels real.

Follow Lucia on LinkedIn, learn more about ReGrow here, and find NatureX events by following Lucia on Luma.

Wishing everyone a happy 4th of July 🇺🇸. We found 13 events so far as the summer heats up, and we’ll be keeping you up to date with our 📅 Live Calendar 📅.

Special plug for our next COCT event with Bauen Build and the first ever Colorado Fusion Week.

Events This Month

• 🥳 New Energy CO 2026 Summer Celebration: Jul 7, Tue in Lakewood

• 💪 Grand Junction Here & Now Tour: Building Local Resilience to Climate Disaster: Jul 8, Wed in Grand Junction

• 🧱 Getting Clean Energy Built: How Resource Planning Decisions Are Made: Jul 8, Wed

• 🌻 Pollinator Palooza: Jul 11, Sat in Longmont

• 🧑‍🔬 Passive House Tour with COCT and Bauen Build: Jul 14, Tue in Boulder

• ⚡️ EV Charging Meet-Up: Jul 15, Wed in Longmont

• 🍻 Boulder Climate Happy Hour: Jul 15, Wed in Boulder

• 📋 Mining Cleantech Challenge Application Deadline: Jul 16, Thu

• 🌟 Colorado Fusion Week: Jul 20 to Jul 22 in Golden

• 🍺 Building Science (BS) & Beer Denver Metro: Jul 21, Tue in Denver

• 🙌 WRISE CO Boulder Volunteer Event!: Jul 23, Thu in Boulder

• 🌻 Public Tour at Jack’s Solar Garden: Jul 25, Sat in Longmont

• 🥾 New Energy Economic Opportunity Bootcamp: Jul 30, Thu in Boulder

Read on for more details about this month’s upcoming events.

Sneak Peak at the Following Month

• ⚡️ EV Charging Meet-Up: Aug 6, Thu

• 🌻 Public Tour at Jack’s Solar Garden: Aug 8, Sat in Longmont

• 🔘 NSS 3rd Annual ConferenceAug 17 to Aug 19 in Denver

• 🍺 Building Science (BS) & Beer Denver Metro: Aug 18, Tue in Denver

• 🍻 Boulder Climate HappyHour: Aug 19, Wed in Boulder

• 🌻 Public Tour at Jack’s Solar Garden: Aug 22, Sat in Longmont

There will be more! These are just a few that I know about if you like to plan ahead.

Submit an Event

Know an upcoming event that we should include? Submit it here.

Climate News in CO

Did you know Denver has a steam network linking up more than 100 buildings? A new plan to decarbonize buildings involves removing old natural gas boilers and turning this downtown loop into a geothermal network, leveraging new tech (heat pumps) and old tech (sewage).

Colorado Spotlight

In case you missed it, check out our latest spotlight.

Event Details

New Energy CO 2026 Summer Celebration

🕔 WHEN: Tuesday, July 7, 2026 from 6:00 PM to 8:00 PM

📍WHERE: The Retreat at Solterra, Lakewood, CO

Join New Energy Colorado as we gather in person for our 14th annual Summer Solstice party. We invite everyone interested in helping promote a future based on renewable energy and energy efficiency to join us. We also celebrate great work by all the folks who contribute to renewable energy, green building, and energy efficiency. We will have live music, beer, wine, food and short talks from our environmental movers and shakers. Due to a special guest we are holding the celebration in early July this year. 

Grand Junction Here & Now Tour: Building Local Resilience to Climate Disaster

🕔 WHEN: Wednesday, July 8, 2026 from 5:30 PM to 8:00 PM

📍WHERE: Mesa County Central Library, Grand Junction, CO

Join us on July 8th, 2026, 5:30-7pm in Grand Junction for a "Here & Now Tour: Building Local Resilience to Climate Disaster” event to protect our communities from the impacts and costs of the climate crisis. This listening tour event will inform a new policy to make the biggest historic corporate polluters pay their fair share toward climate disaster adaptation and resilience efforts, such as wildfire, drought and flood mitigation. 

Getting Clean Energy Built: How Resource Planning Decisions Are Made

🕔 WHEN: Wednesday, July 8, 2026 from 6:00 PM to 7:30 PM

📍WHERE: Virtual

CRES will be joined by Dr. Brent Nelson of Ascend Analytics, who will provide an orientation to US power markets and regulatory processes, explaining how decisions about our electricity supply get made and who makes them, market forecasting practice at Ascend Analytics, advising clients on emerging market dynamics, and a strategic long-term investment strategy. His knowledge spans wholesale markets, financial modeling, emerging technologies, and energy systems analysis.

Pollinator Palooza

🕔 WHEN: Saturday, July 11, 2026 from 9:00 AM to 12:00 PM

📍WHERE: Jack’s Solar Garden, Longmont, CO

Get ready for a day full of fun, discovery, and bug-tastic adventure at Pollinator Palooza! Whether you're a family with curious kids, a lifelong nature lover, or just bug-curious, this event has something for everyone.

Passive House Tour with COCT and Bauen Build

🕔 WHEN: Tuesday, July 14, 2026 from 4:30 PM to 7:30 PM

📍WHERE: Boulder, Register to see details

​Join Bauen Build and Colorado Climatetech for an exclusive tour of a Passive House home in Boulder. See firsthand how thoughtful design and construction can dramatically reduce energy use while creating a healthier, more comfortable living space, especially when paired with electrification. Afterwards, meet us at a nearby brewery an open happy hour and conversation with the Bauen Build team and the local climate community.

EV Charging Meet-Up

🕔 WHEN: Wednesday, July 15, 2026 from 9:00 AM to 11:00 AM

📍WHERE: Longmont, CO

Join us for an EV Charging Meet-Up on July 15, 2026, at the Latino Chamber of Commerce of Boulder County. This interactive session will bring together charging experts, local leaders, and industry partners to share best practices for EV charging deployment. This event is made possible by our Champion Members at Xcel Energy. 

Boulder Climate Happy Hour

🕔 WHEN: Wednesday, July 15, 2026 from 5:30 PM to 7:30 PM

📍WHERE: Rayback Collective, Boulder, CO

​Boulder is full of interesting people working on solutions to the climate crisis. Our goal is to bring people with diverse backgrounds together to share ideas, connect, and learn from one another.

Mining Cleantech Challenge Application Deadline

🕔 WHEN: Thursday, July 16, 2026 from 9:28 AM to 5:00 PM

📍WHERE: Online

A global product-innovation showcase that matches breakthrough solutions with the world’s leading miners, investors, and suppliers. After a competitive vetting process, select finalists earn a live pitch spot, executive feedback, and partnership opportunities.

Colorado Fusion Week

🕔 WHEN: Monday, July 20, 2026 thru Jul 22

📍WHERE: Beck Venture Center, Golden, CO

Colorado is emerging as a serious hub for fusion—and the work to prepare for commercial deployment is happening now. Colorado Cleantech, in partnership with the CleanTech Alliance, is proud to launch the inaugural Colorado Fusion Week.

Join fusion energy companies, researchers, policymakers, investors, and industry leaders from across the country for a multi-day convening focused on advancing fusion innovation, collaboration, and commercialization.

Building Science (BS) & Beer Denver Metro

🕔 WHEN: Tuesday, July 21, 2026 from 5:00 PM to 8:00 PM

📍WHERE: Tradecraft Industries, Denver, CO

A casual conversation about building science

WRISE CO Boulder Volunteer Event!

🕔 WHEN: Thursday, July 23, 2026 from 8:30 PM to 11:00 AM

📍WHERE: Growing Gardens, Boulder, CO

Join WRISE CO for a hands-on volunteer day at Growing Gardens in Boulder as we celebrate WRISE Week and its theme of "Giving Back." This is a chance to step away from the desk, get our hands in the soil, and make a tangible difference in our local community.

Public Tour at Jack’s Solar Garden

🕔 WHEN: Saturday, July 25, 2026 from 10:00 AM to 11:30 AM

📍WHERE: Jack’s Solar Garden, Longmont, CO

Join a guide from the Colorado Agrivoltaic Learning Center on an interpretive tour of Jack's Solar Garden, the premier agrivoltaic research site in the nation. During this family friendly tour, attendees will be introduced to agrivoltaics, the combination of solar and agriculture, and learn about its potential benefits to farmers, biodiversity and local communities. Attendees will walk among solar panels and observe different plots dedicated to agrivoltaic research. When you leave we hope you have an understanding of the benefits of agrivoltaics and become an advocate for agrivoltaic practices. The money from your admission ticket directly funds us bringing local students to Jack's Solar Garden so that we can introduce our next generations to clean energy, local food and sustainable land-use practices. So, thank you!

New Energy Economic Opportunity Bootcamp

🕔 WHEN: Thursday, July 30, 2026 from 8:00 AM to 5:30 PM

📍WHERE: 2490 Junction Pl #200, Boulder, Colorado,

The New Energy Economic Opportunity Bootcamp is a 1-day, in-person training and convening designed to equip economic development practitioners with the tools, data, and insights needed to attract and scale advanced energy and manufacturing investment.

Want to make sure you don’t miss anything? There are a few ways to stay in the loop.

1. Follow Colorado Climatetech on LinkedIn to see the latest on new events

2. Subscribe to this newsletter for monthly summary emails

Subscribe now

Want to contribute or share through the newsletter? Submit an event with the button at the top or share your news directly here:

Submit your Announcement

For now, I hope you will share this with a friend. Or better yet, attend a local upcoming event!

Cheers,
William Greenbohl

Share Colorado Climatetech Newsletter

That question pulled her into community organizing and food policy in Hawaii, and then into impact investing. Today, she is Chief Operating Officer of Elemental Impact, a 17-year-old nonprofit climate investor with a portfolio of more than 160 companies and over $100 million deployed. Elemental focuses on the missing middle of climate hardware — the first-of-a-kind and early commercial projects that are too late for venture capital and too early for infrastructure investors. The companies Elemental backs are 2.5x more likely to survive from early to late commercial stages than their peers.

In this conversation, Danya talks about Elemental’s flexible nonprofit model, the scale gap stalling climate hardware, and what’s pulling climate tech forward after a year of federal rollbacks.

Hannah Davis conducted this interview on April 29th, 2025. It has been edited for length and clarity.

Your path is unusual — documentary film at National Geographic and Discovery, then community organizing and food policy, now climate finance. What’s the through-line?

It’s been driven by my own curiosities. I started out really passionate about how you inspire people to care about and protect the planet, and filmmaking felt like the way to do that — tell those stories, activate people. But I’m sure you’ve watched documentaries where it’s problem, problem, problem, and then at the end there’s a narrow call to action: go vote. I started to get curious — what do you do with that newfound inspiration?

That got me into community organizing and policy work, which brought me to Hawaii. I focused on the food system because everybody has some connection to it. After a while I thought: okay, we’ve told people what’s wrong with the food system. We’ve fought, we’ve galvanized, we’ve pushed for legislation. But what are people supposed to do about it? Are the solutions really viable for farmers, for customers, for individuals? That’s what got me into impact investing — how do we elevate these solutions, make them cost-competitive and at scale so they actually transform the system? It’s just curiosity pushing me into where I think I can have the biggest impact.

For readers who don’t know it, what is Elemental, and what does the nonprofit model let you do that traditional venture can’t?

At a high level, we take in grant dollars from government, philanthropy, and corporate giving. We invest in companies, we provide really targeted coaching and services to support them, and we do a lot of field-building and systems-change work. Any dollars recycled from our investments go back into the pool to support future entrepreneurs.

What’s more poignant in moments like these is that the model is flexible and adaptive in ways venture is not. Venture is more structured and predetermined. We can put an incremental dollar into an investment in a creative way that mobilizes other capital. We can put it into services and coaching — especially in a moment when our entrepreneurs are really struggling. Or we can put it into convening when that’s what’s needed. We can be way more responsive to the moment than a venture fund that has its preset structure and executes against it for the next ten years.

Can you give an example of how that flexibility plays out for one of your companies?

We just shared one at SF Climate Week.Plantible is developing an ingredient called Rubi Protein, an alternative plant protein derived from duckweed, or lemna, which is a nicer way to frame it. They grow it in aquaculture facilities, and it has real environmental benefits: no arable land, 10x less water use. They built their Ranchito facility in Eldorado, Texas, a tiny town of 1,500 people. Our funding went to operational improvements that meaningfully reduced their cost of goods sold, but we also worked with them on an internship playbook, their workforce strategy, and helped them host a ribbon-cutting in the community.

Fast forward a few months: they’re trying to get approval from Texas Fish and Wildlife for one specific strain of duckweed — one out of about a thousand — that wasn’t already approved in the state. It’s critical to their growth. They were getting no’s across the board, with a lot of misinformation about what Plantable was doing. We did a ton of coaching on their testimony, and helped facilitate written and verbal testimony from folks they’d been cultivating through the ribbon-cutting. It was just recently approved in a nail-biter of a hearing. Without that, they would have needed to move their operations out of Texas.

Since Plantable set up there, the median income in the community has increased 60%. They have 25 local employees and sponsor the local university and the high school football team. So it was existential for the company — and meaningful for the community too.

Your portfolio companies are 2.5x more likely to survive from early to late commercial stages than those you don’t invest in. Beyond what you’ve already described, what else drives that gap?

We’re along for the journey. We’re a long-term committed partner — we still work closely with companies we invested in ten years ago. We help them through the ups and downs, and we have a deep bench of coaches on our team and across the network we’ve built over 17 years. So when a company needs the right person or partner to unlock a key milestone, we can help find them.

We’ve also been providing more follow-on funding in critical ways that mobilize other dollars and help companies through challenging moments outside their control. In the venture context, you often pick the winners and double down. We’re not propping up companies that shouldn’t continue — but we really try to bring all our entrepreneurs forward and find ways to help them, whether through dollars or coaching.

Elemental’s mission focuses on market failures for first-of-a-kind and early commercial projects. In plain terms, what’s the failure, and why isn’t private capital solving it?

The market failure we focus on most actively is the scale gap — financing for first-of-a-kind projects and early commercial projects, often for hardware companies. The sub-failure within that is development capital. Before companies can build a project, there are key milestones they need to complete: permitting, engineering studies, and community engagement. They’re pretty binary — yes or no. Companies often use venture dollars for those, which is extremely expensive capital to use for development activities per project. There isn’t enough capital dedicated to it.

Then there’s financing for the actual construction. You might finance a first project with venture capital, but $50 to $100 million facilities are an expensive way to use venture. And project financiers typically won’t commit to anything less than $100 million, and they want to see everything de-risked. So most are unwilling to fund until maybe the fourth or fifth project. You have companies with strong technologies that have been piloted, that are demonstrating, but they really need to scale up — and there’s a gap between venture and these later-stage financing partners. We worked with BCG to size that gap at $150B, and we’re spending time now with a data partner to get more specific on which technologies, project sizes, and geographies are most affected, so we can better target our support.

You co-developed something called the Development-SAFE. What is it, and what problem does it solve?

It’s built off of Y Combinator’s SAFE note — Simple Agreement for Future Equity — which lets investors invest outside of a formal round, with dollars that then convert into the next priced round. The Development-SAFE is a new iteration of that tool. It’s catalytic in that it can either look like a loan, because a company can pay it back, or it can convert to equity. So it has flexibility. You can think of it like a “redeemable SAFE.” Companies can repay it when they have more capital, typically in a couple of years.

A good example is Nitricity. We committed $2 million, which became the nucleus of a $10 million fundraise for their FOAK fertilizer facility in California. They used it to get matches and additional funding. Six months later they raised their Series B and paid us back. We’ve published the templates and a practitioner’s note so other catalytic capital providers can use it. Ultimately, it’s good for the venture community too — it preserves their equity, and lets philanthropic and catalytic dollars keep recycling.

You stepped into the COO role in January, after five years running portfolio and investments. What’s changed?

I still oversee our portfolio and investments work with a fantastic team — we promoted Mitch Rubin, a longtime Elemental staff member, into the lead seat. Now I also look after corporate partnerships, policy, legal, people, and overall organizational strategy. Elemental does a lot, and we’re a highly ambitious group that likes to execute at really high quality. Having been at the organization for eight years, I have a strong sense of what it takes to get things done across everyone’s different roles.

I’ve also continued to represent the organization externally — I did a lot of speaking at SF Climate Week and was happy to host a couple of things at Colorado Climate Week.

You spent a decade in Hawaii before moving to Colorado about two and a half years ago. What brought you here, and how does the climate ecosystem feel different?

I’m originally from Washington, D.C., and absolutely loved my time in Hawaii — I had really formative years there, and felt deeply connected to the culture and community through the work I was doing. It’s also very isolated and very focused on Hawaii and the Pacific, which is so important and I learned so much. The difference in Colorado is that there’s certainly a focus on what Colorado can be doing, but also a community of people focused more nationally and globally.

The move was a mix of personal and professional. We wanted to be closer to family — my husband’s from Nebraska. Professionally, I’d often hear from folks in Hawaii: if you’re not going to spend your whole career here, you should leave, because the network you’re building is pretty isolated. Our team is spread across the country, so being more central has made it easier to connect with our broader team, our portfolio, and the investment community. Trips to San Francisco, New York, and D.C. from here are just so easy.

It’s been fantastic to uncover the depth of network and community in Colorado, and especially in Boulder, it’s really close-knit. Everyone has been incredibly welcoming.

What gives you reason for optimism right now?

What I’m most excited about is the demand pull from AI and critical minerals — it’s pulling so many climate-positive technologies forward. We’re about to launch a big initiative with the hyperscalers focused on how we can accelerate innovation by piloting technologies in data centers, then scaling so they can serve schools, hospitals, and other applications — skipping over some of the scale-gap pieces we’ve been talking about. Fervo Energy, a Utah portfolio company, just filed their IPO and raised over $400 million in non-recourse capital on the other side of the scale gap. So much of that pull is because of data center customer demand.

There’s a lot of pushback on data centers right now, and rightly so given the energy and water use. But there’s an opportunity in that these challenges are no longer a climate or environmental problem to solve — they’re a core business problem to solve. You don’t need to call it a climate solution; it’s just a required solution for them to meet their targets. I know it’s complex and we’ll see how things go, but I am very excited about what it could mean for climate innovation.

Anything outside of work — climate or sustainability-related — that you’re passionate about?

We bought a home tucked into the mountains a bit off Lee Hill in North Boulder. We’re absolutely loving homesteading a little bit here — gardening, learning what grows well, learning how to navigate the wildlife. We’ve had bears eating our deer-proof flowers, mountain lions, bobcats walking through the yard, and obviously, the bunnies chowing down on everything. It turns out that everything we think is delicious, so do the wildlife. So we’re figuring out the best way to grow more of our own food.

Learn more about Elemental Impact. Connect with Danya on LinkedIn.

Festivities abound this month with events all around Colorado, with plenty of options in Denver, Boulder, and FoCo. We found 20 events so far, and we’ll be keeping you up to date with our 🆕 Live Calendar 📅, which can always be found on Substack.

Events This Month

• 🤝 Energy Innovators Network: Energy, Sustainability, and Risk in the Data Center Boom: Jun 3, Wed in Denver

• 🛻 CSU Fleet Electrification Ride & Drive: Jun 3, Wed in Fort Collins

• 🪴 Fort Collins Ecofest: Jun 6, Sat in Fort Collins

• 🏡 Green Home Tour: Fully Electrified 1966 split level house: Jun 6, Sat in Boulder

• 🍻 Nature x Solutions Happy Hour: Jun 8, Mon in Boulder

• 🌻 Save the Farm, Save the Future: Showing & Panel Discussion: Jun 8-9, 3 showing in Steamboat Springs, Meeker, and Craig

• 📜 Energy Policy Updates: 2026 Colorado Legislative Session: Jun 10, Wed Online

• 💨 Denver Carbon Capture, Utilization, and Storage Networking Event: Jun 10, Wed in Golden

• 💪 Powering the Future: Opportunities and Challenges by Growing Energy Demand: Jun 11, Thu in Denver

• 🍸 Cocktails & Cleantech: Jun 11, Thu in Denver

• 👩‍🔧 EV Workforce Symposium: Jun 12, Fri in Denver

• 🌻 Public Tour at Jack’s Solar Garden: Jun 13, Sat in Longmont

• 🍻 Boulder Climate Happy Hour: Jun 17, Wed in Boulder

• 🍻 CGBG Happy Hour + Live Demos: Jun 18, Thu in Littleton

• 🔌 Plugged In & Powered Up: A Policy Update with Naomi: Jun 18, Thu in Denver

• 🥾 SunWRISE Hike: Jun 19, Fri in Golden

• 🥳 Sandbox + Solar Summer Party: Jun 23, Tue in Fort Collins

• 🌻 Public Tour at Jack’s Solar Garden: Jun 27, Sat in Longmont

Read on for more details about this month’s upcoming events.

Sneak Peak at the Following Month

• 🥳 New Energy CO 2026 Summer Celebration: Jul 7, Tue

• 🌻 Pollinator Palooza: Jul 11, Sat in Longmont

• 🧑‍🔬 Passive House Tour with COCT and Bauen Build: Jul 14, Tue

• 🍻 Boulder Climate Happy Hour: Jul 15, Wed in Boulder

• 🌟 Colorado Fusion Week: Jul 20, Mon in Golden

• 🌻 Public Tour at Jack’s Solar Garden: Jul 25, Sat in Longmont

There will be more! These are just a few that I know about if you like to plan ahead.

Climate News in CO

Geothermal is having its moment, and Colorado does not want to miss out. Even though Colorado does not have any geothermal power today, it joined Arizona, New Mexico, and Utah to launch the Mountain West Geothermal Consortium a week after the geothermal startup Fervo Energy went public.

Also here’s a fun report on the State of Renewables, where you can find Colorado’s ranking in renewable growth, EV growth, energy efficiency, and other factors. TLDR: we’re not leading (top 5) but we’re hovering around #10 with steady, consistent improvement across the board.

Job Openings in CO

The job board has a new home → Substack navigation bar. This section will be going away to make more room for events.

Event Details

Energy Innovators Network: Energy, Sustainability, and Risk in the Data Center Boom

🕔 WHEN: Wednesday, June 3, 2026 from 8:00 AM to 9:30 AM

📍WHERE: Davis Graham | 3400 Walnut Street,

The explosive growth of data centers is reshaping energy markets, grid planning, and corporate sustainability strategies across the West and nationwide. This panel brings together three practitioners working at the intersection of data center development and infrastructure: an energy and regulatory attorney, a data center sustainability executive, and a risk and insurance advisor. Together they will explore how data center operators are sourcing reliable power, meeting ambitious decarbonization commitments, navigating an evolving regulatory landscape, and managing the unique risk profile of these critical facilities.

CSU Fleet Electrification Ride & Drive

🕔 WHEN: Wednesday, June 3, 2026 from 9:00 AM to 1:00 PM

📍WHERE: See event page for details,

Join Drive Clean Colorado for a hands-on Fleet Electrification Ride & Drive featuring electric vehicles (EVs) designed for real-world fleet operations.
In addition to getting behind the wheel, attendees can learn more about fleet charging infrastructure, available incentives and funding opportunities, and practical applications for fleet electrification.

Fort Collins Ecofest

🕔 WHEN: Saturday, June 6, 2026 from 10:00 AM to 1:00 PM

📍WHERE: Washington Park FoCo, Fort Collins, CO

Join the City of Fort Collins FoCo EcoFest at Washington Park to explore the Our Climate Future plan and discover local conservation resources. Chat with an energy advisor about ways to make your home more comfortable and efficient, and connect with local organizations offering programs, services, and tips to help you live more sustainably.

Green Home Tour: Fully Electrified 1966 split level house

🕔 WHEN: Saturday, June 6, 2026 from 12:00 PM to 4:00 PM

📍WHERE: See event page for details,

Come check out this fully electrified 1966 split level home in South Boulder on our Green Home Tour!

Nature x Solutions Happy Hour

🕔 WHEN: Monday, June 8, 2026 from 5:30 PM to 7:00 PM

📍WHERE: Rayback Collective, Boulder, CO

​Nature x Solutions will be doing a monthly happy hour, featuring expert speakers working on solutions for protecting and restoring nature.

​This month we will be featuring: Nik Philipsen is Principal Product Manager at Technosylva, the leading provider of wildfire and extreme weather modeling and situational awareness solutions for utilities and emergency management agencies. He leads the Planning product line with a focus on data-driven risk reduction, mitigation prioritization, and regulatory reporting.

Save the Farm, Save the Future: Showing & Panel Discussion

🕔 WHEN: Monday, June 8, 2026 from 6:00 PM to 8:30 PM

AND Tuesday, June 9, 2026 from 5:30 PM to 8:00 PM

📍WHERE: 3 showings in Steamboat Springs, Meeker, and Craig

Farms are disappearing. Solar energy is rising. Could combining the two help save farmers and the planet? Introducing agrivoltaics.
This film recently won "Best in Fest" at the Colorado Environmental Film Festival and has aired on over 80 PBS stations nationwide! 

Energy Policy Updates: 2026 Colorado Legislative Session

🕔 WHEN: Wednesday, June 10, 2026 from 6:00 PM to 8:00 PM

📍WHERE: Virtual,

The 2026 Colorado Legislative Session has officially wrapped. From bills on data centers to new nuclear, plug-in solar to energy affordability, energy policy took center stage this session.

For a full recap of 2026 and a look ahead at what’s in the works for 2027, join us June 10 for the Energy Policy Updates: 2026 Colorado Legislative Session virtual webinar. The webinar, co-hosted by Empower Our Future, COSSA, and PSR Colorado, will feature presenters from CRES and partner organizations.

Denver Carbon Capture, Utilization, and Storage Networking Event

🕔 WHEN: Wednesday, June 10, 2026 from 6:00 PM to 8:00 PM

📍WHERE: New Terrain Brewing Company, Golden, CO

Please join us for a timely discussion on an active Carbon Capture, Utilization and Storage (CCUS) project. Cathy Stevens with Harvestone Low Carbon Partners will present on the Blue Flint Sequester Company and its experience navigating North Dakota Class VI compliance from project inception through implementation.

Powering the Future: Opportunities and Challenges by Growing Energy Demand

🕔 WHEN: Thursday, June 11, 2026 from 11:00 AM to 1:00 PM

📍WHERE: RES Americas, Denver, CO

Join us for a morning of conversation, connection, and breakfast as leaders from across energy, infrastructure, and technology come together to discuss one of the most pressing questions facing the power sector today: how is the energy mix evolving to meet rapidly accelerating demand?

Cocktails & Cleantech

🕔 WHEN: Thursday, June 11, 2026 from 5:30 PM to 8:00 PM

📍WHERE: RiNo Beer Garden, Denver, CO

Join us for an evening of cocktails and conversation at RiNo Beer Garden!

EV Workforce Symposium

🕔 WHEN: Friday, June 12, 2026 from 10:00 AM to 3:00 PM

📍WHERE: Colorado Department of Transportation - Denver Headquarters, Denver, CO

Colorado leads in EV adoption – a distinction carrying heavy responsibility. Symposium attendees – state agency leaders, workforce educators, industry partners, and student – gathered to make sure the workforce is ready with appropriate, accessible, and leading-edge training programs. This event is perfect for Automotive Technicians | Charger Installation and Maintenance | First Responders

Public Tour at Jack’s Solar Garden

🕔 WHEN: Saturday, June 13, 2026 from 10:00 AM to 11:30 AM

AND Saturday, June 27, 2026 from 10:00 AM to 11:30 AM

📍WHERE: Jack’s Solar Garden, Longmont, CO

Join a guide from the Colorado Agrivoltaic Learning Center on an interpretive tour of Jack's Solar Garden, the premier agrivoltaic research site in the nation. During this family friendly tour, attendees will be introduced to agrivoltaics, the combination of solar and agriculture, and learn about its potential benefits to farmers, biodiversity and local communities. Attendees will walk among solar panels and observe different plots dedicated to agrivoltaic research. When you leave we hope you have an understanding of the benefits of agrivoltaics and become an advocate for agrivoltaic practices. The money from your admission ticket directly funds us bringing local students to Jack's Solar Garden so that we can introduce our next generations to clean energy, local food and sustainable land-use practices. So, thank you!

Boulder Climate Happy Hour

🕔 WHEN: Wednesday, June 17, 2026 from 5:30 PM to 7:30 PM

📍WHERE: Rayback Collective, Boulder, CO

​Boulder is full of interesting people working on solutions to the climate crisis. Our goal is to bring people with diverse backgrounds together to share ideas, connect, and learn from one another.

CGBG Happy Hour + Live Demos

🕔 WHEN: Thursday, June 18, 2026 from 4:00 PM to 7:00 PM

📍WHERE: See event page for details,

CGBG Happy Hour + Live Demos with B.Public and E Windowtastic

Plugged In & Powered Up: A Policy Update with Naomi

🕔 WHEN: Thursday, June 18, 2026 from 5:30 PM to 7:00 PM

📍WHERE: Women Who Charge Office, Denver, CO

While Sisters in Energy is a dedicated WWC initiative, we are opening the doors for this special update to all WWC supporters! Join us for an exclusive conversation with our very own Naomi, Director of Policy with The Denver Foundation, as she decodes these new laws and explains exactly how they impact us as residents, energy users, and EV drivers.

SunWRISE Hike

🕔 WHEN: Friday, June 19, 2026 from 7:00 AM to 8:30 AM

📍WHERE: See event page for details,

Kick off a Women in Renewables & Energy hike with CMTA, connect, share, and recharge outdoors with inspiring women in energy
Join us for an energizing Women in Renewables morning hike sponsored by CMTA. We’ll meet at 7:00am and set off together at 7:30am, with route options available for both shorter and longer distances.

Sandbox + Solar Summer Party

🕔 WHEN: Tuesday, June 23, 2026 from 6:00 PM to 8:00 PM

📍WHERE: “Sandbox Solar 112 Racquette Dr Unit C · Fort Collins, CO”,

Join us for an evening of networking, snacks, and fun at Sandbox+ Solar with our partners Green Drinks NoCo, Colorado Green Building Guild, and the Sustainable Living Association.

Enjoy yard games, beverages, live music from Fresh Fruit!, and food for purchase from the Cilantro & Lime food truck.

Want to make sure you don’t miss anything? There are a few ways to stay in the loop.

1. Follow Colorado Climatetech on LinkedIn to see the latest on new events

2. Subscribe to this newsletter for monthly summary emails

Subscribe now

Want to contribute or share through the newsletter? I’m looking for collaborators to work on news, spotlights, and more. If you’re interested, email me!

For now, I hope you will share this with a friend. Or better yet, attend a local upcoming event!

Cheers,
William Greenbohl

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Hannah Davis conducted this interview on April 21st, 2025. It has been edited for length and clarity.

Q: How did you first get into climate work?

A: I was always drawn to environmental issues, but I became deeply engaged with climate during my master’s program at Dartmouth in the early 2000s. My advisor was working on climate change and received a grant from the Ford Foundation to study climate justice: the intersections of capital and climate, how financial resources were being unevenly directed toward solutions, and who was being left out of those conversations. We attended the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change negotiations, worked with NGOs in New England, and participated in a global network called Climate Justice Now!. This was 2008, and we were still explaining to many people not only what climate change was, but that its impacts fall hardest on those who have contributed least to the problem.

From there I came to CU Boulder’s geography department for my PhD, where I became deeply engaged with carbon markets, specifically carbon offsets. The central question guiding my dissertation was deceptively simple: What actually is a forest carbon offset? I conducted fieldwork in the Peruvian Amazon and in northern Maine, tracking projects across multiple years to understand who was investing, what outcomes those projects enabled, and where unintended consequences emerged. After graduating in 2018, I consulted with technology startups, Fortune 100 companies, governments and NGOs conducting rigorous due diligence on climate investment. I also taught at Colorado State and Metropolitan State University. Two months ago, I joined Project Drawdown, which has been a dream.

Q: You describe yourself as a social scientist working in climate finance, a somewhat unusual combination. What do you bring to that space?

Every room benefits from having a social scientist in it, even when people do not immediately recognize why. Social science is fundamentally about looking beneath the surface: not accepting dominant narratives at face value, and not assuming that what’s most visible is the whole story. As a geographer, I work at the intersection of people, places, and ideas. There is a tendency in this space to equate “data-driven” and “quantitative” with truth finding, but people are messy. Human behavior, power dynamics, and the lived experience of people affected by climate interventions all constitute real, meaningful data.

A social scientist can identify risk before it materializes, surface equity concerns early, and draw attention to dimensions of a project that technical experts may not be positioned to see. That kind of holistic analysis leads to more resilient climate interventions and stronger investments long-term.

Q: Can you give an example of that perspective revealing something that data alone would have missed?

So often, the most important risks in a carbon project are not captured in the technical models. Community dynamics, land tenure histories, and the relationships between project developers and local stakeholders can determine whether a project succeeds or collapses, yet they rarely appear in a standard due diligence checklist. I have seen projects with strong biophysical fundamentals run into serious trouble because the human or justice dimensions were not adequately understood at the outset. That is precisely where a social science lens adds value. We bring those factors into focus early, when there is time to address them and make climate interventions stronger and more impactful.

Q: You’ve moved across academia, tech, nonprofits, and consulting. Any advice for people trying to navigate different sectors?

Do not reinvent the wheel. People new to the climate space often arrive with tremendous energy, which is important, but they sometimes assume they are the first to have encountered a particular problem or opportunity. It is worth taking time to conduct an informal landscape assessment to understand what has already been tried, where progress has been made, and to learn from others’ mistakes.

I have seen many people burn hot and fast. They arrive with an idea, attract early attention, perhaps raise a seed round, then lose momentum. If you want to be part of the long-term solution, a more deliberate pace can serve you better. Pay attention to what has already been built. Collaborate rather than isolate. The climate ecosystem is deeply interconnected, and people who understand that tend to have a more durable impact.

I would also encourage people entering the field to think carefully about differentiation. There are so many passionate, talented individuals working on climate and not enough well-paying jobs for all of them. Your distinct knowledge and perspective are your greatest assets. My background in social science has distinguished my work in ways I did not fully anticipate at the outset.

Q: Tell us about Project Drawdown and your role there.

Project Drawdown is an independent nonprofit focused on driving bold, science-based climate action. We are working in service of the best available science on what can actually reduce greenhouse gas emissions. That is hard to find, and I do not take it for granted.

The research coming out of Drawdown right now is extraordinary. We recently welcomed Kate Marvel, formerly of NASA, and have a whole team of incredibly brilliant people working to advance science-based climate solutions and strategies. My role is to serve as a translator between that science and the people who have the resources to support it. I work to communicate what climate strategies are proven, effective, and capable of moving the needle on emissions quickly, in ways that resonate with philanthropists and investors. It draws on everything: science communication, the language of finance, and the teaching skills I built teaching four course sections a week as a doctoral student (eeek!).

Q: What climate solutions are you most excited about right now?

I am glad to see growing attention on super pollutants. Carbon dioxide has rightly dominated the climate conversation, but other greenhouse gases, including methane and black carbon, are dramatically more potent in the near term, even if they do not persist in the atmosphere as long. Addressing them creates meaningful breathing room. There is real momentum in the methane space, and in technologies like clean cookstoves that simultaneously reduce super pollutant emissions and improve air quality for communities. Investment in those areas is genuinely exciting.

I am also encouraged by the evolution of forest protection approaches. Early forest carbon projects faced real design challenges: they were often top-down, excluded the communities who directly managed those forests, and in some cases caused harm. A more mature generation of projects is now emerging, co-developed with local and Indigenous communities, structured to give real decision-making power to those on the ground, and bundling multiple interventions rather than treating complex ecosystems as single-variable problems. Agrivoltaics is a compelling example of that integrated thinking, combining shade-assisted agriculture with solar generation on the same land. These multi-benefit approaches tend to produce stronger, more durable outcomes.

Q: What gives you reason for optimism right now, especially given the current political and funding environment?

Climate change is a biophysical phenomenon, and a collective crisis. It does not care about partisan politics or whether a mega corporation paused its sustainability commitments.

What I keep returning to is how much climate progress has already become embedded in everyday life, to the point where we no longer register it as such. Heat pumps are being installed across entire neighborhoods, not because homeowners have made an ideological commitment, but because the economics are compelling. Solar panels are going up because they make financial sense. My father bought a hybrid car because it’s fast and inexpensive to operate. He doesn’t think of it as a climate decision, but it is.

When things become mainstream, we stop recognizing them as victories, but they are. One of the most important things the climate community can do is look back, take stock, and acknowledge what actually worked. If we can see and celebrate our wins, it gives us momentum to keep moving forward.

Q: Is there anything outside your paid work that you’re passionate about related to climate or sustainability?

Honestly, I don’t really draw a line. Climate work is just who I am and how I understand the world. What has deepened that in recent years is becoming a parent. We have the opportunity to teach children from the very beginning how to be good stewards and how to engage with the world with care. Recently Project Drawdown asked its social media followers why they care about action. One woman said: I do what I do with the hope of leaving a better planet for my child, but also leaving a better child for the planet. That says it better than I could.

To explore the science behind the world’s most impactful climate solutions, check out the Drawdown Explorer — Project Drawdown’s free, publicly available research tool covering dozens of proven climate interventions. Lauren also recommends signing up for the newsletter and attending events at the Denver Museum of Nature & Science’s Institute for Science & Policy, which is doing important work at the intersection of science, policy, finance, and technology.

Connect with Lauren on LinkedIn and learn more about Project Drawdown.

Despite the mild winter, the climate crowd is clearly excited about spring. There’s a long list of 22 events this month, with a few conferences and a bunch of happy hours. And as we find more events, we’ll be keeping you up to date with our 🆕 Live Calendar 📅, now permanently published as a permanent tab on Substack.

Events This Month

• 🌻 Public Tour at Jack’s Solar Garden: May 2, Sat in Longmont

• 🏡 Climate Resilient Neighborhoods Mini Grants Community Sessions: May 5, Tue in Denver

• 🍺 Nature x Solutions Happy Hour: May 6, Wed in Edgewater

• 🕵️‍♀️ Fusion Energy Trivia Night: May 6, Wed in Boulder

• 🎤 Switch - Denver Event: May 7, Thu in Denver

• 🤑 Sustainable Business Symposium: May 8, Fri in Denver

• 🏢 USGBC ADAPT 2026 Conference: May 12, Tue in Denver

• 📊 Overview of U.S. Energy Information Administration’s Annual Energy 2026 Outlook: May 12, Tue in Golden

• 💨 How to start a Hydrogen Hub: Colorado Style!: May 14, Thu in Denver

• 🍻 CGBG Denver Happy Hour: May 14, Thu in Denver

• 🌻 Public Tour at Jack’s Solar Garden: May 16, Sat in Longmont

• 🍻 COSSA/CRES May Happy Hour: May 19, Tue in Denver

• 🍻 Boulder Climate Happy Hour: May 20, Wed in Boulder

• 🛤️ Logistics are Key to Decarbonizing Rail Transportation: May 28, Thu in Golden

• 🌻 Public Tour at Jack’s Solar Garden: May 30, Sat in Longmont

Read on for more details about this month’s upcoming events.

Sneak Peak at the Following Month

• 👩‍🔧 EV Workforce Symposium: Jun 12, Fri in Denver

• 🍻 Boulder Climate Happy Hour: Jun 17, Wed in Boulder

• 🍻 CGBG Happy Hour + Live Demos: Jun 18, Thu in Littleton

• 🥾 SunWRISE Hike: Jun 19, Fri in Golden

There will be more! These are just a few that I know about if you like to plan ahead.

Climate News in CO

You know how coal is always touted as “firm, reliable power”? Well not in Colorado. Multiple coal plant failures over the last 9 months have left Xcel with a nearly 600MW capacity shortfall going into this summer. They are scrambling to find power as another summer is expected to bring record-breaking temperatures and high peak loads.

Job Openings in CO

The job board has a new home → Substack navigation bar. This section will be going away to make more room for events.

Event Details

Public Tour at Jack’s Solar Garden

🕔 WHEN: Saturday, May 2, 2026 from 10:00 AM to 11:30 AM

📍WHERE: Jack’s Solar Garden, Longmont, CO

Join a guide from the Colorado Agrivoltaic Learning Center on an interpretive tour of Jack's Solar Garden, the premier agrivoltaic research site in the nation. During this family friendly tour, attendees will be introduced to agrivoltaics, the combination of solar and agriculture, and learn about its potential benefits to farmers, biodiversity and local communities. Attendees will walk among solar panels and observe different plots dedicated to agrivoltaic research. 

Climate Resilient Neighborhoods Mini Grants Community Sessions

🕔 WHEN: Tuesday, May 5, 2026 from 5:00 PM to 7:00 PM

📍WHERE: See event page for details,

We’re offering upfront funding to community-led projects that advance local climate solutions. Come chat with CASR staff about your ideas!

Denver's Office of Climate Action, Sustainability and Resiliency (CASR) is launching a new mini grant opportunity! This funding aims to help neighborhood groups and community-based organizations co-create and implement climate, sustainability, and resiliency projects

Nature x Solutions Happy Hour

🕔 WHEN: Wednesday, May 6, 2026 from 5:30 PM to 7:00 PM

📍WHERE: Barquentine Brewing Company, Edgewater, CO

​Connect & Innovate with Local Colorado Eco-Leaders working on nature. Happy hour featuring expert speaker on water issues- Sami Tellatin, Head of Water & Climate Development at Kilimo

Fusion Energy Trivia Night

🕔 WHEN: Wednesday, May 6, 2026 from 6:00 PM to 7:00 PM

📍WHERE: See event page for details,

​No PhD required. Join the Colorado Cleantech and Horne Technologies for Fusion Trivia Night on Wednesday 5/6 at 6 PM and get a fun introduction to one of the most exciting energy technologies on the planet that's happening right here in Colorado!

Switch - Denver Event

🕔 WHEN: Thursday, May 7, 2026 from 6:00 PM to 9:00 PM

📍WHERE: Denver Comedy Underground, Denver, CO

Switch is an opportunity to learn from, teach to, and build relationships with professionals in Colorado's clean tech community. Submit your topic today!

Sustainable Business Symposium

🕔 WHEN: Friday, May 8, 2026 from 8:30 AM to 5:00 PM

📍WHERE: Margery Reed Hall, Denver, CO

Join leaders from business, government and nonprofits, alongside faculty and students to tackle real sustainability challenges. Senator Michael Bennet will join us for a fireside chat during lunch to talk about the future of sustainability. Join us for this opportunity to experience The Daniels Effect and participate in solving real-world challenges for the public good.

USGBC ADAPT 2026 Conference

🕔 WHEN: Tuesday, May 12, 2026 from 8:30 AM to 4:30 PM

📍WHERE: Denver Art Museum, Denver, CO

USGBC's 2026 ADAPT: Denver regional conference will convene hundreds of industry leaders and innovators to address the critical intersection of resilience and the built environment.

With a focus on the growing impacts of climate change, population growth and extreme weather in the Midwest, Southwest and Mountain regions, ADAPT will explore scaleable real-world strategies for building communities that are healthy, sustainable and future-ready.

Overview of U.S. Energy Information Administration’s Annual Energy 2026 Outlook

🕔 WHEN: Tuesday, May 12, 2026 from 11:00 AM to 12:00 PM

📍WHERE: Colorado School of Mines, Golden, CO

EIA Administrator Tristan Abbey will give an overview of results from the Annual Energy Outlook 2026. The report covers production, consumption, trade, and prices across the U.S. energy economy. He will discuss the different scenarios explored in AEO2026 and how different assumptions affect U.S. energy markets through 2050.

How to start a Hydrogen Hub: Colorado Style!

🕔 WHEN: Thursday, May 14, 2026 from 1:00 PM to 4:30 PM

📍WHERE: CSU Spur, Denver, CO

Ready to dive deeper into the hydrogen revolution? Join us in person for Hydrogen 102, where we'll explore how to kickstart a hydrogen hub the Colorado way. Connect with passionate people, learn practical steps, and get inspired by real-world success stories from across the state.

CGBG Denver Happy Hour

🕔 WHEN: Thursday, May 14, 2026 from 5:00 PM to 7:00 PM

📍WHERE: The Artisan Shop, Denver, CO

During the event you'll have the opportunity to check out Artisan Shop's new Denver showroom, meet the team, and see examples of their stunning millwork - combining today’s modern technology with the hands-on craftsmanship of true artisans.

Public Tour at Jack’s Solar Garden

🕔 WHEN: Saturday, May 16, 2026 from 10:00 AM to 11:30 AM

📍WHERE: Jack’s Solar Garden, Longmont, CO

Join a guide from the Colorado Agrivoltaic Learning Center on an interpretive tour of Jack's Solar Garden, the premier agrivoltaic research site in the nation. During this family friendly tour, attendees will be introduced to agrivoltaics, the combination of solar and agriculture, and learn about its potential benefits to farmers, biodiversity and local communities. Attendees will walk among solar panels and observe different plots dedicated to agrivoltaic research.

COSSA/CRES May Happy Hour

🕔 WHEN: Tuesday, May 19, 2026 from 5:00 PM to 7:00 PM

📍WHERE: Little Machine Beer, Denver, CO

We're teaming up with our friends at the Colorado Solar and Storage Association (COSSA) for a May Happy Hour at Little Machine Brewing in Denver!

Boulder Climate Happy Hour

🕔 WHEN: Wednesday, May 20, 2026 from 5:30 PM to 7:30 PM

📍WHERE: Rayback Collective, Boulder, CO

​Boulder is full of interesting people working on solutions to the climate crisis. Our goal is to bring people with diverse backgrounds together to share ideas, connect, and learn from one another.

Logistics are Key to Decarbonizing Rail Transportation

🕔 WHEN: Thursday, May 28, 2026 from 7:00 PM to 8:30 PM

📍WHERE: Jefferson Unitarian Church, Golden, CO

Decarbonizing rail transportation often focuses on building better engines but even larger gains are possible with strategies that optimize logistics by eliminating unneeded movement which cost energy and money. Here to explain the Advanced Locomotive Technology and Rail Infrastructure Optimization System (ALTRIOS) is Jason Lustbader, Commercial Vehicle Technology Group Manager at NLR (formerly NREL).

Public Tour at Jack’s Solar Garden

🕔 WHEN: Saturday, May 30, 2026 from 10:00 AM to 11:30 AM

📍WHERE: Jack’s Solar Garden, Longmont, CO

Join a guide from the Colorado Agrivoltaic Learning Center on an interpretive tour of Jack's Solar Garden, the premier agrivoltaic research site in the nation. During this family friendly tour, attendees will be introduced to agrivoltaics, the combination of solar and agriculture, and learn about its potential benefits to farmers, biodiversity and local communities. Attendees will walk among solar panels and observe different plots dedicated to agrivoltaic research. When you leave we hope you have an understanding of the benefits of agrivoltaics and become an advocate for agrivoltaic practices. The money from your admission ticket directly funds us bringing local students to Jack's Solar Garden so that we can introduce our next generations to clean energy, local food and sustainable land-use practices. So, thank you!

Want to make sure you don’t miss anything? There are a few ways to stay in the loop.

1. Follow Colorado Climatetech on LinkedIn to see the latest on new events

2. Subscribe to this newsletter for monthly summary emails

Subscribe now

Want to contribute or share through the newsletter? I’m looking for collaborators to work on news, spotlights, and more. If you’re interested, email me!

For now, I hope you will share this with a friend. Or better yet, attend a local upcoming event!

Cheers,
William Greenbohl

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Colorado Climate Week showed up exactly how you’d hope: rooms full of real people, real conversations, and real solutions. Huge thanks to Elephant Energy and Lightship for hosting two energizing gatherings with us and to the Colorado Cleantech team for bringing it all together.

If you know any cool climate organizations or companies that you want to visit, send an email with your ideas and connections to: theelectrifyguy+events[at]gmail[d0t]com.

Colorado Climate Week Themes

The headline takeaway? This community is moving from ideas to execution. Across policy, tech, academia, and investment, the tone was overwhelmingly the same: less talk, more building. Economics was central to every conversation as panelists discussed market forces and the requirements for scaling impact. Whether it was AI and virtual power plants, geothermal and fusion, or workforce and equity, Colorado offered a proving ground for climate solutions that actually scale.

Events This Month

• 🏗️ Powering Data Centers in the Mountain West: Apr 7, Tue in Denver

• 🔥 Colorado Wildland Fire Conference: Apr 13, Mon in Fort Collins

• ❄️ Spring into Clean Energy: Apr 13, Mon in Steamboat Springs

• ⛽️ Energy and Environment Symposium: Apr 14, Tue in New Castle

• 🍻 Boulder Climate Happy Hour: Apr 15, Wed in Boulder

• 🍺 Earth Day Fort Collins Volunteer + Beer: Apr 18, Sat in Fort Collins

• 🌎 Earth Day 2026: Apr 22, Wed

• 🍻 Denver Energy Baddies Happy Hour: Apr 23, Thu in Denver

• ☀️ Solar & Energy Storage Summit 2026: Apr 29, Wed in Broomfield

Read on for more details about this month’s upcoming events.

Sneak Peak at the Following Month

• 🎤 Switch - Denver Event: May 7, Thu in Denver

• 🏢 USGBC ADAPT 2026 Conference: May 12, Tue in Denver

• 🍻 Boulder Climate Happy Hour: May 20, Wed in Boulder

There will be more! These are just a few that I know about if you like to plan ahead.

Climate News in CO

Remember that proposed bill about “plug in” (aka balcony) solar in Colorado? It has taken a big step and passed the House with a 48-16 vote. Almost there! These small DIY solar systems could show up in Costco before we know it.

Job Openings in CO

🤝 Looking to connect with professionals working in climate?

#OpenDoorClimate runs a directory of climate professionals willing to chat with green jobseekers and maintains a great list of resources for job seekers.

🔍 Looking for a climate tech job?

Our friends at ClimateTechList have created a live Colorado-specific job openings tracker.

⛰️ Check out the Colorado list! 🏔️

Event Details

Powering Data Centers in the Mountain West

🕔 WHEN: Tuesday, April 7, 2026 from 11:00 AM to 1:00 PM

📍WHERE: Wright Room, Denver, CO

As AI and digital infrastructure drive a massive surge in data center development across the United States, the Mountain West has become a critical frontier. Join WRISE Colorado in Denver for an in-depth lunch-and-learn on Tuesday, April 7, 2026, to explore the complex intersection of energy demand, policy, and infrastructure.

Colorado Wildland Fire Conference

🕔 WHEN: Monday, April 13, 2026 from 8:00 AM to 4:00 PM

📍WHERE: Fort Collins Marriott, Fort Collins, CO

The Colorado Wildland Fire Conference is geared toward professionals working proactively to improve wildfire outcomes in Colorado communities and landscapes such as Mitigation Specialists, Emergency Managers, Firefighters, Researchers, Foresters, Developers and Policy Makers. Anyone wishing to learn more about how they can reduce their community’s vulnerability to wildfire is welcome to attend.

Spring into Clean Energy

🕔 WHEN: Monday, April 13, 2026 from 5:30 PM to 8:00 PM

📍WHERE: Steamboat Social Club, Steamboat Springs, CO

Join Protect Our Winters and Greenlight America for refreshments, drinks and an evening of education around renewable energy. A panel of local experts will delve into tricky topics and important questions around getting renewables on the grid – come enjoy an evening of education and community!

Energy and Environment Symposium

🕔 WHEN: Tuesday, April 14, 2026 from 3:28 PM to 3:29 PM

📍WHERE: New Hope Church, New Castle, CO

This two-day event is tailored to meet the needs of municipal and county officials tasked with navigating planning, social, fiscal, regulatory and environmental issues related to energy development. In 2025, 330 local government staff and elected officials, state regulators, and industry from across Colorado participated.

Boulder Climate Happy Hour

🕔 WHEN: Wednesday, April 15, 2026 from 5:30 PM to 7:30 PM

📍WHERE: Rayback Collective, Boulder, CO

​Boulder is full of interesting people working on solutions to the climate crisis. Our goal is to bring people with diverse backgrounds together to share ideas, connect, and learn from one another.

Earth Day Fort Collins Volunteer + Beer

🕔 WHEN: Saturday, April 18, 2026 from 1:00 PM to 3:00 PM

📍WHERE: Odell Brewing Company, Fort Collins, CO

This year Earth Day Fort Collins will be hosted at Odell's Brewing. Sign up now to volunteer here. Green Drinks will be joining the fun at Earth Day Ft. Collins with Sustainable Living Association.

Earth Day 2026

🕔 WHEN: Wednesday, April 22, 2026 from 12:00 AM to 11:30 PM

📍WHERE: Earth

Celebration events range all along the Front Range. Look for one in your town!

Denver Energy Baddies Happy Hour

🕔 WHEN: Thursday, April 23, 2026 from 5:00 PM to 8:00 PM

📍WHERE: Prost Brewing Company, Denver, CO

For those new to the Denver Energy Baddies, we are an informal group that meets up every other month. There are no sponsors, agendas, or requirements. If you love talking energy and live in the Denver area, please join us.

Solar & Energy Storage Summit 2026

🕔 WHEN: Wednesday, April 29, 2026 from 8:00 AM to 5:00 PM

📍WHERE: Omni Interlocken Hotel, Broomfield, CO

Wood Mackenzie’s 19th annual Solar & Energy Storage Summit returns to Denver from April 29-30 2026, bringing together over 450 senior leaders from US solar and storage developers, utilities, IPPs, C&I offtakers, and state and federal government. 

Want to make sure you don’t miss anything? There are a few ways to stay in the loop.

1. Follow Colorado Climatetech on LinkedIn to see the latest on new events

2. Subscribe to this newsletter for monthly summary emails

Subscribe now

Want to contribute or share through the newsletter? I’m looking for collaborators to work on news, spotlights, and more. If you’re interested, email me!

For now, I hope you will share this with a friend. Or better yet, attend a local upcoming event!

Cheers,
William Greenbohl

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Your Unofficial Guide to Colorado Climate Week 2026

Starting on March 30th, Colorado Climate Week (CCW) descends on Denver and Boulder to bring together founders, investors, policymakers, researchers, and climate operators across the state.

This guide may change over the next two weeks as more events are added.

👉 Browse the full schedule at coclimateweek.com

Why another Climate Week in Colorado?

Colorado Climate Week is not a copy and paste of NYCW or SFCW. CCW is intentionally aligned to the same week as the Industry Growth Forum, the premier pitch event of the National Lab of the Rockies (r.i.p. NREL). The IGF brings hundreds of investors and entrepreneurs to Colorado, and CCW is designed to showcase what sets Colorado apart: our culture of collaboration and our long-term commitment to climate solutions, even the hard parts.

If New York Climate Week is about finance, and San Francisco Climate Week is about software startups, Colorado Climate Week is about the physical backbone of the climate transition, from grid infrastructure and climate science to land, water, and the hardtech innovations powering the clean energy economy.

CCW will spotlight and accelerate Colorado’s outsized potential for climate impact to bring investments and attention to a state pushing for local, innovative, actionable solutions.

Do I really need a guide?

There are nearly 100 events planned which is great for the ecosystem, but overwhelming if you’re deciding what to attend.

I tried dumping the whole calendar into ChatGPT and asking for tips… it wasn’t very helpful.

🗺️ So I assembled a quick guide to get you started and help you find the best sessions for you.

But AI did help me assemble this cute infographic. Enjoy!

What you need to know

Mar 30-31: Denver focused

The first two days are centered in Denver at a few central locations.

• CSU Spur Campus

• The Alliance Center

• Forney Museum of Transportation

• Various breweries

Apr 1-2: Boulder focused

The second half of the week moves to Boulder a few central locations.

• Limelight

• Rayback Collective

• Various cafes

Themes to Watch This Year

🤖 AI + Energy Infrastructure
Multiple conversations about the energy demand from AI and how to build climate-aligned computing.

⚡ The Future of the Grid
Sessions on utilities, storage, virtual power plants, grid resilience, nuclear, and geothermal energy.

🌾 Climate + Agriculture
Colorado’s agriculture sector and its intersection with water, food systems, and climate resilience.

💰 Climate Capital + Startups
Founder playbooks, investor panels, and discussions on scaling climate companies.

👷 Workforce + Community Impact
How Colorado is building the workforce needed for the energy transition.

What not to miss

Shameless plug. Our COCT Field Trips are back!

We’re starting this year with a CCW special, a behind the scenes tour of the Lightship factory in Broomfield on April 2nd.

Come see their new AE.1 electric, aerodynamic, battery-powered trailer in person with a guided tour of the showroom and production line.

Register here: https://luma.com/h291u09c

What you should keep a look out for

Huge thank you to Colorado Cleantech for organizing CCW and all of the main stage events. But this year features an expanded set of events from local climate communities. These are some of our favorite groups to keep an eye out for.

• Women Who Charge [WWC] → ex: running The Mobility Exchange

• Women of Renewable Industries and Sustainable Energy [WRISE]

• Colorado Renewable Energy Society [CRES]

• Women in Cleantech and Sustainability [WCS]

• Nature X Solutions

• Colorado Agrivoltaic Learning Center [CALC]

If you just can’t wait

There are some great climate events in the build up to CCW. What better way to get pumped up than the launch of Denver’s newest professional sports team!

• 🍻 Boulder Climate Happy Hour: Mar 18, Wed

• 🍻 Solardarity: Mar 19, Thu

• 🙋‍♀️ Energy trivia: Mar 19, Thu

• 🗺️ Location Analytics in Colorado’s Clean Energy Planning: Mar 19, Thu

• 🌵 Weather, Climate, and Climate Change in Colorado: Mar 24, Tue

• 📈 Solar Peaks & Windy Nights: Making Energy Use Match Clean Supply: Mar 26, Thu

• ⚽️ WRISE CO Game Day - Denver’s New NWSL team: Mar 28, Sat

Final Tip

Most sessions are free or low cost, but many fill up quickly.

If something looks interesting, RSVP early.

Want to make sure you don’t miss anything? There are a few ways to stay in the loop.

1. Follow Colorado Climatetech on LinkedIn to see the latest on new events

2. Subscribe to this newsletter for monthly summary emails

Subscribe now

Want to contribute or share through the newsletter? I’m looking for collaborators to work on news, spotlights, and more. If you’re interested, email me!

For now, I hope you will share this with a friend. Or better yet, join a local upcoming event!

Cheers,
William Greenbohl

Share Colorado Climatetech Newsletter

Hannah Davis conducted the interview on December 8th, 2024. It has been edited for length and clarity.

Q: Can you tell me about your background and how you got into climate work?

A: I had a winding career path that started in healthcare and shifted to climate work almost 8 years ago. My “aha climate moment” came in 2016 with the Paris Agreement. It was the first time I’d seen that level of global attention and media coverage about climate change. I was, honestly, terrified about all the human suffering that would come if we go beyond two degrees of warming. I was also starting to see the very real effects of climate change in my own life: less snow, more unpredictable weather, hotter summers. It became impossible to deny.

I’ve always been guided by wanting to help people. Out of college, I worked in the healthcare industry but quickly became disillusioned by the greed in pharma. I moved closer towards what felt like impacting lives when I shifted to International Development work at the Gates Foundation. But once I had my climate revaluation in 2016, when I thought about what climate change would do, I thought: you can’t have health without a healthy planet.

Knowing I wanted to do something in the climate space, but not sure what, I went to Business School at Berkeley Haas. After graduating I took a job at Nike in corporate sustainability where I worked for three and a half years. I learned a lot about manufacturing, materials, energy, waste, and carbon footprinting. But after a while, I felt like I was just making shoes a little less bad.

While at Nike I started volunteering with a home electrification organization in Portland, Oregon, where I was living at the time. The project I was involved in switched low-income households to heat pump water heaters and paired the upgrade with community solar, dramatically lowering their energy bills. The work felt so much more direct and impactful. Around the same time my husband Bobby and I both electrified our own homes, his in Virginia, mine in Portland, and both of us had nightmare experiences. We thought, maybe we should try to do something about this.

Q: How did that lead to starting your own business?

A: We moved to Denver to be closer to family, and we both took jobs at startups in the electrification space. I worked at Zero Homes and Bobby worked at Elephant Energy. We wanted to learn the business: what homes are suitable for heat pumps, how to size them correctly, and how to talk with skeptical homeowners.

I was the first hire at Zero Homes and there were 10 people when I left. That experience helped me realize how much I enjoyed building a business. I loved building a company with culture, purpose, and impact.

Quickly, both of us became frustrated because we were largely serving folks with more than enough money to afford a heat pump. If you want a heat pump in Denver or Boulder, there are 20 contractors you can call. In rural Colorado, there’s no one. We were leaving out entire populations who needed help the most.

The idea for Blanca came when we lived in La Veta, Colorado for a summer 4 years ago right as we moved to Colorado. La Veta is a small town of 800 people where my family has had a cabin for about 100 years, and where my parents retired. We tried to help a couple of friends get heat pumps installed. It was a disaster. We called contractors within an hour radius—Pueblo, Colorado Springs, Trinidad. Either they wouldn’t answer, or they’d give us what we call the “FU price,” adding $10,000 because they didn’t want to drive out there. When we finally got contractors to come to La Veta, it was clear they didn’t know what they were doing. They hadn’t heard of cold climate heat pumps. They didn’t do a Manual J load calculation or any proper sizing. We left discouraged, thinking we couldn’t help anyone.

We knew there was a business here, but we didn’t know enough about electrification at that point to launch something ourselves. After we gained more experience at Zero and Elephant, and realized the fast pace of startup life wasn’t compatible with starting a family, we returned to that problem. That’s how Blanca Electric Homes was born.

Q: Tell me about Blanca Electric Homes and how you’re solving this problem.

A: At Blanca, we sell and install heat pumps in Southern Colorado, handling all the sales and marketing work while subcontracting the actual installations. We only launched last summer (June 2025) and so we’re still very early! We have ambitions to bring installation work in-house, but we wanted to get installs under our belt and prove that there’s enough demand in these rural markets.

The core idea behind Blanca is that we need to be there, physically present in these communities. What we learned while living in La Veta is that many rural households are low-income, retirees who are distrustful of new technology and salespeople claiming to “help them out.” To serve these people we need to be trusted messengers and to do that we need to be part of the community.

So, we moved to La Veta! We have a rental house there, and we’re in the community more than we’re in Denver. Our daughter is in daycare there. We show up at local events and talk about Blanca Electric Homes and heat pumps. At the last potluck dinner I went to in town the woman next to me complained about her heating system and the next day I was in her home sizing it for a heat pump.

Q: What’s been the biggest challenge?

A: Honestly, the reliability of rural contractors is still our biggest challenge. We learned what good looks like from working at companies with strong contractor networks, so we knew what questions to ask and how to probe better than we did a few years ago.

We found contractors who already know how to install Mitsubishi heat pumps, the brand we work with. We also worked directly with utilities to identify contractors with good reviews. We’ve worked hard to vet contractors in the area and have stopped working with some who don’t know heat pumps well enough or aren’t willing to work with us.

Our biggest learning: most contractors in rural areas don’t need more work. They’re busy all the time and most aren’t interested in getting more business. That’s unfortunate because rebate programs sell themselves by promising more business. What contractors do want is consistent work. If you can promise them three months of work equaling $50,000, then they’re interested.

We’ve learned there’s a sweet spot: contractors who were working with bigger shops, and now want to go out on their own and build a couple of crews, but don’t yet have a book of business. They’re very experienced with heat pumps but need steady work. Our two best contractors fit exactly that profile.

We realized we’re not yet able to provide training or any sort of workforce development ourselves to grow the number of contractors. Contractors don’t want to go to traditional trainings anyway. Two days of training means an opportunity cost of $7,000 when they don’t even need more business. The incentives are upside-down. The training that would work better is on-the-job learning, bringing someone less experienced onto a job with the promise of consistent business afterward.

We’re hoping to partner with a local high school that’s part of Colorado’s CTE pilot program. High schoolers learning about trades will shadow some of our heat pump install jobs. That feels like a better pipeline for training than trying to retrain someone in their 50s who’s been installing furnaces their whole life and who doesn’t want more business.

Q: How do you tackle the affordability challenge?

A: We deliberately timed our launch with the HEAR rebates. A statewide program offering up to $14,000 off electrification upgrades and about $10,000 off a heat pump for income-qualified households. We knew we wanted to work in rural areas and so we zero-ed in on places where the economics of switching are a no-brainer. The lowest-hanging fruit is propane.

People spend so much money on propane, and they hate having a tank outside that’s essentially a bomb in their backyard, especially in wildfire-prone areas. La Veta had a wildfire six years ago, so this is top of mind for homeowners.

We surveyed the state and mapped out which areas were on propane and had towns with a population of 500 people or more. La Veta was one of the few that fit that profile, and I had all these personal connections there. The economic argument is compelling: if you’re spending $2,500 a year to heat your home with propane, you’ll now spend $400-500 a year to heat it with electricity. Even if it costs more upfront, the savings make it doable. Paired with HEAR rebates, it’s actually cheaper to buy a heat pump upfront than any other furnace replacement.

The Colorado Energy Office says the rebates will last five years, but talking to other contractors and knowing the backlog, I think it’s probably closer to two years. Our goal is to maximize rebates going to this community in the next two years, then figure out what’s next.

We’re also experimenting with lower-cost cold climate heat pump equipment available directly from wholesalers, cutting out the middleman. And we’re learning about other rebate programs that stack on top of HEAR. We just discovered a Black Hills Energy program that offers free heat pumps for low-income households. When I found it on their website, I called the program administrator and asked how they advertise it. He said they don’t really want to because all the money would get used. I thought: so you just have this pot of money sitting there unused? We now have households lined up to take advantage of it.

Our hope is to rely on word-of-mouth and referrals to drive more business. I was driving through a neighborhood where 25% of houses have solar, but no one has a heat pump. We’re doing a heat pump install in that neighborhood and already have that homeowner signed up to knock doors with us and invite her neighbors to join her in saving thousands of dollars a year with a heat pump. We’re the only contractor registered to offer these rebates in five surrounding counties. If we weren’t there, no rebates would be flowing to these communities.

Q: Are there other states or models you’re looking to for inspiration?

A: Maine is probably the best analog to Colorado. They similarly have rural areas on delivered fuels, in their case, oil instead of propane. They also have a patchwork of utilities with one or two big ones and a bunch of co-ops, just like Colorado. That matters economically because co-ops tend to have slightly lower electricity rates, which affects the savings calculation.

Companies like Dave’s World started about 10 years ago doing the same thing we’re doing. They started in one rural town, really got traction, then moved to adjacent towns. They now have multiple offices, including in bigger cities. The difference is that 10 years ago, no one was doing heat pumps anywhere in Maine, so they started small and were able to capture the majority of the state’s market. In Colorado, lots of people are doing heat pumps in Denver and Boulder, but none in rural areas. I don’t imagine us working in urban markets, since that’s not who we’re trying to serve.

Honestly, the playbook isn’t that sophisticated: be a trusted messenger in the community, sell a quality product like cold climate heat pumps, ensure your install is high quality and get a flywheel going where a few good installations lead to neighbor referrals.

Q: How has being located in Colorado impacted your work?

A: It’s been really rewarding to see how everyone in the Colorado climate community is rooting for us. We built a strong network working in Denver and Boulder, and people understand how hard it is to work in rural areas. We’re traveling constantly, in our car a lot, and living in a small town that’s not what we originally signed up for when we moved to Denver.

We’re also learning fast that many of these rebate programs aren’t well set-up for rural contractors. As an example, one requirement is having a $1 million workers’ comp policy. We don’t have employees, we’re literally paying for a piece of paper. We’ve had to be on the phone with program administrators saying their requirements don’t make sense for small contractors. It’s frustrating but also rewarding to know that we’re fighting on behalf of “the little guys” in the space. We’re a Mom & Pop shop in a small town, so now we’re one of those little guys.

But we’ve had multiple contractor friends in Denver say, “If something falls through with one of your contractors, call me and I’ll help you.” That support means everything. The work is hard in the most frustratingly bureaucratic way, but it’s also incredibly rewarding.

Q: Is there something climate or sustainability-related you do outside of work that you’re passionate about?

A: I used to be more involved with Go Electric Colorado. I was early on their board before starting at Zero Homes. Since having our first kid, a lot of our hobbies have shrunk, but we’re trying to incorporate sustainability into every aspect of our lives.

We live what we preach so we have an electrified home and drive an EV. We try to be sustainable but have learned that having a kid means an entirely new amount of stuff you suddenly need. The biggest thing we’ve tried to do is buy less. We’re creating a community around sharing, reusing, and shopping at used stores. Instead of defaulting to buying something new, I reach out to my network of mom friends and ask if someone has something or wants something.

I’ve even turned one of my neighbors, who doesn’t prioritize sustainability but does value frugality, onto a used kids’ clothing store. She now goes once a week instead of buying off Amazon. I consider that a small win.

Q: How can the Colorado climate community support your work?

A: First, if you know anyone in Southern Colorado who needs a heat pump, send them our way! Second, if you know contractors, especially anyone with an inkling of wanting to work in rural Colorado or relocate to the mountains, we’d love to connect.

Third, and this might be less tangible but equally important. I hope more people really think about the rural problem in this country. A big motivator for me is recognizing who’s being left out of the energy transition, folks in rural communities. I think that, along with many other reasons, is why people in rural areas feel left out and, ultimately, why our country is so divided and polarized.

It’s really hard to put yourself in the shoes of someone who lives in a rundown house, doesn’t have enough money for repairs, is retired and struggling to keep up with SNAP benefits, and then their heat goes out. What do you do? Heat pumps have almost always been out of the question because of the extra time it takes to switch from a gas/propane infrastructure to electric. We’re trying to change that. We’ve now been in people’s homes and seen the oldest furnaces I’ve ever seen in my life, furnaces that could go out any second. Some folks we’re working with have no heat at all. They’ve opted to go without because they can’t afford it.

If people had more awareness and empathy for how many people are living day-to-day, I think we’d be in a better place. Whether that motivates someone to give to a nonprofit, volunteer, or just be more generous to people in their community. We need more of that. We are part of this community now. When someone has an accident or loses a loved one, we’re already bringing soup over and trying to help as much as possible.

You can learn more about Blanca Electric Homes at their website or follow Anne on LinkedIn.

Keeping this March issue light, because we’ll be doing a Colorado Climate Week special in two weeks. Stay posted and get pumped!

Events This Month

• ☀️ Solar Power & Energy Storage Mountain West Conference: Mar 2, Mon in Denver

• 📜 Climate Lobby Day 2026: Mar 6, Fri in Denver

• 💨 Geothermal Industry & Market Open House: Mar 9, Mon in Grand Junction

• 🌻 Free Agrivoltaics Webinar: Fire Safety Within Your Panels: Mar 12, Thu

• 🍻 Boulder Climate Happy Hour: Mar 18, Wed in Boulder

• 🍻 Solardarity: Mar 19, Thu in Denver

• 🎤 Switch - Denver: Apr 30, Thu in Denver

• 🙋‍♀️ Energy trivia: Mar 19, Thu in Boulder

• ⚽️ WRISE CO Game Day - Denver NWSL team: Mar 28, Sat in Denver

• 🌎 Colorado Climate Week: Mar 30, Mon - MORE to come!

• ⚙️ NLR Industry Growth Forum 2026: Mar 31, Tue in Denver

Read on for more details about this month’s upcoming events.

Sneak Peak at the Following Month

• 🍻 Nature x Solutions: Apr 2, Thu in Boulder

• 🍻 Boulder Climate Happy Hour: Apr 15, Wed in Boulder

• 🍺 Earth Day Fort Collins Volunteer + Beer: Apr 18, Sat in Fort Collins

• ☀️ Solar & Energy Storage Summit 2026: Apr 29, Wed in Broomfield

There will be more! These are just a few that I know about if you like to plan ahead.

Climate News in CO

Live in an apartment, renting a place, have a shaded roof, or just can’t shell out $30k for a full solar rooftop system? Colorado is considering “balcony” solar in a new bill. It’s already legal in Utah, and Colorado, along with 30 other states, seems poised to follow suit.

Job Openings in CO

🤝 Looking to connect with professionals working in climate?

#OpenDoorClimate runs a directory of climate professionals willing to chat with green jobseekers and maintains a great list of resources for job seekers.

🔍 Looking for a climate tech job?

Our friends at ClimateTechList have created a live Colorado-specific job openings tracker.

⛰️ Check out the Colorado list! 🏔️

Event Details

Solar Power & Energy Storage Mountain West Conference

🕔 WHEN: Monday, March 2, 2026 to March 4, 2026

📍WHERE: Hilton Denver City Center, Denver, CO

Solar Power and Energy Storage Mountain West is presented by the Colorado Solar and Storage Association (COSSA), the state’s leading trade association for more than 35 years. COSSA’s perceptive industry knowledge has informed the carefully picked subject matter and conference design. The three days are designed to advance your understanding of new policies and opportunities to equip your business with the necessary skills to compete in the ever-developing clean energy industry.

Climate Lobby Day 2026

🕔 WHEN: Friday, March 6, 2026 from 8:00 AM to 12:00 PM

📍WHERE: First Baptist Church of Denver, Denver, CO

Join climate activists from across the state for our 11th annual Climate Lobby Day on March 6th, 2026 co-hosted by multiple Colorado organizations! Whether you're lobbying for the first time or are a seasoned citizen lobbyist, you'll have the opportunity to learn the ropes, recieve support, and apply your passion with friends and allies. 

Geothermal Industry & Market Open House

🕔 WHEN: Monday, March 9, 2026 from 2:30 PM to 5:30 PM

📍WHERE: Colorado Mesa University, Grand Junction, CO

Join us for a Geothermal Industry & Market Open House on March 9, 2026, at Colorado Mesa University. Learn about geothermal power generation and what it could mean for our Colorado communities.

Free Agrivoltaics Webinar: Fire Safety Within Your Panels

🕔 WHEN: Thursday, March 12, 2026 from 1:00 PM to 2:30 PM

📍WHERE: Virtual,

Agrivoltaics is the co-location of agricultural activities within a solar array whereby the microclimates of the solar panels impact the growth, health, and production of crops and livestock. The Colorado Agrivoltaic Learning Center is providing a series of discussions about agrivoltaics highlighting various professionals engaged in or adjacent to the field of agrivoltaics. We center our discussions on the outlook for agrivoltaics specifically in Colorado, though certain aspects of agrivoltaic designs or operations can be extrapolated to other areas of the country. Total run time of this webinar will be no more than 90 minutes.

Boulder Climate Happy Hour

🕔 WHEN: Wednesday, March 18, 2026 from 5:30 PM to 7:30 PM

📍WHERE: Rayback Collective, Boulder, CO

​Boulder is full of interesting people working on solutions to the climate crisis. Our goal is to bring people with diverse backgrounds together to share ideas, connect, and learn from one another.

Solardarity

🕔 WHEN: Thursday, March 19, 2026 from 5:00 PM to 7:00 PM

📍WHERE: Ratio Beerworks, Denver, CO

Solardarity is a happy hour for the commercial, community, and utility-scale solar industry. In 2019, Pivot Energy created the event in Denver as a way to connect and network without any agenda. At Solardarity there are no speeches, presentations, or sales pitches -- just great people. 
Join us as we strengthen the commercial and utility solar community and ride the "solar coaster" together at our next event. Fill out the form to join the invite list at https://go.pivotenergy.net/solardarity

Colorado Climate Week

🕔 WHEN: Monday, March 30, 2026 to April 2, 2026

📍WHERE: See event page for details,

Colorado Climate Week is hosted by Colorado Cleantech, a non-profit whose mission is to drive climate action, fast. As Colorado emerges as a leader in clean technology, this four day gathering will spotlight cutting-edge solutions and catalyze bold climate action across sectors.

NLR Industry Growth Forum 2026

🕔 WHEN: Tuesday, March 31, 2026 to April 2, 2026

📍WHERE: Sheraton Denver Downtown Hotel, Denver, CO

The National Laboratory of the Rockies (NLR) Industry Growth Forum (IGF) is the premier event for energy innovation and investment.
IGF connects cutting-edge startups with forward-thinking investors to accelerate partnerships and drive quality deal flow across the energy innovation ecosystem.
The event features energy technology startup pitch competition,1:1 networking, and insight into emerging technologies.

Want to make sure you don’t miss anything? There are a few ways to stay in the loop.

1. Follow Colorado Climatetech on LinkedIn to see the latest on new events

2. Subscribe to this newsletter for monthly summary emails

Subscribe now

Want to contribute or share through the newsletter? I’m looking for collaborators to work on news, spotlights, and more. If you’re interested, email me!

For now, I hope you will share this with a friend. Or better yet, attend a local upcoming event!

Cheers,
William Greenbohl

Share Colorado Climatetech Newsletter

Hannah Davis conducted the interview on December 10th, 2024. It has been edited for length and clarity.

Q: Can you tell me about your background and how you got into climate work?

A: I’ve always been interested in building systems that are beneficial for society as a whole. Early in my career, I was interested in public service. But after a slow-moving internship at the State Department in Paris, I turned my attention to opportunities where I had more responsibility and the pace was faster.

So I became a consultant at McKinsey. One day, I got a call from one of our Managing Directors who told me, “I’ve got an incredible project: I can’t tell you the client, the location, or the topic, but if you accept this will be the best decision you’ve ever made.” I accepted. What did I have to lose? The following Monday, I flew out to California to begin work on a top-secret electric car project.

That work involved big questions: What’s the full well-to-wheel impact of electric vehicles? Are they truly positive for our climate? Does it depend on location? What about all the side effects of the battery and drive unit supply chain? It was exciting to see that the client was considering those issues in a deep and thoughtful way, and it made me want to get more hands-on. So I applied for a position at another electric car company, Tesla. That was the start of my journey into electrification.

Q: What is Lightship, and why did you join them?

A: Lightship is bringing electrification into outdoor recreation and helping people tread more lightly out there in nature. We do that by producing an electrified platform: a chassis, solar, batteries, and an on-board charger that transforms power from different DC voltages into AC for appliances and other applications. That platform can be used in many exciting ways.

Our flagship product right now is an adventure vehicle, a trailer. What makes it unique is that it pushes itself behind your tow vehicle and offsets its own drag. Just yesterday, I was out towing with a Rivian R1T in cold, windy, steep mountain conditions. Normally, with a Rivian towing a trailer in these conditions, you might get 100 miles of range. I got 270 miles yesterday before reaching zero. In more friendly conditions, owners can get 350 miles. That’s game-changing for adventure.

We see ourselves as both enabling cleaner camping and enabling the electrification of vehicles. By eliminating the range penalty of towing, we’re helping more electric trucks get out on the road.

Q: What’s your role at Lightship, and how do you spend your time?

A: For two and a half years, I was the head of finance at Lightship. Six months ago, I transitioned to leading sales and marketing. I’ve never thought of myself as a salesperson, but it doesn’t feel like your typical sales job here: my goal is to find people who have adventures and stories they’re trying to bring to life - then make those possible with the Lightship.

A stereotypical customer would be recently retired, passionate about protecting the environment, and hoping to see the world with their partner or family. They’re buying a Lightship to do that. It doesn’t feel salesy, it’s more consultative: we help people get out there and realize their dreams.

Q: Where are you in production, and can people buy these now?

A: Yes, people can buy them, and we’re delivering. I just set up one on a property in Napa as an ADU (accessory dwelling unit) and office. We’ve got two more going out next week. We’re in full production at our facility in Broomfield, and our workforce has grown to 115 to 120 people (almost 10X the number when I joined!). Last year, we were a finalist for the “Coolest Thing Made in Colorado,” a chamber of commerce program. It’s been great to see us become a more sizable local employer.

Q: You mentioned the platform can be used for applications beyond travel trailers. What are some other use cases?

A: There are many towing applications where the Lightship platform could be the base. At the moment, we’re working on two different use cases where we’ve partnered with other companies to integrate shells on top of the Lightship platform.

We see example applications across industry, agriculture, and entertainment. For instance, we see use cases for mobile power sources in construction and construction trailers. Likewise, there is interest in quiet, clean, abundant energy at live events, music, and the film industry; there is also a need for spaces for talent to prepare. A couple of companies are developing mobile grids to electrify entire events. With 80 kilowatt hours of energy and 2 kilowatts of solar in each unit, Lightships are a perfect addition to those energy networks.

There could also be applications in towing and hauling goods. We haven’t touched the commercial space yet, but longer term, we see massive potential there.

Q: Why Colorado? What made it the right place for Lightship?

A: Lightship was founded in San Francisco, and we still have an office there, but two years ago, we officially moved our headquarters to Colorado as we started scaling our manufacturing. Colorado is a great place to build.

For us, it’s the combination of a friendly community for tech and innovation, a rich talent pool, and a network of sister companies that are innovating in hybrid hardware-software applications. We’ve got folks who have come to us from places like Solid Power, AMP Robotics, Sierra Space, and Scythe, just to name a few. There’s also an established manufacturing base from aerospace and a rich talent pool of production technicians to help us scale.

When you look at where venture capital is flowing in the country, the Denver/Boulder metro is in the top five for hardware. It’s a good place for us to be.

Q: What are some of the biggest challenges you’re facing?

A: The biggest challenge is transforming a great idea into a fully commercialized product and producing it in high volume. There’s a lot in translating “that thing I dreamed of” into “that thing I can produce.” We’re dealing with questions like: Is this process scalable? Is it low-cost? Can I do it profitably? Can I make the product reliable for customers? Can I service it?

There’s a host of very real challenges and opportunities that are all vying for attention. Deciding which things to prioritize and where to use our limited resources -- that is the core challenge.

No one else building a trailer today is building it like we are. If you visit other players out there, they’re hand-building things. They’re hacking things together, and the quality is poor. We designed the AE.1 like automotive companies would do: we sketched it, created a digital model, created drawings, released the drawings, sourced parts, created a testing plan, tested the components, put them in the vehicle, tested the vehicle, and fixed the issues before we put it in the hands of customers. It’s never been done this way before in the RV space, and we hope that it will translate into a product that lasts customers for years and years and years.

This is the Lightship experiment.

Q: Personally, what climate solutions are you most excited about right now?

A: The thing I’ve been excited about recently is the progress in geothermal. It seems like technologies are advancing across the full stack, from discovery to extraction. In theory, if you could drill deep enough at a low enough cost, Geothermal could power the world in a virtually emissions-free way. In the shorter term, the game is evolving to become more about using big data and mapping to find the highest potential sites more rapidly and with greater precision. This is an interesting new development, especially for the American West. Obvious Ventures, one of our investors, led a funding round last year in Zanskar, a company that is at the cutting edge of AI-based geothermal discovery. It’s been exciting to see!

Q: What is something climate or sustainability-related that you do outside of work that you’re passionate about?

A: I owe my passion for sustainability to my mom. My mom has spent much of her life as an amateur ornithologist, a birder. As a kid, it was: “oh my God, my mom’s out doing this nerdy thing,” but over time, she helped me really appreciate our natural ecosystems, both flora and fauna. Her work evolved into conservation and restoration of natural habitats, even expanding into things like pollinator highways. Recently, she became a Master Naturalist in Illinois and launched several education programs for kids and adults alike.

When I was young, we bonded over a shared passion for butterflies. We built butterfly cages and raised moths and swallowtails. We went on field trips to local habitats, including the wonderful Butterfly Rainforest at the University of Florida.

As I’ve gotten older, I’ve helped on conservation projects in a limited capacity, and I hope to do much more in the future. Next year we’re going on a birding trip to Costa Rica, where there are over 50 species of hummingbirds! I also make it a point to donate regularly to conservation projects around the world, and to teaching programs here in Denver (shoutout Denver Botanic Garden!). It’s been fun to discover areas of Denver with pocket parks filled with pollinator plants. Wash Park has a whole pollinator garden! For me, conserving our natural spaces and our biodiversity is so important. We’re just stewards of this gift after all.

If you have suggestions of how I could do more for conservation here in Colorado (or how we can mobilize the Lightship community towards this end), let me know!

You can connect with Rory on LinkedIn and learn more about Lightship here.

There are some good conferences and talks this month. Otherwise take advantage of the quieter start to the year to rest up for Colorado Climate Week 2026 (starting March 30).

Events This Month

• 🎤 ClimateCon! Denver 2026: Feb 2, Mon in Denver

• 🤝 2026 Colorado Green Business Network Kickoff: Feb 3, Tue in Denver

• 🧐 Open Q&A with Venture For ClimateTech: Feb 16, Mon online

• 👩‍🌾 COGreen Speaker Series: The Art of Community Engagement : Feb 17, Tue in Longmont

• 🌻 Colorado Agrivoltaic Conference: Building Community & Forward Momentum: Feb 19, Thu online

• 🔋 Why Safe, Affordable Batteries Will Win the Grid Transition: Feb 19, Thu in Denver

• 🍸 Meetup at Environmental Film Festival - Evening Soiree: Feb 21, Sat in Golden

• 🕵️‍♀️ Renewable Energy: Where are the Jobs?: Feb 25, Wed in Golden

• 🍻 Boulder Climate Happy Hour: Feb 25, Wed in Boulder

Read on for more details about this month’s upcoming events.

Sneak Peak at the Following Month

• ☀️ Solar Power & Energy Storage Mountain West Conference: Mar 2, Mon in Denver

• 🍻 Boulder Climate Happy Hour: Mar 18, Wed in Boulder

• 🌎 Colorado Climate Week: Mar 30, Mon

There will be more! These are just a few that I know about if you like to plan ahead.

Climate News in CO

A lot of money from Biden-era climate programs has been clawed back, but not all of it! $200 million for heat pumps just landed in Colorado.

Job Openings in CO

🤝 Looking to connect with professionals working in climate?

#OpenDoorClimate runs a directory of climate professionals willing to chat with green jobseekers and maintains a great list of resources for job seekers.

🔍 Looking for a climate tech job?

Our friends at ClimateTechList have created a live Colorado-specific job openings tracker.

⛰️ Check out the Colorado list! 🏔️

Event Details

ClimateCon! Denver 2026

🕔 WHEN: Monday, February 2, 2026 from 9:00 AM to 5:00 PM

📍WHERE: Lowry Conference Center, Denver, CO

This will be our fifth ClimateCon!, and the agenda continues to grow!
Some of the sessions in formation:  Let’s Rebrand the Heat Pump! - Utility Scale Solar - Sustainable Air Fuels (SAFs) - Scope 3 Emissions and Engaging Suppliers - Environmental Justice

2026 Colorado Green Business Network Kickoff

🕔 WHEN: Tuesday, February 3, 2026 from 10:00 AM to 1:00 PM

📍WHERE: CSU Spur, Denver, CO

The Colorado Green Business Network (CGBN) invites you to our annual Kickoff Event! This is a fantastic opportunity for businesses across Colorado to explore what’s ahead for 2026, connect with like-minded professionals, and gain valuable insights into sustainable business practices and funding opportunities.

Open Q&A with Venture For ClimateTech

🕔 WHEN: Monday, February 16, 2026 from 12:30 PM to 1:30 PM

📍WHERE: Virtual,

Venture For ClimateTech, a global non-profit accelerator for climate tech innovators, is accepting applications for its next cohort through February 20, 2026.

COGreen Speaker Series: The Art of Community Engagement

🕔 WHEN: Tuesday, February 17, 2026 from 6:00 PM to 8:30 PM

📍WHERE: Yellow Barn Farm, Longmont, CO

Azuraye Wycoff will share how she managed to get more than 800 local people to participate in her campaign to stop the county from spraying harmful pesticides near her family’s farm.
- This will be a networking event with a live interview in the middle
- It will be centered around the theme of community engagement

Colorado Agrivoltaic Conference: Building Community & Forward Momentum

🕔 WHEN: Thursday, February 19, 2026 from 8:00 AM to 5:30 PM

📍WHERE: Virtual,

This two-day event will bring together more than 100 leaders from solar, agriculture, policy, conservation, and community organizations for collaborative learning and solution-building to accelerate agrivoltaic deployment across Colorado.

Why Safe, Affordable Batteries Will Win the Grid Transition

🕔 WHEN: Thursday, February 19, 2026 from 6:30 PM to 8:30 PM

📍WHERE: Odell Brewing Five Points Brewhouse, Denver, CO

Join our Metro Denver chapter for a battery-focused Speaker Series event to kick off the new year! In this talk, Charles Cipriani breaks down why lithium became the default despite its limitations, why most homeowners are priced out of energy storage, and why safer, non-flammable battery technologies are better suited for stationary energy storage than for vehicles.

Meetup at Environmental Film Festival - Evening Soiree

🕔 WHEN: Saturday, February 21, 2026 from 5:30 PM to 7:30 PM

📍WHERE: Green Center, Golden, CO

Whether you spend the day at the film festival or meet us at the Roots & Reels Evening Soiree, your ticket donation supports the Colorado Environmental Film Festival bringing powerful environmental stories to audiences everywhere. Every contribution fuels their mission to educate, engage, and inspire people to care for the planet we share.
Join us for an unforgettable evening where the drinks will be flowing, and the culinary magic of Denver’s The Easy Vegan will take center stage with their delicious veg-forward creations. Mingle with inspiring filmmakers and fellow festival-goers as we celebrate the spirit of storytelling and sustainability together! Here's where we'll be meeting up at the festival.

Renewable Energy: Where are the Jobs?

🕔 WHEN: Wednesday, February 25, 2026 from 5:00 PM to 7:00 PM

📍WHERE: Student Center - Colorado School of Mines, Golden, CO

This is an in-person panel at the Colorado School of Mines in the Student Center - Ballroom A. This is a free event. The panelists will discuss their career paths, the job market, and how students as well as those already in the workforce, can best position themselves for employment in the renewable energy sector. The panel goes for about 45 minutes. After that, we have one hour of networking with companies. Refreshments and light snacks provided by the School of Mines.

Boulder Climate Happy Hour

🕔 WHEN: Wednesday, February 25, 2026 from 5:30 PM to 7:30 PM

📍WHERE: Rayback Collective, Boulder, CO

​​Boulder is full of interesting people working on solutions to the climate crisis. We aim to bring people with diverse backgrounds together to share ideas, connect, and learn from one another.

Want to make sure you don’t miss anything? There are a few ways to stay in the loop.

1. Follow Colorado Climatetech on LinkedIn to see the latest on new events

2. Subscribe to this newsletter for monthly summary emails

Subscribe now

Want to contribute or share through the newsletter? I’m looking for collaborators to work on news, spotlights, and more. If you’re interested, email me!

For now, I hope you will share this with a friend. Or better yet, attend a local upcoming event!

Cheers,
William Greenbohl

Share Colorado Climatetech Newsletter

Hannah Davis conducted the interview on January 8th, 2025. It has been edited for length and clarity.

Q: You spent 15 years as a diplomat and foreign service officer with USAID, with 14 of those years abroad. Can you tell me about your background and the work you were doing?

A: I served in Bangladesh, El Salvador at the Central America regional hub, Indonesia—one of our largest climate and environment portfolio investments—and Nepal. My family and I were abroad together through all of this. My wife was a wonderful supporter, and my two kids lived in three different countries with us. It was an exciting and meaningful career doing what I thought was really great work on behalf of the U.S. government and the American people.

I was hired as an Environment Officer, though very quickly, you throw aside your specific expertise and start working on many different things. In Nepal, I ended up working on environment, but also in leadership roles focused on economic growth, sustainable economic growth, tourism promotion, and agriculture.

I got into this work somewhat by chance. I was working for a consulting firm in Miami, and my focus had always been international. I saw an opportunity with USAID and was lucky enough to join the Foreign Service. I’d just gotten married. We went on our honeymoon, and when we came back, there was a voicemail about coming to an interview. Nine months later, we were in Dhaka, Bangladesh. It was a big life switch and change then, and definitely a big change coming back home now as well.

Q: For people who aren’t familiar, can you explain what USAID does and the scale of its work?

A: USAID was the world’s largest provider of development funding to the developing world. While we have other institutions, like the U.N. and World Bank, the U.S. government was by far the leader in this space.

One important part of the USAID story: we were hamstrung by regulations and laws that made it difficult, if not illegal, to communicate with the American public about the work USAID was doing. You could buy a NASA t-shirt and see commercials about their work, but it was essentially illegal for USAID to market back to U.S. constituents for most of its existence. We had to work through Congress and congressional representatives to tell our story.

So, when the decision was made by the administration less than a year ago to shut down USAID, the general public, outside of the NGO sphere or folks in Washington, really didn’t know much about what we did. It was very difficult for people to care or advocate for USAID’s continuation when they weren’t aware of our work.

USAID’s annual budget was around $40 billion, depending on supplemental funding and disaster response. When we ended, U.S. climate and environment funding was close to $1 billion a year, about $600 million in direct annual funding for climate activities across three pillars: clean energy, sustainable landscapes (landscape-scale carbon sequestration through forest conservation and wetlands), and climate change adaptation. There was also approximately $400 million per year in congressional earmarks for biodiversity conservation.

These numbers don’t include humanitarian assistance and disaster preparedness, where we contributed more than a third, around 40%, to the overall global system for disaster response and preparedness, most of it responding to climate-related emergencies like floods, droughts, and storms.

Q: What was USAID’s overall climate vision?

A: Our last administrator, Samantha Power, declared USAID as a climate agency. She put together an incredible eight-year plan from 2022 to 2030 with ambitious goals: prevent 6 billion tons of emissions, support 500 million people to adapt to climate change, conserve 100 million hectares of important landscapes worldwide, and mobilize $150 billion in climate finance. The goal was to integrate climate into everything we did, and I really saw that throughout my career.

Q: Can you give me examples of the kind of climate work USAID was doing?

A: Indonesia was an incredible example. It’s the epicenter for environment and climate work. Indonesia is the world’s fourth most populous country, a middle-income nation, and a big player in terms of emission contributions. Palm oil takes center stage there, and we were challenged to find solutions around illegal land use and legal conversion of incredible forests.

We helped put together large landscape plans that reduced poaching of endangered orangutans, elephants, rhinos, and tigers by 90%. We worked to create systems where the government, from local to national levels, could better manage these remote landscapes. All of this added up to conserving about 18 million hectares. We helped establish 12 new marine protected areas in some of the most incredible landscapes in Eastern Indonesia.

We supported these communities with innovative financing, bringing together NGO partners and businesses to set up trust funds with different financial mechanisms. We worked with public and private investors to mobilize hundreds of millions of dollars in concessional finance, giving people access to capital they could use to invest in their businesses and communities.

Here’s a smaller example I loved: We partnered with a sustainable tea business in Nepal. They were so passionate and had amazing tea, but they used to have to sell it to India where it would be mixed with lower-quality teas. Instead, we helped them create a sole-source, traceable tea product. We connected them to global markets and introduced technologies and financing that allowed them to dry the tea without starting fires, essentially creating climate-smart tea. These small interventions created pathways for private sector-led climate solutions while bringing more economic freedom and justice to these communities.

We also helped start four different debt-for-nature swaps. It’s complex, but essentially you forgive a country’s interest on U.S. debt and put those funds in a trust fund for perpetuity. We sat on boards and provided guidance, but the solutions were locally led. In Indonesia, they were able to restore landscapes and even start breeding endangered rhinos.

Another massive success was Power Africa, which focused on partnering with businesses and providing investment across Sub-Saharan Africa. It was incredibly catalytic. South African wind farms we supported reduced a million tons of CO2. The Indonesia project I mentioned helped reduce about 7 million tons of carbon and provided electricity to 3 million additional people who didn’t have it before. When you total these up across all our programs, the scale becomes clear.

Q: You also worked in Central America. How did climate work intersect with other challenges there?

A: In Central America, from 2013 to 2017, there was a big migration crisis with unaccompanied children showing up at the U.S. border. Our job was to integrate climate work into addressing these broader foreign policy challenges.

We were setting up carbon markets and conserving important landscapes in Central America, but we were also helping create a regional electricity market that would connect all these different countries. This allowed them to bring on renewables and invest in clean energy without worrying as much about the intermittent nature of those renewables, because they could trade electricity with other countries. This massively increased renewable energy investments and provided more reliable electricity to the region.

These were key factors that helped people have better livelihoods and economic opportunities that might otherwise push them north. Even when climate wasn’t the ultimate goal, it was critical to solving many of these complex problems. You can’t really address migration from the Horn of Africa when people are moving across the world because of famine, droughts, and the inability of governments to provide public services and safety nets. Climate action was woven into everything.

Q: What happened when USAID was shut down?

A: With the Trump administration, a little less than a year ago, the decision was made very quickly through DOGE and others to freeze and shut down USAID. A very small number of programs were moved to the State Department to continue, primarily a handful of health-related and disaster-related programs, but no climate or environment work.

On a single day, 95% of programs from that $40 billion budget were frozen. We stopped work across the board, and those programs ended. At the same time, the USAID.gov website was taken down. We lost access to 60-plus years of research, results, and impact data that could have been used to communicate back to taxpayers about what had been accomplished. Most staff were put on administrative leave.

This unwinding has had a massive impact, not just on the climate and environment world, but on studies outline the huge human toll from pulling back U.S. investments in international development. This happened at a time when the climate community feels this is one of, if not the world’s greatest and most complex challenges. We need action now. We need innovation now. We need finance now.

India is now the world’s most populous country. There are major changes happening in the developing world with massive implications for overall emissions. These are places where we want to be at the table, where we want to provide support that can catalyze massive investment and action from those countries themselves.

Additionally, just two days before our interview, the U.S. pulled back from 66 different international organizations, any climate or environment international organization, we are now out of.

Q: Who is stepping in to fill this vacuum?

A: It’s a massive vacuum. The UK is stepping up where they can, though they have their own budget issues. The UN, World Bank, and IMF have substantial capacity, but can’t replace what was lost.

NGOs like The Nature Conservancy and Conservation International are doing more, but their funding took a major hit with the loss of USAID support. Private foundations like Gates have committed significant resources, which helps. I’d rather see focused investment now rather than saving for later; it’s pouring now, not tomorrow, we need more funders to step up.

The reality is that many things just won’t get done. Long-term investments like training young professionals in clean energy won’t bear fruit for years, and the downstream impact could be even more significant than what we’re seeing now.

Q: Why did you choose Colorado after leaving USAID?

A: I love the quality of life here, and I have family in Colorado, so being closer to them after visiting only about once a year was important. After living in megacities for more than a decade, having clean air, outdoor access, and an incredible quality of life is tough to beat.

But I’m seeing some of the same climate issues here. We just had a wildfire scare a couple of days ago, and even here there’s this really dry spell with limited snow. I’m eager to connect with folks who are committed to innovative solutions to tackle climate issues locally - everything from communications campaigns to thinking about technology and finance to make it happen.

Q: What climate solutions are you most excited about right now?

A: I think the trajectory of renewable energy over the years has been incredible. We’re exploring new solutions like green hydrogen, seeing battery technology improve rapidly, and continuing to be creative about how we plug into the grid better. It’s great to see so much rooftop solar around here, but what more can we do? What are other sources? How can we use technology to stay on the cutting edge?

During those winds and fire threats a few weeks ago, I thought: are there ways we can still keep the lights on and use sunlight to power our homes in emergencies? How can we scale solutions massively and apply them to hyperscalers, data centers, and growing energy needs for tech? I think working with communities, governments, and technology companies to find the right solutions using creative capital is key.

Being in the public sector for so long with USAID, I’m proud of all the work we did, but there are other ways to generate impact. We need to be smart as a country and community as we move forward. How do we utilize government best, in future administrations, in a way that is helpful, that doesn’t turn our back on others, that can continue to support private sector-led solutions and work with community organizations to find the right solutions and adapt quickly? We’re seeing rapid changes out there.

Q: What is something climate or sustainability-related that you do outside of work that you’re passionate about?

A: I love being outdoors. I’m thinking about how I can best integrate into the community here in Lafayette and be useful. Maybe taking my perspective and expertise to think about how businesses can still be profitable while doing good work, or how NGOs can remain sustainable. That economic viability is really important.

I think it starts at the local government level, so I’d love to be more active there. I’m also trying to pass on a passion for the environment to my kids and others coming up. It’s a big problem, and that can discourage people. So how do you take small bites at the apple? How do you have incremental successes? Where can you find small things that can scale and catalyze action? I’m trying not to be too doom and gloom about what’s happening now, but rather focus on taking action, being smart and strategic, and making progress in the right direction—while hopefully going for great trail runs and enjoying mountain biking and all the other fun stuff I do when I have the chance.

Q: How can the Colorado climate community help?

A: I think there have been so many people affected by the USAID shutdown. There were around 2,000 foreign service officers and diplomats, plus many others on the civil side and tons of people working on projects doing this important work.

Unfortunately, public sector work is a little bit misunderstood. Folks coming from that background are committed, dedicated, smart, and do many things. They wear many hats and can take on anything that comes along. I think companies should be innovative in who they’re hiring, get people with good ideas who work hard, are dedicated, and are happy to take on new challenges. That would be beneficial to them and to the many others facing difficulty with all the changes in the new administration.

Looking ahead, I hope we can eventually advocate for a massive repair job of the U.S. reputation globally. Relationships have been completely severed and reconnected to other places like China and Russia. We need to figure out how we can be a trusted partner once again on the global stage, because that partnership affects U.S. private sector opportunities in these places and where we show up on climate solutions in the future. If we’re not trusted, that’s a lot of U.S. technology and expertise that’s going to go missing. And that’s a tragedy.

You can follow Jason on LinkedIn here.

As usual, January will be a quieter month. Maybe folks are taking a break after a dizzying 2025. Maybe people are gearing up for Colorado Climate Week 2026 (starting March 30). More to come there!

Also — thank you to the people who braved the weather and black outs to attend last month’s Boulder Climate Happy Hour.

Events This Month

• 🏠 2026 CGBG Annual Meeting: Jan 14, Wed

• 🔌 TECH TALK: State of the EV Charging Industry in Colorado: Jan 15, Thu

• 🍻 WAC Denver Happy Hour | January: Jan 21, Wed

• 🔋 Why Battery Storage is Key for Renewable Energy: Jan 22, Thu in Golden

• 🎥 Save the Farm, Save the Future: Documentary Sowing & Panel Discussion in Denver: Jan 24, Sat in Denver

• 🏠 Colorado Home Building Summit: Jan 27, Tue

Read on for more details about this month’s upcoming events.

Sneak Peak at the Following Month

• 🎤 ClimateCon! Denver 2026: Feb 2, Mon in Denver

• 🤝 2026 Colorado Green Business Network Kickoff: Feb 3, Tue in Denver

There will be more! These are just a few that I know about if you like to plan ahead.

Climate News in CO

Two stories this month. Not very fun, but important.

1. The National Center for Atmospheric Research (NCAR) has been caught in the crossfire of the Trump administration’s effort to dismantle scientific institutions, and it might be closing. If you’re looking for people at NCAR or NREL to talk to, check out this special event on Jan 15.

2. Electricity bills are going up across the country, and Colorado is no exception. It is likely that many Coloradans will see a 10% increase after Xcel filed a $356 million rate increase for 2026.

Job Openings in CO

🤝 Looking to connect with professionals working in climate?

#OpenDoorClimate runs a directory of climate professionals willing to chat with green jobseekers and maintains a great list of resources for job seekers.

🔍 Looking for a climate tech job?

Our friends at ClimateTechList have created a live Colorado-specific job openings tracker.

⛰️ Check out the Colorado list! 🏔️

There were 45+ Colorado postings in December 2025. 🔻40% compared to Nov

Event Details

2026 CGBG Annual Meeting

🕔 WHEN: Wednesday, January 14, 2026 from 6:00 PM to 8:00 PM

📍WHERE: See event page for details,

Join us for CGBG's 2026 Annual Meeting on January 14th Downtown Boulder
Agenda: See your friends - Enjoy some food - A look back on what we accomplished in 2025 - Thoughts about CGBG in 2026 - Meet Board Nominees - Announcement of CGBG's 2025 Annual Award Winners!

TECH TALK: State of the EV Charging Industry in Colorado

🕔 WHEN: Thursday, January 15, 2026 from 12:00 PM to 1:00 PM

📍WHERE: Virtual,

Our speakers will share their perspectives on how charging infrastructure is expanding, how new technology and standards are shaping the market, and what these changes mean for communities, fleets, and businesses across the state.

WAC Denver Happy Hour | January

🕔 WHEN: Wednesday, January 21, 2026 from 5:30 PM to 7:30 PM

📍WHERE: Register to see,

​Welcome to our Denver Happy Hour for January!
​If you are looking for an opportunity to talk climate with professionals identifying as women or non-binary, you are in the right place! No climate experience necessary.

Why Battery Storage is Key for Renewable Energy

🕔 WHEN: Thursday, January 22, 2026 from 7:00 PM to 9:00 PM

📍WHERE: Jefferson Unitarian Church, Golden, CO

Battery energy storage is the key for making the renewable energy transition a reality. Consequently, this industry is growing extremely fast, despite facing hurdles over safety and restricted supply chains. 
Our presenter, Allison Weis, PhD, shares her insights on where batteries are headed across all applications but will focus on utility scale markets, based on her expertise as Global Head of Storage at Wood Mackenzie, a leading global research consultancy for renewables, energy and natural resources.

Save the Farm, Save the Future: Documentary Sowing & Panel Discussion in Denver

🕔 WHEN: Saturday, January 24, 2026 from 6:00 PM to 8:30 PM

📍WHERE: Limelight Denver, Denver, CO

Farms are disappearing. Solar energy is rising. Could combining the two help save farmers and the planet? Introducing agrivoltaics.

Join us for a showing of this film that was created by Free Range Films in collaboration with Colorado Agrivoltaic Learning Center. Funded in part by the Walton Family Foundation.

There will be a panel discussion with the filmmaker Chad Weber and Byron Kominek of Jack’s Solar Garden, plus others, following the showing.

Colorado Home Building Summit

🕔 WHEN: Tuesday, January 27, 2026 from 8:00 AM to 5:00 PM

📍WHERE: See event page for details,

BUILDTank inc. and BS and Beer Denver Metro have created an annual residential building science driven Summit for Colorado Builders, Architects, Code Officials, and Trades People.

Want to make sure you don’t miss anything? There are a few ways to stay in the loop.

1. Follow Colorado Climatetech on LinkedIn to see the latest on new events

2. Subscribe to this newsletter for monthly summary emails

Subscribe now

Want to contribute or share through the newsletter? I’m looking for collaborators to work on news, spotlights, and more. If you’re interested, email me!

For now, I hope you will share this with a friend. Or better yet, attend a local upcoming event!

Cheers,
William Greenbohl

Share Colorado Climatetech Newsletter

Between the newsletter and LinkedIn, we’ve assembled:

• 1️⃣9️⃣9️⃣ events from 7️⃣5️⃣ organizations

  • 1️⃣ event organized for the first Colorado Climate Week

• 7️⃣ community members spotlighted (see more below!)

• 2️⃣ babies added to the Colorado Climatetech squad

Thank you for being part of this community. Colorado’s climate and energy ecosystem is strong because of you and the many people across the state doing this important work.

Throughout the year, at events all along the Front Range, we met people from every corner of the climate and energy world.

You’re tackling some of the planet’s biggest challenges, yet still make time to show up, share a beer, and make a new friend.

It’s this spirit that makes our community so strong and supportive, and we’re deeply grateful for it.

We hope to see you at an event in 2026!

-Will and Hannah

Spotlight Series Recap

We’re particularly excited about the growing Spotlight Series on Colorado’s unique mix of people working together to make it a major climate hub.

In case you missed them, below are the seven individuals highlighted in 2025.

We already have a great lineup for 2026. If you know someone that we should highlight, send your suggestion to Hannah.

Megha Agrawal on How Stories Can Drive Climate Action

This Climate Spotlight features Megha Agrawal Sood, Co-Director of Doc Society and a leader in the global climate storytelling movement. Megha’s work shows how powerful stories can shift culture, influence policy, and build a more just climate future. If you want to feel hopeful—and see what creative climate action looks like—don’t miss this one

Sophie Egan on Reimagining Food Systems

How do we fix a food system that touches everything from climate change to public health? Sophie Egan has spent years answering that question—and helping organizations make real progress along the way. Her take on food waste, plant-forward eating, and systemic change is one of the most energizing climate perspectives you’ll read.

Will Misko on How Climate Tech Is Rewriting the Future of Wildfire Risk

Wildfire has become one of the most personal facets of climate change—something we smell, see, and fear every summer (and now, every winter). I spoke with Will Misko, who spends his days helping utilities and fire agencies translate complex fire science into life-saving decisions. At Technosylva, he works at the intersection of modeling, resilience, and community safety, bringing clarity to a risk that grows more unpredictable every year. Our conversation touches on his path into this work, the innovations he’s excited about, and how he finds hope while working so close to the front lines of climate change.

Quinn Antus on Innovating Carbon Management in Colorado

In Colorado’s race to meet ambitious climate goals, Quinn Antus is turning big ideas into real-world solutions. From mapping carbon management zones to supporting carbon-negative building materials, Quinn combines innovation, strategy, and community engagement to help the state accelerate emerging climate technologies. In this interview, he shares how Colorado is becoming a testbed for transformative climate solutions and why seeing and experiencing clean energy in action is key to adoption.

Jane Zelikova on Bridging Ecology, Research, and Climate Solutions

Ecologist, researcher, and community organizer, Jane Zelikova has spent two decades studying how ecosystems respond to climate change and how humans fit into that picture. From documenting soil microbes and seed-dispersing ants to supporting sustainability research across CU Boulder, Jane blends rigorous science with hands-on climate action. In this interview, she shares her unconventional path, cross-sector insights, and the neighborhood garden collective that keeps her grounded amid climate uncertainty.

Antoinette Matschuck on Bridging Supply Chains and Climate Innovation

Antoinette Matschuck is at the forefront of carbon removal innovation, turning Colorado’s forest biomass, often removed to prevent wildfires, into permanently sequestered bio-oil at Charm Industrial. In this interview, she shares her unconventional journey from finance and tech to sustainable supply chain strategy, the challenges of building trust in carbon markets, and why meeting people where they are is key to making climate solutions work at scale.

William Greenbohl on Elevating Colorado’s Climate Network

William Greenbohl’s path from mechanical engineering to clean energy led him to a simple but powerful idea: building connections. As the founder of Colorado Climatetech and the creator of the Colorado Climate Tech Newsletter, he works to make the state’s climate community more visible, connected, and effective. In this conversation, he shares how local relationships, persistent networking, and a focus on long-term community growth can turn a vibrant but fragmented climate scene into a hub of innovation and impact.

With holiday parties across the state, this month is the time to enjoy a little merriment with your local climate nerds.

That includes us! Colorado Climatetech is teaming up with the Boulder Climate Happy Hour for a special holiday meetup. If you join us in Boulder on Dec 17, wear something festive and bring some holiday cheer to celebrate another great year as the Colorado climate community!

Events This Month

• ♨️ NREL Geothermal Research Presentation: Dec 1, Mon in Golden

• ♨️ Geothermal Solutions Symposium: Dec 2, Tue in Golden

• 🎊 NoCo Clean & Green Holiday Party: Dec 2, Tue in Fort Collins

• 🌻 How Solar and Agriculture can Coexist & Thrive: Dec 2, Tue in Golden

• 🚗 State of the EV Charging Industry in Colorado: Dec 4, Thu

• 🏆 Cleantech Innovation Celebration: Dec 4, Thu in Boulder

• 🎉 CGBG’s 2025 Annual Holiday Party: Dec 4, Thu in Louisville

• 🍪 Women Who Charge Holiday Cookie Exchange + Networking: Dec 11, Thu in Denver

• 🥳 Climate Advocates’ Happy Hour and Year End Celebration: Dec 11, Thu in Aurora

• 🎉 WRISE Holiday Celebration: Reflect, Recharge, Renew: Dec 15, Mon in Arvada

• 🍻 Boulder Climate Happy Hour Holiday Party Edition with CO Climatetech: Dec 17, Wed in Boulder

• 🍻 Drive Clean Colorado Holiday Meet-Up: Dec 18, Thu in Centennial

Read on for more details about this month’s upcoming events.

Sneak Peak at the Following Month

• 🔋 Why Battery Storage is Key for Renewable Energy: Jan 22, Thu in Golden

• 🏠 Colorado Home Building Summit: Jan 27, Tue

There will be more! These are just a few that I know about if you like to plan ahead.

Climate News in CO

Colorado needs more people to work with their hands if it wants to hit its climate goals. A new state report takes stock of Colorado’s climate workforce.

Who do we need the most? Electricians, construction workers, and wind turbine technicians topped largest occupation gaps.

Job Openings in CO

🤝 Looking to connect with professionals working in climate?

#OpenDoorClimate runs a directory of climate professionals willing to chat with green jobseekers and maintains a great list of resources for job seekers.

🔍 Looking for a climate tech job?

Our friends at ClimateTechList have created a live Colorado-specific job openings tracker.

⛰️ Check out the Colorado list! 🏔️

There were 80+ Colorado postings in November 2025. 🔺17% compared to Oct

Event Details

NREL Geothermal Research Presentation

🕔 WHEN: Monday, December 1, 2025 from 2:00 PM to 8:00 PM

📍WHERE: Barrels & Bottles Brewery, Golden, CO

In conjunction with the Geothermal Solutions Symposium, NREL is hosting related events on December 1, in Golden, CO. Please make sure to keep that in mind when booking your accommodations.
NREL Laboratory Tours (2:00PM-4:00PM)
NREL Geothermal Research Presentation (4:00PM-6:00PM)
NREL Welcome Reception at Barrels and Bottles (6:00PM-8:00PM)

Geothermal Solutions Symposium

🕔 WHEN: Tuesday, December 2, 2025 from 8:00 AM to 4:00 PM

📍WHERE: Student Center - Colorado School of Mines, Golden, CO

Please join us for the first annual, Mines Geothermal Solutions Symposium, where we aim to convene academia, industry, non-profits, regulators, and policymakers to discuss advancing geothermal technology and accelerating project development. With bipartisan support for geothermal energy, coupled with technological advancements in next-generation geothermal systems, this campus-wide initiative aims to address technical, regulatory, and policy challenges while leveraging the expertise of departments across campus actively engaged in geothermal research.

NoCo Clean & Green Holiday Party

🕔 WHEN: Tuesday, December 2, 2025 from 5:30 PM to 8:00 PM

📍WHERE: Odell Brewing Company, Fort Collins, CO

Join Fort Collins CGBG, NCRES, and BS + Beer for a holiday mixer. Connect with builders, designers, energy pros, and advocates as we toast a year of innovative projects and policies advancing our Fort Collins community! Expect light bites, local drinks, and an overview of events in the year ahead. Bring a colleague, wear your best flannel, and help us wrap up 2025 with good people and good cheer. 

How Solar and Agriculture can Coexist & Thrive

🕔 WHEN: Tuesday, December 2, 2025 from 7:00 PM to 9:00 PM

📍WHERE: Jefferson Unitarian Church, Golden, CO

Agrivoltaics – the practice of planting crops in the partial shade of raised racks of solar panels – is a heavily researched endeavor with broad applications. It is raising justified expectations among farmers to add a lucrative income stream producing clean power while simultaneously increasing yields for certain cash crops.
Talking about opportunities and limitations of this dual-land-use concept is Colorado Department of Agriculture energy manager Sam Anderson who shares from his vast project experience in both Colorado, the nation, and abroad.

State of the EV Charging Industry in Colorado

🕔 WHEN: Thursday, December 4, 2025 from 9:30 AM to 10:30 AM

📍WHERE: Virtual,

Our speakers will share their perspectives on how charging infrastructure is expanding, how new technology and standards are shaping the market, and what these changes mean for communities, fleets, and businesses across the state. 
Whether you work in transportation, energy, local government, or simply care about Colorado’s clean energy future, this one-hour virtual session will give you useful insights, practical takeaways, and a clearer view of the road ahead.

Cleantech Innovation Celebration

🕔 WHEN: Thursday, December 4, 2025 from 6:00 PM to 9:00 PM

📍WHERE: The Riverside, Boulder, CO

The Cleantech Community Impact Celebration brings the cleantech community together to honor the creativity, innovation, and dedication to a cleaner energy future put forth by Colorado’s entrepreneurs, educators, corporate innovators, volunteers, and policymakers.

CGBG’s 2025 Annual Holiday Party

🕔 WHEN: Thursday, December 4, 2025 from 6:00 PM to 8:00 PM

📍WHERE: Alpen High Performance Products, Louisville, CO

This year, we’re excited to continue our annual tradition of gathering at the home of CGBG Annual Sponsors: Alpen High Performance Products, in Louisville. The party will take place next to Alpen’s new high speed automated IGU fabrication line that has been cranking out next generation windows!
As always, we’ll reminisce over the past year and announce the 2025 Annual Award Nominees!

Women Who Charge Holiday Cookie Exchange + Networking

🕔 WHEN: Thursday, December 11, 2025 from 4:30 PM to 7:00 PM

📍WHERE: Women Who Charge Office, Denver, CO

Get ready for a sweet and electrifying evening! Women Who Charge is hosting their annual Cookie Exchange, co-hosted by the Electrification Workforce Network (EWN). This is a casual networking event for professionals in beneficial electrification, electric vehicles, and the clean energy workforce.

Climate Advocates’ Happy Hour and Year End Celebration

🕔 WHEN: Thursday, December 11, 2025 from 5:00 PM to 7:00 PM

📍WHERE: Stanley Beer Hall, Aurora, CO

Join the Denver Chapter of Citizens’ Climate Lobby for an cheerful evening of connection, community, and celebration. Let’s raise a glass together as we wrap up the year, reflect on our accomplishments, and look ahead to the climate action opportunities coming in the new year. This is a great chance to meet fellow Denverites who care about the environment and enjoy a relaxed evening with friends old and new. Enjoy good company and plenty of holiday cheer as we celebrate our shared commitment to a healthier planet. 

We’ll meet at the Stanley Beer Hall which is located inside of the Stanley Marketplace. All ages welcome. Whether you’re a longtime member, a recent volunteer, or simply curious about CCL, we’d love to see you there!

WRISE Holiday Celebration: Reflect, Recharge, Renew

🕔 WHEN: Monday, December 15, 2025 from 5:30 PM to 8:00 PM

📍WHERE: Colorado Tap House, Arvada, CO

Rock your best holiday sweater—ugly, sparkly, or downright fabulous—and come ready to celebrate! Enjoy complimentary drinks, delicious bites, and wonderful company as we wrap up another fantastic season of networking and connecting through WRISE events. The Holiday Party will have a photo booth to capture lasting memories, and a donation drive for The Gathering Place, a women and children’s shelter in Denver. As the evening winds down, the dance floor will open for a lively finale!

Boulder Climate Happy Hour Holiday Party Edition with CO Climatetech

🕔 WHEN: Wednesday, December 17, 2025 from 5:30 PM to 7:30 PM

📍WHERE: Rayback Collective, Boulder, CO

​In collaboration with Colorado Climatetech, we’re hosting a special “holiday edition” of the Boulder Climate Happy Hour. Same deal as always, but wear something festive and bring some holiday cheer to celebrate another great year as the Colorado climate community!

Drive Clean Colorado Holiday Meet-Up

🕔 WHEN: Thursday, December 18, 2025 from 2:00 PM to 4:00 PM

📍WHERE: Winn-Marion Companies - HQ, Centennial, CO

Wrap up the year with your clean transportation community. Join us for an afternoon that mixes real connection with a little end-of-year fun. Whether you want to talk shop, meet new partners, or just enjoy a well-earned break, this is a great chance to spend time together before everyone scatters for the holidays.

Want to make sure you don’t miss anything? There are a few ways to stay in the loop.

1. Follow Colorado Climatetech on LinkedIn to see the latest on new events

2. Subscribe to this newsletter for monthly summary emails

Subscribe now

Want to contribute or share through the newsletter? I’m looking for collaborators to work on news, spotlights, and more. If you’re interested, email me!

For now, I hope you will share this with a friend. Or better yet, join a local upcoming event!

Cheers,
William Greenbohl

Share Colorado Climatetech Newsletter

This interview was conducted on August 28th and edited for length and clarity.

Tell us about your path into climate work and what you do now.

WG: I’ve always wanted to work in clean energy, but couldn’t find a job right after school. I decided learning how to build physical things would be useful and started my career as a mechanical engineer in consumer hardware and manufacturing. After 10 years and moving to Colorado, I eventually worked up the courage to pivot. That wasn’t easy — it took 18 months of persistence before I landed at Optiwatt, where I work now.

At Optiwatt, we are building the missing link between utilities, smart devices, and consumers that want to save money. We provide a free app that helps people shift their energy use to times when electricity is cheaper and cleaner — for example, charging your EV overnight instead of right when you get home. Utilities pay us to help customers do this because it saves them money and reduces strain on the grid. My role is Director of Solutions, which sits between product and sales. I translate what our tech can do into clear, useful offerings for utilities and other partners.

Honestly, the way I got here was luck. I went to a climate happy hour, then a few more clean energy events, had coffee chats, and got invited to a climate potluck. I met someone who introduced me to Steve, who eventually became my hiring manager. It was totally unpredictable and very different from submitting résumés online, which felt like shouting into the void.

That experience reinforced to me why building in-person connections matters so much. It’s not just about meeting people, it’s about stumbling into the unexpected opportunity. That’s also what inspired me to create more opportunities for others to connect with companies doing amazing work here in Colorado.

How did the Colorado Climate Tech Newsletter get started?

WG: It grew out of COVID. At the time, there were many Slack communities, and I wanted to see what kinds of events were happening locally. After some googling all I could find was the Boulder Climate happy hour (which I went to and it was awesome), and I was frustrated by how hard it was to figure out what was going on. Colorado’s climate and energy scene is big and vibrant, but it felt fractured and disorienting.

I’d seen other cities do event roundups and thought, “Why not here?”. That’s how the newsletter started — with the simple goal of making it easier for people interested in climate to meet in-person and foster a stronger climate identity in Colorado.

I spend time searching the internet, newsletters, and local groups for events so others don’t have to. If even one person makes it to an event they otherwise wouldn’t have found, then I’ve succeeded.

What have you learned since starting it?

WG: The climate community here is more fun and supportive than I could have imagined. I’m an introvert, but I leave events feeling energized. That’s not always the case in other places I’ve lived, such as New York or the Bay Area, where events can feel more competitive and exploitative.

At the same time, it’s a roller coaster. In 2023, there was an explosion of events, then people burned out a bit, and 2024 was quieter. Hiring cycles and politics shape the tone too. I’ve learned not to push too hard but instead focus on offering something sustainable and listen to what the community needs. I’ve seen some folks try to organize too much and then can’t keep it going — I want this newsletter to last.

Since having a kid, I’ve had to prioritize what I can offer the community. That’s why I’ve slowed down with the company field trips and meetups. Company dynamics have shifted too. A couple of years ago, more companies were eager to host. Now, many are heads-down and don’t have the bandwidth. I believe that will swing back, and I’d love to help open doors again when it does.

The newsletter was the piece I could keep going consistently. If there is anyone interested in working together to bring back the site tours, reach out! It is an incredible way to build local relationships.

How has being located in Colorado impacted you and your climate work?

WG: I think Colorado is underrated as a climate hub. The big three are Boston, New York, and the Bay Area — Boston has the university power, New York has the money and people, and the Bay has the tech scene. Those will always be better places to go for fundraising.

But the community in Colorado is unique compared to anywhere else I’ve explored. My theory is it has to do with the mountains. Many people who live here, are living here at least partly for the mountains. That creates a kind of shared understanding of priorities, and I’ve found people here to be more collaborative and less zero-sum than in places where the climate scene evolved out of the broader, often cutthroat tech world. If your goal is to reduce climate emissions, you want everyone to succeed.

In general, the vibe feels more passion-driven, with a long-term approach that makes sense for climate. It’s less boomy-busty or bubble-oriented. We saw in 2021–2022 how quickly the hype cycle could inflate climatetech and then collapse, and that doesn’t drive actual emissions reductions — Clean Tech 1.0 is a good reminder of that. In contrast, Colorado is positioned to be an anchor, with a steadier, more sustainable community that will still be strong even if climate tech goes in and out of fashion elsewhere.

Are there any climate solutions you’re most excited about right now?

WG: I’m always excited about electrification, and home electrification in particular is fascinating to me. It’s not a question of if, just when. We quietly burn a lot of fossil fuels in our homes, and moving away from that is both healthier and more comfortable. I love the idea of a future where people experience firsthand that not burning stuff is just a better way to live. Once they feel it at home, it could ripple outward — politically, commercially, even culturally.

I’m also excited about geothermal energy, which Colorado is particularly well positioned to lead. It’s a cleaner source that is also more compatible with oil and gas businesses, which makes it less politically divisive. Right now, resistance to renewables can be painful. I believe economics will ultimately win, but it would be great to have one solution everyone could agree on. Geothermal might be that — an energy option we can all get behind and scale up.

Is there something climate or sustainability related outside of work that you’re passionate about?

WG: I’ve also been involved with Go Electric Colorado, which everyone should check out. Their whole thesis is simple: electrification is great, but it’s still complicated. They provide free coaching from neighbors in your area to help people navigate the transition to going electric.

A lot changes when you move from burning fuel to electrifying your life: how you set your thermostat, how electricians wire your house, even how and when you fuel your car. Those shifts can be confusing, and Go Electric Colorado is full of folks who’ve lived it and want to make it easier for others. The impact is deeply personal and tangible, and I’ve loved being part of it.

You can follow William on LinkedIn and learn more about managing electricity usage at optiwatt.com.