Climate Action Now
Course Number 2045
Course Overview
Climate Action Now (CAN) aims to deepen students’ ability to create and implement high-impact climate solutions by focusing on key ventures, cities, and regions, along with the leadership skills and tactics that can accelerate climate action. The course will explore business models and stakeholder coalitions that can produce solutions quickly while building markets and constituencies for change -- the “demand” side of climate action.
CAN will feature cities/regions as critical for addressing climate change, especially in high-emission domains such as energy, transportation, buildings, and consumer household choices. Issues include developing and scaling innovations, cross-sector coalition-building, stakeholder engagement, and dealing with obstacles as ventures proceed. Solutions include offshore wind energy, electric school buses and vehicle fleets, green buildings and districts, new ventures using hidden assets, and the building of climate tech ecosystems to grow and deploy solutions faster.
Cases on selected cities and regions will feature key actors and constituencies across sectors (business leaders, climate tech entrepreneurs, government leaders, clean energy developers, community activists, climate action resisters) who must collaborate to identify promising solutions and promote their adoption as positive responses to climate risks and opportunities. The use of cross-sector multi-stakeholder coalitions will be explored in diverse places. Questions of climate justice – who is most vulnerable to climate change, who benefits from actions – will be raised.
Class guests will include leaders from focal cities and ventures to whom students might later address recommendations in a deeper action plan/analysis for a city/region of their choice as the final course product/deliverable. Throughout, students will contribute to developing a leadership-for-climate-action toolkit. Students will finish CAN better able to build climate-related ventures or take on civic leadership to promote faster, more effective change.
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