The clean energy economy has been tremendously positive for Georgia and in communities across the state. In March of 2025, the Georgia Chamber of Commerce shared this data on the economic impacts of clean energy in Georgia:

• Clean energy jobs in Georgia: 82,163
• Georgia ranks 15th in the nation for green jobs
• Our state has a 4.9% growth rate annually for clean energy jobs

Additionally, the chamber reported the following statistics on clean energy investments and revenues:

• $31.3 billion in nation-leading investments for EV-related industries 
• $36.7 million in property, state, & local tax revenues generated from clean power projects 
• $23.6 million of income to farmers, ranchers, and private landowners via clean energy projects 

This kind of data can help you make a compelling case for clean energy to your local business community. Look for chances to share these statistics with your local chamber of commerce, emphasizing the sources of the data. Show them that climate solutions are green in more ways than one.

With Focus, We Can Bring Climate Solution Benefits to All Georgians

Most climate solutions have positive economic impacts at the point of implementation, saving households, businesses, and local governments money in the short or long run. For someone acquiring rooftop solar through a traditional purchase and install contract, the energy savings should be enough to pay for that system, achieving ROI in less than 10 years – sometimes as little as five years. For the community as a whole, homeowners face a lower energy cost burden, businesses become more profitable, and local governments and non-profits can expand services.

In the “Beyond Carbon” portion of their research, the Drawdown Georgia team measured positive, neutral, and negative effects of each of the 20 solutions in areas outside of greenhouse gas reductions, specifically looking at the economy, equity, public health, and the environment.

Their economic analysis looks more closely at the ways in which each climate solution can have a positive or negative impact on the local economy and jobs, prices, opportunities for skilled labor, wages and benefits, property values, and infrastructure impacts.

As mentioned earlier, climate solutions can often lower costs for households. But access to those benefits often depends on the ability to afford the up-front costs of solar panels, an EV, or an electric heat pump. The Equity lens of the Beyond Carbon analysis identifies where special focus is required to ensure everyone in your community has access to the benefits. As the research team found, “Successful climate solutions lift people up, ensure that all communities are at the table, and deliver benefits to those who are under-resourced. Focusing on equity ensures that community concerns are addressed and advantages widely shared.”

Local governments have one of the largest footprints in the community for employment, land use, buildings, equipment, and vehicle fleets. Local governments consume significant quantities of energy and water, while generating considerable greenhouse gas emissions and solid waste. Persuading them to pursue clean energy or zero-waste objectives can make a huge difference for your community overall.

Build a Vision, Set Goals, Make Plans, & Act

In Georgia, governments in Atlanta, Athens-Clarke County, Augusta-Richmond County, Clarkston, DeKalb County, and Savannah have committed to achieving 100% clean energy in government operations by a chosen target date. Some have also committed to community-wide clean energy objectives. A number of Georgia communities are also taking steps to divert solid waste from landfills and move towards a “zero-waste” future.

To get local traction, you need a champion – an elected official or someone in a high-ranking staff position who will stand with you to advocate for sustainability or climate action goals. There are many ways of identifying potential climate champions in your local government, such as:

• Use networks like Path to Positive Communities, which lists proactive mayors, business leaders, faith and health advocates working on climate solutions.
• Search local news, city, and county commission websites, and social media for mentions of climate or environmental programs and the leaders associated with them.
• Attend city council, school board, or public forums about climate, health, energy, or sustainability issues—speakers and active participants are often local leaders in these arenas.
• Research elected officials’ voting records and public statements. 
• Use official legislative or government websites to access voting histories, sponsored bills, and public statements regarding sustainability, renewable energy, or climate preparedness.
• Write, call, or meet with your representatives to directly ask their stance on climate action—personal meetings can reveal true priorities and commitment.

If you are part of an already established climate group, writing letters to the editor of local newspapers and asking questions of candidates at election time are also effective techniques for growing support for clean energy and waste reduction. You can also host a candidate forum or solicit written answers to a set of questions posed to all candidates. Let current and would-be officials know that climate policy matters to their constituents

Equip Yourself with Facts and Be Ready to Share 

Use available data to demonstrate the need for climate solutions and the existing public support. As mentioned earlier, you can use the Yale Climate Opinion Factsheets to show local officials how many people in your community or congressional district support climate solutions. Show them the percentage of people who say “Local officials should do more to address global warming.”

You can also use the Drawdown Georgia Greenhouse Gas Emissions Tracker to share how your county or city compares to the rest of the state – including a local comparison against neighboring counties in the quarterly County Snapshots. The tracker website even includes a section on helping policymakers use the trackers.

Understand How Local Governments Encourage or Discourage Climate Action

Local governments aren’t just consumers with carbon and solid waste footprints; they also set policies that can make it easier or harder for residents and businesses to implement climate solutions. 

Because municipal electric and gas companies are not regulated by the Georgia Public Service Commission, local city councils set policies for these utilities. And those are not always supportive of renewable energy projects, as members of the climate action non-profit Sustainable Newton learned during their 2019 Solarize Newton-Morgan campaign. 

The three electric cities in Newton County (Covington, Oxford, and Mansfield) had electric rate tariffs that charged residential customers a “standby fee” of ~$32/month if they installed distributed energy generation and were connected to the city grid. This fee eroded the financial case for rooftop solar with customers of these utilities.

Through an organized campaign, Sustainable Newton persuaded the Oxford City Council to eliminate their standby fee and the City of Covington to significantly lower theirs. These types of policy interventions are an important way of removing barriers to enable households and businesses in your community to implement climate solutions.

Electric vehicle adoption is another area where working with local governments can inspire them to install their own public EV charging stations to serve residents and visitors and make it easier for people to “drive electric.” The Electric Mobility and Energy program at the University of Georgia assists local governments with planning services, resources, and training to help communities access the economic and environmental benefits of clean transportation. Connecting your local officials with these resources is an easy way to promote electric vehicles in your community.

As we said up front, start your local climate action group with the people you know. Find out who is concerned about climate change and/or passionate about embracing climate solutions. But that approach doesn’t automatically lead to a broad-based movement with participation from across the community. For that, we have to grow our group deliberately so that everyone feels included and our message resonates everywhere.

Virtual or Face-to-Face? Yes and Yes.

With the proliferation of social media platforms and digital communities, internet-based communications are an important part of growing your base. But they can’t fully replace the traditional outreach through civic groups and clubs, churches, homeowners’ associations, and word of mouth.

Even with the broad reach of social media platforms and online neighborhood networks like Nextdoor, you may have significant blind spots in the geographic and demographic reach of your digital communication strategy.

Ask For Help to Assess How You’re Doing

When Newton County-based nonprofit Sustainable Newton wanted to evaluate their reach and adjust their digital strategy, they worked with the Partnerships Program at the Yale Program on Climate Change Communications and a Capstone Project Team from the University of Georgia’s Interdisciplinary Certificate in Sustainability Program to survey their followers across all their digital platforms using the Six Americas framework developed by the Yale program. 

Keep Climate Action Practical and Accessible

As their final deliverables, the students presented Sustainable Newton board members with a report of findings and a communications strategy for moving forward. A key takeaway from the report was that a large percentage of group members already understood the urgency of the climate crisis and were looking for concrete, practical solutions. 

Making your friends and neighbors feel fear and alarm is not the goal. Successful community efforts help residents take action and connect with experts and early adopters who can help each other apply climate solutions at home and in their communities.

Collaborate with Local Governments to Find Funding

If, as discussed earlier, you have established a good working relationship with one or more of your local governments, there are grant opportunities available for local governments and non-profit organizations to apply for in partnership. In our state, many of these flow through the Georgia Environmental Finance Authority (GEFA). To see the kinds of projects they have funded and find out which communities have received funding, visit GEFA’s press releases page. Subscribing to the quarterly GEFA newsletter is also a good way to stay informed about new grant opportunities.

Many cities and counties have grant writers whose job is to find and apply for available government grants. Find out if your local government has a grant writer and get to know him/her. You can be a resource to them in identifying new funding opportunities, and your ability to partner will increase the community’s odds of winning competitive grants.

Leverage Non-Profits that Support Your Causes

It’s always worth researching local nonprofits and foundations that can provide funding to support climate work in your community. Here are a few examples of statewide sources of funding:

• One helpful resource to find grant opportunities in the clean transportation space and even receive technical assistance with applying is the non-profit Clean Cities Georgia. You can subscribe to updates on their website. (Verify if your local government is a member.)
• The non-profit Go Georgia (formerly Georgia Bikes) provides similar services to assist local governments with finding and applying for grants associated with active transportation (including walking, biking, mobility assistance, and connections to transit). They also provide planning support.
• The AARP Community Challenge is an annual “quick-action” program providing small grants for projects that improve livability in American communities.

Tap Into Support from Corporations Invested in Your Community

Corporate grants and sponsorships are also a great avenue for tapping into funding for climate action projects in your community. Most larger corporations have some sort of grant program for the locations where they have major facilities. In 2024, the local climate action non-profit Sustainable Newton used a $50,500 grant from the Meta Community Action Grant Program to install rooftop solar for a non-profit early childhood learning center in the community.

Companies with a significant presence in your community that put sustainability at the center of their brand image and messaging are a great place to start. Take a look at the companies that have joined the Drawdown Georgia Business Compact, then see which ones have facilities in your community. Research those companies to find out more about their philanthropic programs.

Leverage your local chamber of commerce and the economic development office or agency in your community. Industrial recruiters love to recruit clean industries in emerging technology fields because of the prestige and higher-paying jobs they bring. Make friends and allies. Ask those offices to help you connect with existing industries and new companies announcing plans to build. Then use those relationships to recruit sponsors and partners for the work you are doing.

Expertise and Insights Don’t Have to Be Expensive

Aside from all of these ways to seek funding for climate action projects, there are sometimes ways to get important work completed without funding. Some universities in Georgia have learning programs where students solve real-world problems for a business, non-profit, or local government as part of earning their certificate or degree. 

A great example of this is the Sustainable Business Consulting Practicum in the Ray C. Anderson Center for Sustainable Business at Georgia Tech’s Scheller College of Business. In this particular project, students worked for a business – Creature Comforts Brewing Co. – but the program also welcomes project ideas from non-profits and local governments. You just need an idea that is compelling for the students and achievable within a 12-week semester. If you have ideas, email the center’s Managing Director to find out how to pitch your project to one of his classes.

The University of Georgia features a similar program with the Interdisciplinary Certificate in Sustainability Program, in which teams of students complete a Capstone project to satisfy requirements for the program. You can learn more about the program and how to submit a project proposal on the program website.

The Carl Vinson Institute for Local Government at the University of Georgia provides technical assistance and training for local governments in Georgia seeking to leverage public/private partnerships to expand e-mobility in their communities. Their Plug Into Georgia: EV Charging Funding and Partnerships Webinar held on February 5, 2025 is available for replay.

For starters, look around you at the climate solutions visible in your community:

• EVs on the streets
• New public EV charging stations where you live, work, or play
• People walking or biking to work, school, or errands
• Solar panels on rooftops and in fields
• Curbside recycling bins at the ends of driveways
• Recycling or composting bins in public places
• Utility companies offering incentives for clean energy upgrades or energy efficiency measures
• Local non-profits offering classes in composting, plant-forward diet, and food waste reduction
• An increase in farmers markets promoting locally grown produce and goods
• Community tree-planting efforts around Arbor Day or other times of year.

Take stock of the conversations around you. Are more people talking positively about climate action and asking about climate solutions? Are climate solutions and climate policies being discussed by your local governments? Are they coming up in your local newspaper? Do you see environmentally-focused student groups forming in your K-12 schools and local colleges and universities? Are civic groups in your community taking action in environmentally positive ways? 

These indicators may be more anecdotal than objective, but they’re all positive signs your community is moving in a good direction. 

Leverage Measurable Data Where You Can Find It

If you’re seeking quantifiable measures, the most comprehensive place to look would be the Drawdown Georgia Solutions Tracker, where you can find statewide progress data on 16 of the 20 Drawdown Georgia climate solutions. And you can drill down to see how your county ranks in terms of multiple key measures of adoption.

EV Resources in Georgia

For easy access to data about the growth of public EV charging where you live, third-party websites and apps like Plugshare and Chargeway that help drivers find public EV charging stations are a good way to assess how robust the charging infrastructure is in your community. And you can watch it grow.

The Carl Vinson Institute for Government at the University of Georgia recently assembled and published a Georgia Electric Mobility Snapshot that includes statewide and county-level data on consumer EV adoption, charging station buildout, economic impacts of e-mobility, and trends across a number of key metrics. You can email the Electric Mobility and Energy Team to inquire about specific data for your community.

Rooftop and Large-Scale Solar Resources in Georgia

To find out how many residences and businesses have installed rooftop or ground-mounted solar energy systems in your community, you may be able to work with your local city or county planning and zoning department to get permitting data on the number and size of systems installed within a particular time period.

Recycling and Reducing Waste Resources in Georgia

You can also talk with your county’s landfill or solid waste manager to gauge the effectiveness of efforts to reduce or divert solid waste from the landfill.

Leverage Drawdown Georgia to Learn from Those Who Came Before You

Since 2023, Drawdown Georgia has partnered with like-minded organizations to provide funding for equity-focused climate solution work through the Drawdown Georgia Climate Solutions & Equity Grant. The list of past winners provides a long list of projects and programs that may inspire you to make a really special, transformative impact in your community.

The Drawdown Georgia Blog brings an endless stream of inspiring, insightful content about climate action in Georgia:

• Learn about faith communities making worship spaces greener
• Georgia businesses, large and small, are coming together to solve climate challenges
• Communities capturing landfill methane to keep it out of the atmosphere and put it to use as energy
• A community non-profit addressing food waste and promoting a plant-based diet by transforming excess produce from local farms into plant-based, ready-to-eat meals for those who need them. 

To never miss a story, subscribe to the bi-weekly Georgia Climate Digest newsletter.

Strength in Numbers – It’s About the Company You Keep

To reenergize your passion for climate action and deepen your sense of belonging to a movement much larger than just you, find opportunities to immerse yourself with other climate leaders. The Ray C. Anderson Foundation, which founded and funded Drawdown Georgia, created such an opportunity for many years by hosting their annual RayDay event to celebrate Ray’s legacy and inspire collaboration among Georgia’s most impactful climate action organizations. A blog post from one of those organizations, Sustainable Newton, describes how Ray’s use of the phrase “Brighten the Corner Where You Are” from a hymn he sang as a child inspired them to find even deeper purpose in their climate work.

The Georgia Climate Project convened statewide conferences for several years,  bringing together scientists, researchers, policymakers, advocates, community organizers, and solution builders from across Georgia. You can read about past gatherings and watch for future plans on their website. The Georgia Department of Natural Resources has also convened statewide conferences through the years, now known as the Georgia Resiliency Conference.

Learn from Others & Let Their Stories Inspire You

The Southern Alliance for Clean Energy focuses on electric transportation, energy efficiency, solar power adoption, and utility decarbonization within the eight states making up the Southeastern Region. The spotlights they shine on individuals, groups, and entire communities acting on climate are often quite inspiring and insightful.

In Drawdown Stories, Project Drawdown curates features from around the world, leveraging storytelling and engagement as a bridge between science-based climate solutions and everyday people seeking their role in stopping climate change.

Generation180 inspires climate action through storytelling about ordinary, relatable people choosing clean energy and inspiring others to go electric too. And they use climate comedy to show how climate discussions can even be fun. 

Start small wherever you can act. But never stop asking, “Who else isn’t here yet that might help us?”