Energy Policy Briefings

The Local Clean Energy Alliance offers briefings to bring your organization up to speed on policy issues regarding climate change, its impact on your community, energy policy programs and alternatives, and how energy issues are crucial to economic sustainability and jobs.

Briefings are customized to the needs and interests of your organization: they can range from brief presentations to webinars to strategy workshops.

Here are comments on the value of recent presentations:

Roger Kim, Executive Director, Asian Pacific Environmental Network

The Local Clean Energy Alliance has been a fantastic partner to APEN as we shape our policy agenda around green energy. Al Weinrub, Alliance Coordinator, went above and beyond in supporting our local and statewide policy scan with a briefing on renewable energy, explaining the technical pieces of energy policy and working to make sure that this information was accessible to our staff and leaders. We appreciate that the Local Clean Energy Alliance supports APEN’s vision that the key to unlocking the potential of local renewable energy is to make sure that low-income communities of color are its core beneficiaries and are at the heart of its leadership.

Strela Cervas, Co-Coordiator, California Environmental Justice Alliance

The Local Clean Energy Alliance played a key role in the California Environmental Justice Alliance’s understanding of renewable energy and renewable energy policy. We needed to provide internal education to our member organizations about why local renewable energy is essential to our communities. Al Weinrub, the Local Clean Energy Alliance Coordinator, responded to this need by developing a thorough, lucid and succinct presentation on decentralized energy.

About 35 organizational representatives from up and down California attended CEJA’s Energy 101 Webinar that Mr. Weinrub presented. Given that renewable energy is a new topic for many CEJA organizations, this training provided valuable fundamentals on how a local decentralized energy model provides the environmental, economic, and social benefits needed in the most vulnerable communities. The webinar also demonstrated how equity and democratic control are vital components of local decentralized energy.

The Local Clean Energy Alliance went above and beyond our expectations in preparing and delivering this Energy 101 Webinar. In the evaluation of this training, 100% of respondents felt that Mr. Weinrub was well prepared, knowledgeable, and provided satisfactory responses to their questions. CEJA continues to seek advice and consultation from the Local Clean Energy Alliance and will certainly continue to look to that organization for assistance as we create robust energy policy that will transition us off of fossil fuel and will ensure that our communities benefit from the green economy.

Bruce Jensen, Senior Planner, Alameda County Planning Department

Our department thanks Al Weinrub for an interesting and stimulating discussion of renewable energy and implementing it on a local and sustainable level.

Against the backdrop of corporate promotion of industrial-scale renewable installations, which are typically large and cover broad tracts of land with the usual attendant retinue of undesirable environmental effects, and which follow the traditional super-profitable design of production control and distant energy distribution--often to the detriment of the individual user, Al Weinrub's presentation provided a rational antidote to the standard corporate line. It gave all of the Planning Staff here at Alameda County good information about how to support small-scale renewable installations, how they can be cost-effective, and how they provide a better hope for not only environmental healing but also social justice. 

Alice Wilson-Fried, VP, Programs, City of Alameda Democratic Club

Al Weinrub spoke to the City of Alameda Democratic Club (CADC) meeting on the significance of renewable local energy development and the legislative measures that bear directly on the ability of our communities to address this important issue.  An objective of our Club is to educate and promote activism around issues that protect and advocate for the common good.  Al’s presentation shed light on how the efforts of the Local Clean Energy Alliance regarding clean energy are in compliance with the core principles of protecting and working for the common good.  

I am convinced that the Club members and guests who attended the meeting and heard Al Weinrub’s presentation,  will become empowered activists in our community for clean energy--proving that knowledge is power.

Karen Crommie, Past President, Economic Round Table of San Francisco

Al Weinrub’s presentation to the Economic Round Table, making the case for decentralized energy systems, was a rare opportunity for us to hear a person, with true understanding of global climate change, lay out a realistic plan for mitigation of carbon-based fuel emissions.

All of us in the room now understand how a local energy system can provide economic opportunity for local firms and workers, while preserving the rural environment. There is nothing environmentally sustainable about massive wind farms covering mountaintops or miles of panels overpowering centuries-old ecological systems.

With a low-key, collegial style and notable expertise, Weinrub made his points brilliantly and sent us off with a new point of view.

Karin Oxenham, Program Officer, International Visitor Leadership Program, Institute of International Education

Thank you very much for taking the time to meet with our international visitors from Cyprus on Tuesday, July 16. They found their meeting with you to be both very fruitful and inspiring. Several noted that the perspective of your organization on energy was rather different from what they have been hearing elsewhere. They found it very valuable to get a perspective on the importance of energy decentralization. The delegation also felt very inspired by and appreciative of your practical focus on economic and social benefits.

Your time and effort is highly valued by the Institute of International Education and by the visitors participating in these important diplomatic exchanges.  We thank you warmly for your contribution and look forward to working with you again on visitor programs in the future.