We work on energy literacy as a path to decarbonization.
To prevent climate change from getting worse, we have to build new infrastructure quickly and for that to happen, people have to agree to it. We need ten years of almost perfect cooperation between governments, businesses, and the public.
Our solution is to create a public practice space for the transition. With this method, students learn how to fix climate change with accurate, updatable info, scaling from a 2.5 hr game to a month long series of workshops, matched to where they live.
Evidence shows that the public has to be on board and know what needs to be done to build the political will for a rapid transition. Students being able to explain the energy transition to their families will be crucial to getting it done on time.
Our focus on clear, accurate education is confirmed by the findings in last year’s National Academies report on solving climate change in the US, which spells out the urgent need for an informed public.
By using a collaborative game, we have found a way to engage players in the challenge themselves, while giving them a sense of the interlocking dynamics that are part of the solutions. In one 2.5 hour game play, the shape of the problem and the paths to solutions become clear.
Thanks to teachers who have administered a Google forms survey for our project, we have results from five NYC high schools, and 213 students. The key before and after question in the survey is “How confident would you be in describing the factors in the energy transition to a family member?” In each class surveyed, students became more confident in their understanding of the energy transition, and more confident in being able to describe the steps to decarbonize NYC. In the first class that responded, a class at Bronx Science, students answering ‘confident’ (4) and ‘very confident’ (5) after learning with ENERGETIC showed a five-fold gain compared to the survey taken before playing.
ENERGETIC is a four-player cooperative challenge in which you work to decarbonize New York City by building 16 GW of carbon neutral energy by 2035 (in the Green New Deal version) or 2050 (in the standard version). You can build entirely with renewables (wind, water and solar), or, by doing research before construction, include advanced nuclear power or natural gas with carbon capture (CCS).
ENERGETIC is now used in classes in 18 public high schools in NYC, as well as in classes at universities, including Carnegie Mellon and Vanderbilt. But there are 67,000 12th graders in NYC and we want to give them all practice solving climate change themselves, as soon as possible, because it’s central to their future lives. And beyond them, we plan to scale to the additional 100,000+ 12th graders in the rest of New York state.
A case study is the class above at Beacon High School, where the students now have accurate information and strategic ideas on how NYC can meet the goals of the CLCPA.
Our supporters and advisors include academics, high school students and their teachers, and IPCC authors. Photos of the game in use in a wide range of classes and events are here.
Daniel Aldana Cohen at UC Berkeley, co-founder of the Climate and Community Project, explains the value of our game-based approach to climate and energy education in his brief interview below:
High school teachers have given us letters of support for Congressional funding, and they describe in depth the classroom benefits. And with resources and partnerships, we can produce larger public events with people of all ages, scale up workshops with hundreds of facilitators drawn from the climate movement in New York, and create a wave of energy literacy that will accelerate the energy transition across the state.
We’re going to have 1200 sets of ENERGETIC in November 2024, thanks to a mass production run. Our teacher workshop deck gives a more detailed overview of ENERGETIC. Our goal is to help make this rate of change increasingly plausible, with informed public support:
We believe in speed, and our constant reference point is the report for New York, and other cities, by C40, from 2016, shown in the graphic above and at the link below. This report details the actual commitments in the Paris Agreement. It didn’t get much press, but NYC is technically a signatory to these commitments. Yet few people in New York understand the implications, or have been prepared for how we might accomplish it. See the absence of understanding the steps for the transition in the ‘before’ results in our survey, including from AP Physics students at New York’s top high schools. It’s not yet a familiar topic, though the transition should be happening at top speed now.
And so, it’s time to pick up speed:
C40 Cities | Deadline 2020: How cities will get the job done
“Deadline 2020 is the first significant routemap for achieving the Paris Agreement, outlining the pace, scale and prioritisation of action needed by C40 member cities over the next 5 years and beyond. Deadline 2020 is focused on C40 cities, the findings are more broadly applicable. Action is needed by all cities in order to meet the critical goal of limiting global warming to 1.5°C.”
Deadline 2020: How cities will get the job done. (2016). https://www.c40knowledgehub.org/s/article/Deadline-2020-How-cities-will-get-the-job-done?language=en_US
That gap in broad public understanding is what we’re working to solve. Once people learn through their own exploration, by playing a collaborative game matched to the real world around them, they don’t forget what they’ve learned, and every political and technical step gets easier from that point on.
For follow-up reading, here are the key points from the NASEM report on public engagement:
- A coordinated and comprehensive transition to net zero will serve the public well. The significance and complexity of decarbonization requires all levels of government, the energy sector, and the media to provide the public with accurate depictions of decarbonization progress, risks being addressed, and benefits being provided.
- People value being consulted no matter what the outcome. When processes are understood to be accessible, transparent, fair, and inclusive, actions to decarbonize the U.S. energy system will be more widely viewed as acceptable.
- Trust can ultimately reduce time to achieve consensus about key decisions. While it takes time and effort to build such trust, the perceived legitimacy of the public process depends on trust and the character of the relationships among stakeholders.
- The development of new energy infrastructure is fundamentally a social process. When planning and engagement occur early and often, attachment to places can be leveraged as a catalyst for technological processes.
- Decarbonization processes will be slow in pace without appropriate public engagement opportunities. While meaningful engagement does not guarantee consensus, its absence can increase opposition to project development.
- Projects must deliver tangible or visible public benefits aligned with publicly identified priorities. Projects that provide tangible or visible public benefits have a greater likelihood of securing support from communities.
- It is essential to be better equipped to learn as the transition progresses. This requires greater investment in knowledge of how transitions are affecting the public and investment in methods to estimate future impacts.
National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine. 2024. Accelerating Decarbonization in the United States: Technology, Policy, and Societal Dimensions. Washington, DC: The National Academies Press. https://doi.org/10.17226/25931.
More recommended reads:
Overcoming Obstacles in the Mid-transition to Clean Energy, interview with Emily Grubert
UK FIRES is a UK government-funded research project at Cambridge University with a series of reports redefining the path to achieving the Paris goals:
Extreme heat waves are doubling in frequency on roughly a ten-year basis: “It means that summers today already have nothing to do with summers about 10 years ago: In 2024, one expects twice as many extreme heat waves as in 2014, and 4 times as many as in 2004.” –Robert Vautard, IPCC WG1 co-chair, July 2024
Why should today’s 12th graders gain an accurate understanding of climate and energy? Doing a better job with how we produce and use energy will mean a better outcome on climate.
Here is a clear and effective 30 minute talk from Stanford CISAC, 5/24, on the range of climate hazards facing 12th graders as they become adults: