IMPEL is a woman-led, DOE-funded tech-to-market program accelerating equitable access to next-generation building decarbonization technologies for schools, homes, and commercial buildings. For Earth Day, Forbes published an exclusive on the program's remarkable success over the past five years. IMPEL innovators – over half of whom identify as women, non-binary, and/or people have color – have raised $90 million in funding, created 180 jobs, and won 167 awards, grants, and prizes.

For National Librarian Day (April 16), Rodney Freeman, librarian and producer of the documentary Are You a Librarian?, penned a Newsweek  essay celebrating librarians as heroes. He highlights librarians’ long history of promoting a healthy democracy and standing up for access to information, from Black librarians fighting  to end the segregation of libraries during the Jim Crow era, to present-day librarians pushing back against censorship and book bans. 

Our Southern forests are a national treasure. On President’s Day weekend, the Atlanta Journal-Constitution ran an op-ed by Treva Gear, PhD, founder of Concerned Citizens of Cook County, calling on Pres. Biden to address a blank spot in his environmental justice agenda: protecting Southern forests and communities from the dangerous and destructive wood pellet industry.

In Chicago’s Morgan Park neighborhood, 16% to 35% of residents are at risk of experiencing food insecurity. To help address the problem, Dion’s Chicago Dream and Blue Cross and Blue Shield of Illinois unveiled a Dream Vault – a set of network-enabled smart lockers that provide free, fresh produce – at the Blue Door Neighborhood Center Morgan Park. FOX 32, CBS Chicago, and Block Club Chicago covered this uplifting story.

Environmental justice leader Katherine Egland is calling on President Biden to stop the biomass industry from harming our climate and disadvantaged communities in the South.

On October 19, environmental justice leaders held a press conference to call on President Biden to stop the expansion of the biomass industry, which is polluting Southern communities and clearcutting Southern forests.

In a Newsweek opinion piece, Kathy Egland of EEECHO — who chairs the national NAACP board’s Environmental & Climate Justice Committee – calls on President Biden to patch a hole in his ambitious environmental justice agenda: industrial-scale logging and highly polluting wood pellet mills cropping up in low-income, majority-Black communities across the South.

Dion Dawson of Dion’s Chicago Dream is developing innovative ways to ensure all people have the healthy food they need to thrive. Story & Reach was proud to work with MatchPoint Studios to produce this video about Dion’s latest innovation: the Dream Vault.

In a small, majority Black town in Mississippi, residents are sounding the alarm on Drax – the owner of a local wood-pellet plant –  for exposing them to dangerous levels of air pollution.

The Drax factory has been fined for exceeding its air-pollution permits, but still received federal subsidies to build more wood-pellet plants across the South.

Despite claims that burning wood pellets for power is climate-friendly, studies show it produces more greenhouse gasses than coal.

The 19th News Exclusive: The Fund for Frontline Power – a groundbreaking new model for climate philanthropy – announces its first $5 million in grants to 48 climate justice organizations across the country. Funding decisions are made by F4FP’s governing body, which is made up of grassroots climate justice leaders. The Solutions Project, the Climate Justice Alliance, and the People’s Climate Innovation Center co-created the fund to accelerate the “solidarity philanthropy” movement, where funders work in solidarity with grassroots leaders rather than making top-down decisions. The fund is supported by environmental foundations, big green groups, the sports industry, and the company Seventh Generation.