The Work Was Never in Washington: Building Change One Block at a Time

“This is just the start of the work,” said the lobbyist flatly, as if it was the most obvious thing in the world at the end of an exhausting briefing.

This moment was both a reckoning and the beginning of two people coming together to determine how we could begin building a new type of movement in pursuit of renewable energy in co-governance with local neighborhoods. Here, “we” are Crystal Huang, a longtime community builder, and Mark Miles, a technology innovator in renewable energy.

Under the Biden Administration, it was years of organizing disparate voices from indigenous communities, rural areas, and urban neighborhoods across the country to present a unified argument for what energy democracy could look like. We had a US president who’d made big promises on energy infrastructure, and federal action finally seemed imminent. People who had been organizing in this space for years were energized in a completely new way. But the energy Crystal felt fell flat when the expensive lobbyist Crystal’s coalition had hired to help get the meeting told her she was only at the beginning of a long slog. Just like that, she knew something had to change.

This is what happened when we decided to stop waiting for Washington.

When Reasonable Strategies Stopped Making Sense

Crystal: For years, I had operated on a reasonable assumption: Federal policy is the critical lever for local communities seeking greater control over the energy that fuels their lives and livelihoods. The premise was that, with strong federal rules and sustained funding, communities could gain real control over—and share in the benefits of—the infrastructure that shapes their quality of life. For many years, I led the Energy Democracy Project: a team of passionate, dedicated community leaders and practitioners across the country who shape energy policy from the ground up by organizing in their communities, advancing locally rooted solutions, cultivating relationships with policymakers, and weaving a diverse national movement to democratize energy.

Mark: I was working from a different angle, but with a similarly reasonable vision. For over a decade, I had been developing thermal energy technology focused primarily on a commercial model. It looked like a distributed network supplying cleaner and less expensive heat to businesses with high natural gas costs, with community benefits that were substantial, but limited to factors like job creation and job-training revenue.

Compared to energy options like rooftop solar and household heat pumps, which often require expensive installations for individual buildings, thermal energy networks are designed to serve entire neighborhoods: renters and homeowners, small businesses and schools alike.

When we came together as co-founders, we learned that we’d both been thinking inside frameworks that weren’t big enough for the possibility of what we could accomplish together.

Both of these were smart, reasonable strategies that once made sense. But our first lesson was that when you’re presented with a big opportunity, sometimes smart, reasonable strategies become too small.

The Opportunity We Found

Thermal energy networks are an under-the-radar technology that’s capable of powering entire neighborhoods. Using a shared network of pipes that transfer heat in and out of buildings, thermal energy networks provide heating and cooling to multiple buildings at once with heat pumps. Many networks use geothermal heat, and they can also be designed to leverage creative sources like solar thermal systems or waste heat from sewage systems. Compared to energy options like rooftop solar and household heat pumps, which often require expensive installations for individual buildings, thermal energy networks are designed to serve entire neighborhoods: renters and homeowners, small businesses and schools alike.

Still emerging as an energy option in the United States, thermal energy networks are not generally considered utilities. This means they present an unusual opportunity for communities to have a shot at owning the infrastructure that could heat and cool their homes. Due to these possibilities for community ownership and benefit, thermal energy networks are attractive propositions to local governments and small community organizations like our own, OakTREE Initiative. But the networks are also attractive to private utilities and developers, who are less interested in community ownership than they are in turning a profit.

Another big moment for us came when we realized that thermal energy networks can create benefits for communities even beyond ownership. Through extensive conversations where we shared what we knew from our different fields—community-owned energy infrastructure and technology development breakthroughs—we realized there were opportunities hiding in such networks that could provide communities with some answers to the multiple crises they’re facing.

For example, community members we’ve spoken with have made it clear they’re as concerned with job creation, food security, and affordable energy costs as they are with climate adaptation. So at OakTREE Initiative, a nonprofit organization building block-scale, community-owned, technology-agnostic thermal energy networks in Oakland, California, we’ve designed networks to energize neighborhood blocks with renewable thermal energy and community heat pumps. Energy travels through buried, insulated pipes to the surrounding apartments and homes. Local greenhouses are connected to produce both thermal energy and fresh vegetables for the neighborhood. This design allows residents to monetize excess energy and use the revenue to employ an ecosystem of local workers to deploy, maintain, and operate the infrastructure. The entire ecosystem creates a system of interdependency and community accountability.

What we’ve learned from our years of building OakTREE is that while federal policy will always matter, our current political moment makes local and state-level organizing even more urgent and more effective.

Developing networks like this required us to spend years patiently developing and validating new technology, intensely engaging with community members, and above all, believing in the idea that regular people are capable of being stewards of energy infrastructure, not just consumers of it. Our preliminary 10-year projections include close to 100 permanent jobs, annual abatement of 8,000 tons of CO2, and energy savings of more than $300 per year for roughly 14,440 households. But we think those numbers understate what’s possible when communities become genuine stewards of their own energy future.

“As someone who didn’t wait for infrastructure to catch up to my neighborhood’s needs, I’ve always believed in working collaboratively and building resilience with resources that were readily available,” said Keneda Gibson, a longtime East Oakland resident who’s led mutual aid organizing in her neighborhood, in an interview with NPQ.

Gibson has also been involved with energy democracy work for years. Last year, she helped us organize a local community event to involve Oakland residents in our planning and development. “I’ve seen firsthand how easily communities burn out when they are forced to rely on borrowed equipment, temporary solutions, and goodwill alone,” said Gibson. “OakTREE represents something more enduring. It creates community-owned infrastructure that strengthens the work neighbors are already doing and gives resilience a permanent home. To me, that is the difference between simply surviving crises and building lasting community power.”

Notes for Other Nonprofit Organizers

What we’ve learned from our years of building OakTREE is that while federal policy will always matter, our current political moment makes local and state-level organizing even more urgent and more effective. While the national organizing we did wasn’t at all wasted, it wasn’t sufficient for moving at the speed our communities need. Our ability to pivot quickly when the landscape changes, or when we learn new information about systemic possibilities has been key to continuing our work in rapidly changing times.

As activist and scholar Angela Y. Davis reminds us, “It is in collectivities that we find reservoirs of hope and optimism.” In creating new possibilities for everyday people to engage with their own infrastructure, we create opportunities to organize with ambitious funders to fund a paradigm shift. Here are some of the additional lessons we’ve learned:

Find the people who want the future you see and build with them: Co-governance works when people know what their roles are, can clearly see their impact, and have real dialogue with the people building alongside them.

Invite people into stewardship rather than consumption: Today’s energy system offers communities a very clear role: Pay the bill and take whatever service the utility offers you. There’s an equally clear role for Investor-owned utilities in this system, which is to serve their shareholders. The relationship we’re looking to build is one of mutual accountability. Only when energy producers and community members are accountable to each other can governance be a shared experience, and a vehicle for bringing wealth back into neighborhoods.

New technologies can be shaped to benefit communities, not just extract from them: Communities have rightfully treated new technologies with skepticism when they’re rolled out alongside an exploitative business plan. But when it’s harnessed for community benefit, innovation can open opportunities that weren’t previously possible. Thermal energy networks are a good example: The window to build community-owned infrastructure with them is open right now, before private developers and investor-owned utilities capture the regulatory landscape, but that window is narrowing.

That lobbyist was right about that long-ago congressional briefing being only the start of the work. She just didn’t know which work she meant.