nick.nigro@atlaspolicy.com

Episode 1: Develop of Building Green Communities explores how development decisions shape healthier, more equitable neighborhoods. This episode spotlights Humboldt Park Passive Living, a 60-unit affordable family housing development on Chicago’s West Side, and features A.J. Patton, Founder & CEO of 548 Enterprise, sharing how energy-efficient strategies can align with sound financial decision-making. Through this project, we break down the developer’s role in delivering high-performance buildings and show how sustainable development benefits underserved communities—reducing utility costs for residents, strengthening neighborhood resilience, and making green buildings visible and accessible where they matter most.

The Denver Regional Council of Governments, whose members include area cities, towns, and counties, launched the new Power Ahead Colorado initiative in early 2026 using the nearly $200 million federal grant awarded by the EPA in 2024.

Tech company Epic Systems uses over 6,000 boreholes to help heat and cool its office buildings, making its Verona, Wisconsin campus one of the largest geothermal networks in the world.

In Tempe, Arizona, dozens of kids make their way to school on an unusual "bus." Rather than the traditional yellow, diesel-run vehicle, a "bike bus" consists of children and parents traveling to school on bicycles and is becoming more frequest across the West as parents and schools look for ways to get students moving their bodies.

At the nonprofit Center for an Ecology-Based Economy (CEBE) in the Appalachian foothills of western Maine, stories of weather extremes and the economic pain of recovery serve as real-life prompts to work with communities on climate resilience and green-energy approaches.

Overlake Medical Center and UMC undertook a comprehensive Energy Use Intensity (EUI) reduction initiative within an active hospital environment. Our goal was to improve energy efficiency without disrupting critical healthcare services, targeting measurable reductions in energy consumption across heating, cooling, and water systems.

For Donna Moodie at the restaurant Marjorie, her climate activism is rooted in the memory of her mother, Marjorie, and is driven by Moodie’s concern for the world her own son is inheriting. Trailing her mom—a warm and generous host—around the kitchen as a young girl in Jamaica and Chicago’s South Side, Moodie went on to start celebrated restaurants doing “scratch” cooking using only the highest quality ingredients, supplied largely by local merchants and farmers. It is this thread of stewardship that connects her passion for food, community, and family, and also animates her deep commitment to the climate-friendly movement towards electrification at her new restaurant in Seattle’s Central District—a storied Black community and vibrant center of economic and cultural life that is rejuvenating itself there.

In both his life and career, José Garzon has become well-practiced in reinvention. A childhood in Guayaquil, Ecuador and the Galapagos, a front man in world-touring punk bands, and now a celebrated U.S. chef and restaurateur, his improbable journey has at many turns demonstrated a hunger for new challenges. Now in his first brick-and-mortar restaurant, Garzon has tackled another one—including adopting an all-electric commercial kitchen—in creating an impressive offering in a small, but bustling eatery in Seattle’s Capitol Hill neighborhood.

On Tuesday, August 13, the U.S. Department of Energy (DOE) launched a new video series spotlighting clean energy workers and the communities being transformed by historic clean energy investments. The first video in this series, A New Iron Age, centers on Weirton, West Virginia, a historic steel town. After breaking ground in May 2023, Weirton will soon begin producing iron-air batteries to power homes and lower families’ energy bills. The new facility is one of over 800 new or expanded clean energy manufacturing projects announced on American soil since the Biden-Harris Administration entered office.

In the desert outside of Las Vegas, the Gemini Solar Project took a gentler approach, instead trying to preserve the ecosystem. According to a new study, it paid off for the threecorner milkvetch: Before the development, scientists found 12 plants on the site, and afterward in 2024 found 93, signifying that the seeds survived construction. Compared to a nearby plot of land, the plants at Gemini grew wider and taller, and produced more flowers and fruits. That might be because the solar panels shade the soil, slowing evaporation, which makes more water available to the plants to grow big and strong. “So you just have the potential for a lot more plants,” said Tiffany Pereira, an ecologist at the Desert Research Institute and lead author of the paper, which was published late last year. “There’s seedlings of so many other species coming up as well. And so the fact that seed bank survived is phenomenal.” It’s yet more evidence that solar farms can be built in ways that minimize disturbances to ecosystems. (The company behind the Gemini project, Primergy, did not respond to requests for comment.) This technique is called ecovoltaics: Instead of blade-and-grade, facilities are built with native species in mind. To give the ecosystem a boost, for instance, a crew can seed the soils with native grasses and flowers. “Some of those seed mixes do quite well at solar facilities, and they attract pollinators, birds, and other wildlife as a result,” said Lee Walston, an ecologist at Argonne National Laboratory who wasn’t involved in the new paper. “Sort of asking that umbrella, Field of Dreams, question, right: If you build it, will they come?”