Our Approach

BEI believes cities are powerful change agents that can pilot innovative and equitable solutions.

At BEI, we take a highly collaborative approach to helping city staff and community organizations realize their potential as agents of change. We invest in building long-term relationships within our cities and work closely with city staff and partners to identify equitable strategies that fit their local contexts. 

We bring a strong commitment to equity to ensure that the transition lifts up all communities and helps mitigate harms from past racist policies. We recognize that leaving communities behind would put our climate goals at risk, and that local governments have both the ability and responsibility to repair harm to communities.  

As former city employees ourselves, we understand firsthand the strengths that cities bring to equitable climate action, as well as their limitations. This allows us to help city staff work pragmatically within their existing governmental structures while also helping to expand their partnerships, resources, and influence.  

We focus on working with new partners and across multiple sectors. This includes helping our cities build partnerships across community development, public health, resiliency, housing, workforce, labor, and other sectors. We also recognize that engaging with those who are typically left out of the policymaking process is critical to developing successful and equitable strategies. We help our cities collaborate and co-create new programs, policies, and strategies with communities of color and others who have been historically marginalized. 

Our work with cities goes beyond local borders to influence regional, state, and federal outcomes. We help local governments amplify their voices at these levels of government and push for policy change that will facilitate an equitable transition toward clean energy for all. As our cities demonstrate their successes locally, we seek to inspire others to follow their lead. 

At BEI, we are committed to continuing to learn and grow. Every day, through honest reflection, new collaborations, and continuous iteration in our approach, we evolve. We know that much more needs to be done to uplift communities who have been marginalized in the past and to push toward an equitable transition toward buildings that are healthy, safe, resilient, and fossil-fuel free.

This is just the beginning of our story. 

Learn more about our impact.

BEI’s 2023-2025 Strategic Plan

History of BEI

BEI began as a collaboration starting in 2016 between several cities working through the Urban Sustainability Directors Network (USDN) and the Carbon Neutral Cities Alliance (CNCA). At the time, local governments were developing increasingly ambitious climate goals, and many had just begun to evaluate pathways to eliminate or substantially reduce their greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions. While solutions for the electricity and transportation sectors were often clear, options for the building sector were less so. Many local governments found that building energy efficiency measures alone were not sufficient to achieve their goals. Instead, buildings would need to be transitioned away from fossil fuels and toward systems that can rely on clean and renewable sources of power–such as carbon-free electricity. 

BEI’s founder, Jenna Tatum, was working for New York City at this time and began collaborating with staff in Burlington, Boulder, and Washington D.C. on initial efforts to begin the transition to building electrification. Through this work, these four cities recognized the enormous challenge of electrifying millions of buildings, as well as the need to center equity in the process. They understood that to be successful, local governments will need to learn quickly from one another and collaborate with a wide range of partners to achieve the pace and scale required, which is what inspired Jenna to launch BEI in 2018.