Community-Led Clean Energy
Clean Energy for Every Community.
We put neighbors, workers, and families at the center of the clean energy transition — retiring polluting coal plants and replacing them with utility-scale solar and battery storage that communities own and benefit from.
Mission, Vision & Purpose
Why We Exist
Every community deserves the opportunity to shape its own future.
Communities thrive when residents have access to trusted information, effective leadership, meaningful partnerships, and opportunities to participate in decisions that affect their daily lives. Yet too often, the people most impacted by those decisions have the fewest resources to influence them.
Community Power Institute exists to change that. We believe communities already possess extraordinary knowledge, resilience, and leadership. Our role is not to replace local leadership — it is to strengthen it. We help communities build the capacity to identify challenges, develop solutions, organize collectively, and create lasting change.
Whether the issue is affordable energy, environmental health, community resilience, economic opportunity, or civic participation, our mission remains the same: equip communities with the tools they need to lead.
Our Work
Programs Built for Lasting Impact
Program 01
Community Solar + Battery Storage
We partner directly with neighborhoods to develop utility-scale solar paired with grid-scale battery storage — so communities get reliable, affordable clean power around the clock, not just when the sun shines. Local jobs, local ownership, local benefit.
Program 02
Retiring Coal, Protecting Neighbors
Millions of Americans live within miles of aging coal plants — breathing dirtier air and paying higher electricity bills. We work with those communities to build the case for retirement, protect workers through the transition, and replace coal with clean solar alternatives.
Program 03
People-Powered Clean Energy Policy
Real change happens when communities have a seat at the table. Our advocacy program trains local leaders, organizes public comment campaigns, and engages utility commissions and state legislatures — making sure frontline voices shape the clean energy future.
Building Community Power
Communities are strongest when the people who live there have the knowledge, relationships, and leadership to shape their own future.
Across America, communities face increasingly complex challenges — from rising energy costs and aging infrastructure to environmental hazards, economic uncertainty, and limited opportunities for meaningful public participation. Too often, decisions that affect neighborhoods are made without the voices of the people who call those neighborhoods home.
Community Power Institute was created to help change that. We believe lasting change begins with people. When residents are informed, organized, connected, and supported, they become powerful advocates for healthier neighborhoods, more affordable energy, stronger local economies, and more responsive public institutions.
Rather than focusing on a single issue or campaign, Community Power Institute serves as an engine for community leadership — bringing together organizing, education, research, innovation, and collaboration to help communities solve complex problems together. Whether working in a neighborhood, a city, or across multiple states, our approach remains the same: build local leadership first, because sustainable change is created by communities, not delivered to them.
Develop Leaders
We identify and invest in local leaders who can carry the clean energy vision forward in their own communities.
Strengthen Coalitions
We connect neighbors, workers, faith communities, and local businesses into durable coalitions that outlast any single campaign.
Produce Trusted Research
We generate rigorous, accessible data on air quality, energy costs, and grid economics that communities can use to make their case.
Train Organizers
We provide hands-on training so local advocates can run effective campaigns, testify at hearings, and hold utilities accountable.
Convene Partners
We bring together nonprofits, engineers, policymakers, and community members to build shared strategies and shared wins.
Test Innovative Ideas
We pilot new models for community ownership, local hiring, and benefit-sharing so the best ideas can scale across the country.
Why We Exist
Communities already possess extraordinary assets.
What many communities lack is access to the infrastructure that helps those assets grow into lasting influence.
Too often they lack:
Community Power Institute exists to bridge those gaps. We believe every community deserves access to the same high-quality organizing, research, leadership development, and strategic support that large institutions and well-funded organizations have long enjoyed.
Our Approach
We believe meaningful change is built through relationships.
Our work is grounded in five principles:
Communities lead.
Leaders are developed, not discovered.
Collaboration creates greater impact than competition.
Good decisions require trusted information.
Lasting change happens when local people have the tools, confidence, and relationships to act together.
More Than an Organization
Community Power Institute is not simply a nonprofit program.
A platform for leadership.
A learning community.
A research hub.
An organizing center.
A coalition builder.
A network of communities working together to create practical solutions for a cleaner, healthier, more equitable future.
Every training we deliver, every coalition we support, every report we publish, every fellowship we launch, and every partnership we build contributes to one larger purpose:
Helping communities build the power to shape their own future.
Our Organizational Home
Our Relationship to the Northeast Florida Environmental Leadership Foundation
Fiscal Sponsor & Governing Body
Northeast Florida Environmental Leadership Foundation (NEFELF)
Community Power Institute is the flagship public-facing initiative of the Northeast Florida Environmental Leadership Foundation (NEFELF).
NEFELF provides the governance, fiduciary oversight, and organizational infrastructure that enables the Institute to advance its mission. Through this relationship, Community Power Institute can develop national programs while remaining grounded in community-based leadership and accountable nonprofit stewardship.
As the Institute grows, the Foundation serves as the organization behind the work, while Community Power Institute becomes the platform through which communities connect, learn, organize, innovate, and lead.
Looking Ahead
The challenges facing our communities will continue to evolve.
Our commitment will not.
Community Power Institute is building more than programs.
Most importantly, we are building community power — one neighborhood, one coalition, one leader, and one generation at a time.
When a community retires a coal plant and builds solar in its place, that's not just an energy story — it's a health story, an economic story, and a justice story.
— Community Power Institute Mission Statement
Since 2011, we've worked alongside coal-dependent communities to build a cleaner, fairer energy future. Our approach is neighbor-driven, grounded in science, and measured by real outcomes — cleaner air, lower bills, and good local jobs.
Support Our WorkVolunteer
Show Up for Your Community
From door-knocking in coal-dependent towns to testifying at utility hearings, our volunteers are the engine of this movement. No engineering degree required — just a commitment to cleaner air and a fairer energy system.
Donate
Invest in People and the Planet
Your gift funds community organizing, solar feasibility studies, worker transition support, and the policy campaigns that turn coal plants into solar farms — one neighborhood at a time.