The Kendall Foundation has completed a program transition to become a “climate/energy foundation.” We recognize the urgency associated with the need to reduce greenhouse gas emissions and to prepare for the projected climate impacts by framing an ambitious program centered mainly on energy, its sources and its uses. By employing leveraging strategies we are seeking to achieve greater impacts than our grant dollars represent.

Challenges and opportunities line the path to a new carbon future, with strong signs that significant policy actions are on the way. Clearly there is much movement afoot amid shifting political, environmental and financial landscapes. To navigate these turbulent waters, we have made room for discovery, for learning, and for program innovation.

The Kendall Foundation’s understanding of the climate phenomenon has led to the design of the following program domains:

• Promoting Energy Efficiency - The centerpiece of our greenhouse gas mitigation work is an effort directed to municipal, state and regional levels to set in motion ways to capture the energy savings that are most readily available. This will be a major component in our grantmaking, emphasizing financial innovations that marry public and private capital and strategies to aggregate reductions in electricity demand. A likely component of this Program will center on the roles of electric/gas utilities and financial institutions.

• Climate Policy – Adaptation and Forested Landscapes – There are several aspects of this component reflecting needs for more research, advocacy and development of policies in the emergence of carbon markets, the potential for forest carbon capture, biofuels analysis and implementation of safeguards, and building conservation and natural resource-based climate change adaptation strategies.

• Building a Movement – The creation of a genuine popular political movement is essential to secure fundamental changes in American government policy. We have chosen to focus on youth as the segment of the American population who will bear the brunt of impending climate disruptions. A related program emphasis is on energizing the political movement through community level investments that mobilize individuals to reduce their own carbon footprints.