As an economically struggling Midwestern city of approximately 60,000, Youngstown, Ohio, doesn’t exactly fit the prototype for a micro-mobility hotspot. 

But after a soft launch of four docking stations near Youngstown State University last fall, YoGo Bikeshare is set for a ribbon cutting in downtown Youngstown on March 23, boasting 30 e-bikes and 45 docking stations in various locations in and around downtown, just south of the university. 

And while many big-name players in the bikeshare space traditionally don’t view mid-sized cities like Youngstown as viable markets, YoGo Bikeshare president and co-founder Ronnell Elkins is determined to ensure that this Black-owned, family-run and community-oriented operation succeeds. 

As a privately owned business, YoGo Bikeshare received funding from Valley Economic Development Partners to purchase bicycles and related equipment needed to run the bikeshare operation. Elkins and company also won $5,000 in seed funding through audience votes during a Youngstown Business Incubator event in 2022. 

Participating in the incubator also facilitated the process of securing an insurer for the operation, along with a $174,000 loan to supplement the $5,000 prize and out-of-pocket investments. Obtaining local support and buy-in is essential to the bikeshare’s success, along with securing ongoing sufficient funding to establish and maintain the operation, Elkins said.

“When we talk about fostering a healthy community, we’re going to rely on those same people to help us keep this thing going and keep it viable,” Elkins said. “It’s about scale. We know how expensive it is to run a bike[share] operation. We’re kind of an anomaly in this field because of the way we’re doing it from a business structure. So, on our business plan, we see that it can be profitable if you scale it right. And our margins may not be big as with Lyft and Bird and Lime, but it’s going to be enough to sustain the business.” 

But while he recognizes generating a reasonable return on investment is essential, profit has not been the overriding motivator for Elkins.

“We wanted to create an ecosystem for rideshare within our city because we understood the lay of the land. We are more equipped to provide real insight for what’s important to our people than some outsider looking at our city merely as a profit model,” Elkins said. “We weren’t coming in trying to make this about profit, but more about community engagement and fostering a healthy community. We didn’t have those types of motives.”

The number of bikes and docking stations at each location will vary, but the general rule of thumb is to provide one and a half open docking stations per bike, to allow docking bikes from alternate locations, according to Elkins.

Riders can purchase annual memberships or daily passes, and can reserve bikes at bike station kiosks or via a smartphone app. 

When mapping out docking stations, Elkins and his crew used a 2019 study of bikeshare viability commissioned by the city as a point of reference before beginning their own research. 

YoGo Bikeshare also obtained key approval from the city, which had turned away other proposals, in no small part because YoGo Bikeshare opted for an all e-bike fleet secured at fixed docking stations.

“It was a combination of the major players not thinking Youngstown was profitable, and the government of the city not wanting to have scooters and bikes littered everywhere,” as has happened in cities like Dallas and Chicago, Elkins said.

“There was some pushback early on because it was a combination of those different city organizations wondering why theirs didn’t go through versus ours and you know, who are we? ‘Who are these Black guys?,’ for a lack of better word. ‘Who are these people coming in, being able to do this, and why weren’t we accepted?’” Elkins said. 

Going all-in on e-bikes was always the plan, given the trend in the bikeshare space toward e-bikes. The hilly terrain of the region also pushed YoGo to expand bike access to a broader cross-section of potential riders, Elkins said. 

“From a business mindset, we didn’t want to have to change out bikes within a year or two. And so, I just said, you know what? We’ll just invest the money now on e-bikes. 

“Because again not only do we see the trends in the industry, but also it’s a lot more inclusive in terms of the demographic. If you have any older riders that are looking to ride, Youngstown has quite a few hills. And the e-bikes will help assist them with the pedal assist to get up those hills without putting a strain on their joints,” Elkins said. 

Long-term viability is never far from Elkins’ mind. At the same time, YoGo Bikeshare is more than an entrepreneurial enterprise for Elkins.

“You have to keep the lights on … It does us no good to roll out a bikeshare, get all this attention, and it isn’t sustainable and it closes in two years or next year. It doesn’t do anyone any good. 

“We’re just going to be renting the bikes, but we’ve become embedded in political conversations. We’ve become embedded with the regional government in terms of how they’re trying to repopulate areas. We come up in the sector of transportation, we come up in a lot of different things. It’s not about the bikes, it’s about diversity, equity, inclusion. It’s about so much more than the bike itself. I didn’t realize that when we first started it, but as I, as we go along, it is, it’s bigger than the bike,” Elkins said.

As bikeshare struggles elsewhere, promoters hope Youngstown, Ohio, can make it work is an article from Energy News Network, a nonprofit news service covering the clean energy transition. If you would like to support us please make a donation.

As a longtime fan of George Clinton — a funk pioneer who bent and blended multiple music genres with science fiction imagery — Chicago-based artist Cydney Lewis always had a sense of consciousness beyond the limits of the physical plane.  

But she wasn’t aware of the larger Afrofuturism movement and its connection to real-time issues like climate change until the early 2000s. That’s when she saw notices for classes on Afrofuturism at Columbia College Chicago — and subsequently read the influential text Afrofuturism by author, artist, and fellow Chicagoan Ytasha Womack.

“Oh, they got a name for this,” Lewis said. “But it was something that I’ve always loved…I’ve always thought the whole Afrofuturistic idea — past, present, future — spirituality with science, it’s all, to me, always been one.”

Afrofuturism has been intrinsically connected with real-time social and environmental issues even before the movement had a name. Sociologist and activist W.E.B. Du Bois speculated about the questioning of racism in the face of the catastrophic destruction of New York City by an errant asteroid in his 1920 short story The Comet. Iconic African American science fiction writer Octavia Butler presented a dystopian vision of a society ravaged by climate change in 1993’s Parable of the Sower. 

More recently, the Black Panther graphic novel series and movies showcased the isolated but technologically advanced fictional African nation of Wakanda, powered largely by the amazing substance “Vibranium,” with its promise of a means to literally save the world from climate change, poverty and other ills. 

For Lewis, Afrofuturism reflects but a single aspect — albeit an essential element — of African culture both on the continent and across the diaspora: It draws a large proportion of its resiliency from a fundamental interconnection between the spiritual and the natural worlds. Through Afrofuturism, Black people can visualize themselves as active agents; movers and shakers in a future world — a departure from the largely White male-dominated genre of conventional science fiction.                                                        

“One of the things that I have studied and paid attention to is the spirituality within our culture as African and the African diaspora,” Lewis said. “How everything was from ancient cultures, everything was always based off of spirit and being one with nature and being one mind, body and spirit. And it’s all the same. 

“Part of Afrofuturism is taking that history of spirit and using it for the future of seeing yourself in the future, of always knowing that you’re bigger than just yourself. It’s bigger than just you. It is futurism, period… So, my work is just really about what are the possibilities? What can be a possibility and why don’t we believe it?” Lewis said. 

Earthly visions

Integration between the physical, the spiritual and social reality plays a prominent role in Lewis’s works, three of which were featured in a recent exhibition at Gallery 400 on the University of Illinois at Chicago campus titled Earthly Visions: Inside the Climate Crisis, one of a series of ecologically focused shows. Invited artists were tasked with creating representations that reflect societal reactions to climate change in a way that looks beyond the traditional approaches to environmental issues.

Lewis’s contributions to the show from her Terrain Vague series both reflected and utilized materials common to Bronzeville, a predominantly Black community on Chicago’s Near South Side, with a connection to climate change. 

“As a group we discussed several of Cydney’s series, finally deciding that her Terrain Vague series brilliantly combined multiple threads of interest to us,” Gallery 400 director Lorelei Stewart said in an email.

Incorporating mundane materials and discarded objects — items viewed as having little or no intrinsic or remaining value — into her artwork reflects Lewis’ desire to provoke thought about what is valued in society and what is considered trash or refuse.

For example, during the 1990s, Lewis incorporated plastic shopping bags into much of her work. At the time, many retail and commercial operations offered durable plastic shopping bags that shoppers were encouraged to reuse. Even ecologically conscious operations like Whole Foods gave shoppers the option of “paper or plastic,” stating that their plastic bags were manufactured with water-based inks and recycled materials.

“When I first began this journey of really taking my artwork seriously, I began to just look around at my environment. I didn’t want to go to the art store. I didn’t want to buy things,” Lewis said. “I very much had an understanding that the climate was changing and that global warming was happening. And at that time a lot of plastics were everywhere. And so, I just wanted to just use what we had that we didn’t value that was discarded. We have these materials and we don’t know what to do with them.

“We never really dealt with the fact that these (plastic bags) were harmful. We hadn’t yet converted back to paper. We had taken paper out. You remember Whole Foods. They were all paper. And then they went to plastic, and then they went back. So, we’re still asking these questions. We’re not really solving anything. We’re just asking the same questions.”

In some cases, the found materials in Lewis’s works are discards, like sections of synthetic hair that resemble tufts of tumbleweed, that also reflect the proliferation of beauty salons and dollar stores in many predominantly Black communities — that in a sense represent compensation for the lack of robust commercial and other resources in disinvested BIPOC communities.

“As I’m walking in my community, I see things like hair on the ground, which I think an animal [shed]. And then I find out it’s just synthetic hair. It looks like when you’re in the wild, wild west and those bushes go by.

“They were opening up huge beauty supply stores [in Black communities] dedicated to hair. This was early on, maybe in the 2000s. I started to use that in my work. A lot of times I go to the dollar store because that’s in my community. Beauty supply stores are all over. That’s easy access, it’s cheap. It’s things we discard, we don’t really value,” Lewis said.

‘There’s always light’

For Lewis, the climate crisis, disinvestment and social issues are inseparable but not insoluble. Her works also reflect the inspiration she draws from nature and the resilience of the human species — and especially Black, Brown and Indigenous people — in facing adversity by balancing the looming despair of the climate crisis against the hope of adaptation to mitigate its adverse effects.

“And so, for me, resilience is really important because with that, you have to adapt and you have to be able to move and change. … I really want [people] to be able to see in the future or be able to have some sort of imaginative concept that there is in the darkness … there’s always light. 

“I feel like nature’s already figured all this out. And if we paid attention to biodiversity and what’s going on in our ecological system, then we could learn more. Maybe if we change the value system a little bit, maybe caregiving, things that we don’t really value and put a lot of money towards. Maybe if we start to value those things, we might be able to survive.”

For a Chicago artist, Afrofuturism inspires a vision for confronting climate change is an article from Energy News Network, a nonprofit news service covering the clean energy transition. If you would like to support us please make a donation.

An effort led by Chicago’s Blacks in Green has been recommended for $12.5 million in renewable energy credits to help develop three community solar projects to benefit underresourced communities.

The three projects totaling 9 MW are valued at $25.7 million and will be developed by the Green Energy Justice Cooperative, a project launched by Blacks in Green and other partners, to benefit Black, Brown and low and moderate-income subscribers in and around Aurora, Naperville, and Romeoville, Illinois. The Illinois Power Agency ranked the projects first, second and fourth among proposals vying for renewable energy credits in the Illinois Shines competition.

Naomi Davis, founder and CEO of Blacks in Green, says the recognition is the culmination of a long effort to ensure energy independence for her community.  

“The importance of the industry was made very, very clear to me and others right from the start,” she said. “The opportunity was presenting itself with renewable energy credits that Blacks in Green and others had fought for, for over a decade to really build out the toolkit for the renewable energy industry in Illinois.”  

“We’re delighted to partner with Blacks in Green to help create new sources of renewable energy in Aurora and Romeoville through the Green Energy Justice Co-op,” said Vibhu Kaushik, senior vice president and global head of energy, utilities, and storage at Prologis in a news release. “As a member of the local business community, Prologis is focused on working with our customers, local governments, and local partners like Blacks in Green to help create a vibrant and sustainable economy.”

Launched in 2022, the Green Energy Justice Cooperative, or GEJC, strives to provide low-income communities of color with the economic and political power of owning energy generation. It coordinates the efforts of organizations that have been working toward economically and racially just ownership of local clean energy and related energy justice issues in the Chicago area for decades. 

Davis founded the Green Energy Justice Cooperative along with these board members:

• Anton Seals, Grow Greater Englewood
• Cheryl Johnson, People for Community Recovery
• Olga Bautista, Southeast Environmental Task Force
• Patricia Eggleston – Treasurer, Imani Village
• Tony Pierce – Vice President, Community Transformation Ministries, Sun Bright Energy LLC and Community Transformation Partnership Power (CTP-Power)
• Kendrick Hall – Secretary and alternate for Cheryl Johnson, People for Community Recovery 

The co-op also receives support and advice from Claretian Associates, North Lawndale Employment Network, Chicago Environmental Justice Network, Urban Juncture and Greenleaf Advisors.  

“This is a tremendous win for Chicago and further highlights why collective action works,” said Anton Seals, Jr., GEJC board member and Lead Steward (executive director) of Grow Greater Englewood, in a news release. “Our communities need work and opportunities to support the brilliance and creativity to build a new economy that centers new concepts for commerce and energy in Black communities across the globe.”

Co-op member organizations, both individually and collectively, have sought to implement community-based solar since the passage of Illinois’ Climate and Equitable Jobs Act in 2021 that set ambitious goals for the equitable transformation of the state’s energy portfolio by 2050. Davis deliberately chose and invited members of the co-op to work alongside Blacks in Green to ensure maximum collaboration and productivity. 

“A cooperative is a democratically operated business entity. So, I was looking for people, number one, who I knew to be highly productive organizations; number two, whom I enjoyed being with and around and communicating with; [and] number three, that I trusted in a business context,” Davis said. 

“I was not going to go shopping for a headache,” Davis continued. “I was going to go shopping for the very most collegial, effective, enjoyable people to be a part of the founding board.” 

Renters, condominium owners, and homeowners unable to install solar will be co-owners of the solar co-op and accompanying profit sharing, and will have a voice in management. The co-op will also provide workforce training and capacity development, and present residents with a hands-on opportunity to help create an equitable clean energy transition that protects the environment in their own communities.  

“This will ensure that the projects are completed and thereby demonstrate the power of solar sovereignty for ownership and wealth building by Blacks in distressed Black communities,” said Rev. Tony Pierce, GEJC board member and CEO of Sun Bright Energy, in a news release. 

The co-op’s success in the Illinois Shines competition brings it one step closer to delivering the benefits of the burgeoning clean energy transition in Illinois to underserved and marginalized communities, which have suffered the double whammy of disinvestment and disproportionate detrimental impact of the effects of climate change.  

“Given that many environmental justice communities like mine, in the far Southeast Side of Chicago, bear the brunt of climate change, this is a great opportunity to begin to undo and heal our communities from that harm,” said Olga Bautista, GEJC board member and co-executive director of the Southeast Environmental Task Force, in a news release. 

GEJC is also supported by partners at Cooperative Energy Futures, a Minnesota-based member-owned clean energy cooperative that has developed similar models of equitable community ownership of solar projects. 

“We’re really excited to be supporting GEJC in bringing community-owned solar to GEJC’s local communities in Illinois,” said Cooperative Energy Futures General Manager Timothy DenHerder-Thomas in a news release. “Through our co-op in Minnesota, we’ve seen the power of this model in uniting communities around a clean energy future that works for renters and low-income households and makes sure local residents own and get the benefits too.” 

The three GEJC community solar projects selected by the Illinois Power Agency will be presented to the Illinois Commerce Commission, the Illinois public utility regulatory body, in January 2024 for final approval for renewable energy credit contracts. 

While this award represents a substantial win, it only represents one piece of ongoing work for Blacks in Green, whose mission Davis sums up as the establishment of a “walk to work, walk to shop, walk to learn, walk to play village, where African Americans own the businesses, own the land, and live the conservation lifestyle.”  

“We are determined to expand our clean energy businesses.” Davis said. “That means we’re working to get funding so that we can work closely with our neighbors to educate, engage, train, mobilize, finance, and otherwise support ourselves in the design and implementation of local living economies in energy, horticulture, housing, tourism, and waste. 

“We are here to, for example, decarbonize all of the buildings in our Sustainable Square Mile of West Woodlawn. And that’s no small feat to decarbonize the walkable village at scale,” Davis continued, saying that residents need to undertake weatherization measures and other costs before taking full advantage of clean energy technology. 

Blacks in Green’s mission also includes work on a virtual power plant and clean energy microgrid, affordable energy legislation, and geothermal power.

“So, we’re on the ground taking all of the access points to, along the way to creating a triumph for ourselves in the tradition of our great migration ancestors,” Davis said. 

And while she recognizes the importance and even necessity of philanthropy, Davis has no intention of relying solely on donors. 

“We are looking to be our own emergency management system. At the end of the day when the ‘you know what’ hits the fan, we want our communities, our walkable villages to be ready not only because they have greater health and wealth, but because they have been in the process of creating an oasis of resilience against the harms of the climate crisis” Davis said. “That’s what we’re here to do.”

Community solar projects seen as key step toward energy justice in Illinois is an article from Energy News Network, a nonprofit news service covering the clean energy transition. If you would like to support us please make a donation.

Biking within Black and Brown communities is complicated. 

While non-motorized transportation is an important tactic for reducing emissions, many people still associate biking with something that kids do — or think of it as the last resort for people who can’t afford cars. 

In BIPOC communities, that is compounded by external factors such as perceived or realistic safety issues, police harassment, and lack of access and infrastructure due to decades of disinvestment.  

Olatunji Oboi Reed, president and CEO of the Equiticity Racial Equity Movement in Chicago, aims to change that.

“There are some systemic barriers that keep Black and Brown people driving, that keep Black and Brown people driving by themselves, that push Black and Brown people away from transit or cycling or walking. So, we’ve got to think about this holistically and at the systemic level … some of the systemic barriers that keep us from getting rid of our cars,” Reed said. 

Based in North Lawndale on Chicago’s West Side, Equiticity is a multifaceted, multi-racial organization focused on eliminating racial inequality. Reed, along with his staff and an active board of directors, guides the organization in its pursuit of racial justice — largely pedal-powered by bicycle. 

For Reed and for Equiticity, getting more Black and Brown people on bikes is about more than recreation or even transportation. He sees it as a vehicle for enhanced community cohesion, economic development, and improved health outcomes for Black and Brown residents, whose life expectancy is a full decade lower than that of White residents of the city, in part due to poor air quality generated by fossil fuel combustion.

From Slow Roll to Equiticity

Reed, along with childhood friend Jamal Julien, launched Slow Roll Chicago — a local outpost of a global bicycle movement — in 2014 as a means of encouraging more Black, Brown and Indigenous people to embrace bicycling for both recreation and transportation. While Reed has stepped away from leadership, Slow Roll Chicago continues to work to strengthen community connections and development.

In 2017, Reed expanded his vision of promoting racial equity beyond Slow Roll Chicago with a well-attended soft open of Equiticity in Chicago’s tony River North neighborhood. A number of delegates from the National Association of City Transportation Officials conference, along with local advocates, supporters and members of the media, were in the audience. The new organization was initially tasked with a plan to establish bike libraries on the city’s predominantly Black and Brown South and West Sides.

Since then, the organization has expanded its programming reach while remaining firmly rooted within a framework of advocating for BIPOC communities. Today, Equiticity encompasses advocacy, social enterprises, and programming, along with “community mobility rituals” where Black, Brown and Indigenous people take to the road on two wheels. 

Three of its major programs — the Mobility Opportunities Fund, GoHub Community Mobility Center and BikeForce Workforce Development Program — are specifically designed to make biking more accessible and affordable for Black and Brown riders by addressing inequities, disinvestment and disparities, along with promoting economic development. 

The Mobility Opportunities Fund

In November 2022, Equiticity launched the Mobility Opportunities Fund, supported by a grant of $448,950 from ComEd. The fund initially provided $350 for the purchase of a conventional bicycle, $750 for the purchase of an electric bicycle, $1,500 for the purchase of an electric cargo bicycle and $3,500 for the purchase of an electric vehicle. (Stipends were later increased to $8,750 for EVs.)

Only four EVs were purchased using resources from the fund. However, community members bought 111 bikes, 85 electric bikes and 57 electric cargo bikes with their stipends, according to an August 2023 report on the program.

“When I came on board, I was very excited, because I understand being someone who resides in North Lawndale,” said Remel Terry, director of programs at Equiticity. “I understand the benefit of having alternative modes of transportation especially if you can’t afford a bike or even the cost of, as we’ve seen, gas and things of that nature.

“And then the overall climate-friendly aspect is also a big deal, in my opinion, and helping us to understand how to be more environmentally friendly without having to harp on things in the way sometimes it gets communicated.” 

The GoHub Community Mobility Center

Equiticity is developing the GoHub Community Mobility Center to help address EV charging deserts along with other mobility and transportation needs for residents of North Lawndale. 

“The GoHub would have charging stations accessible to the community who may have electric vehicles,” Terry said. “So, it’s really like a one stop shop bringing all of the various programs into a physical space within the community of North Lawndale.”

But the GoHub is not limited to facilitating EV adaptation. Reed envisions multiple functions to address transportation-related inequities that Black and Brown low- and moderate-income residents experience, some of which may not be readily apparent.

That includes “hardware” — physical infrastructure — and “software,” which Reed describes as “the work we do to socialize people around the act of mobility.”

“For us, that’s our community mobility rituals. We do community bicycle rides, neighborhood walking tours, public transit excursions, group scooter rides, and open streets festivals,” Reed said.

“We also, as a part of the GoHub, want to have a hyper-local advocacy coalition. So, these are people at the neighborhood level who identify the needs to grow our mobility. And then we organize ourselves to move the stakeholders and policy makers in the city to bring the resources to bear that we need to grow our mobility in our neighborhoods,” Reed said.

North Lawndale suffers from a high crime rate, which is highly publicized in local and national media. In acknowledging the prevalence of violence in the neighborhood, Reed also envisions the “software” of the GoHub as a means to reduce the presence of violence that can discourage residents from biking.

“Violence in our neighborhood is not something that we are able to pontificate about often. It is pretty close to us. Trauma is driving our concerns around mobility. So, we want to address trauma. 

“We want mental health services to be a significant part of our work in the GoHub… We want space in the GoHub where that space is dedicated to other forms of healing to help people move through their trauma and begin to consider other modes of travel that, heretofore, they weren’t focused on,” Reed said.

Workforce development

Equiticity launched BikeForce in 2022 as a workforce development program for teens between the ages of 15 and 19 living in North Lawndale and adjacent communities. The apprenticeship program focuses on the emerging electric transportation sector, through the mechanics of e-bicycle construction, along with electric vehicles, e-scooters, battery systems, and electric motors. The Cook County Justice Advisory Council awarded Equiticity a $600,000 grant earlier this year, which allowed the program to expand to serve 60 trainees over 18 months. 

“BikeForce is providing these participants with comprehensive and targeted mentorship, career services and workforce training in an emerging, environmentally sustainable sector — all while increasing access to climate-friendly mobility devices in North Lawndale,” Terry said in an email.

The apprenticeship program also provides networking and opportunities for living-wage jobs to as many as 30 young people each year. Participants who complete the program also receive a cash stipend of $1,100 and a non-electric bicycle, Terry said.

“They’ll be able to leave this program and be hired as a bike mechanic somewhere with the experience of also understanding the battery aspect of the electric bike, which is a very big deal,” Terry told Streetsblog in September.

Ongoing advocacy

Equiticity launched the Free 2 Move Coalition during the summer of 2022 to advocate for improvements in biking infrastructure and policy changes, especially around the issue of police harassment of Black and Brown bike riders, including aggressive enforcement of street crossing regulations and prohibitions against riding on the sidewalk. These types of stops increased exponentially as an alternative to stop-and-frisk, said Jose Manuel Almanza, director of movement and advocacy building at Equiticity.

“Right now, the Chicago Police Department can stop vehicles for a number of reasons, including a busted taillight, no registration or expired registration, [or] no city sticker — stuff that we think that should not be in the hands of the Chicago Police Department” Almanza said.

Equiticity’s research found that between 2014 and 2019, police disproportionately issued citations for bike riding on sidewalks on the West and South Sides, which are predominantly Black and Brown neighborhoods.

“At the same time, those areas have little to no biking infrastructure. So, it makes sense that people just feel safer riding on the sidewalk,” Almanza said. “So, we want to eliminate the CPD’s ability to ticket folks for these offenses, and at the same time invest in these neighborhoods to give them the space and the safety they need to ride their bike safely on the road.”

Like many Black and Brown communities, North Lawndale has suffered the effects of decades of disinvestment. However, dollars intended to mitigate disinvestment frequently don’t make their way to areas where they are most needed. 

At the same time, initiatives to mitigate disparities are sometimes met with pushback — driven by mistrust and anxiety about displacement, and exacerbated by the failure of municipal and other entities to engage community stakeholders, Almanza said. 

“We really want to expand biking infrastructure. However, a lot of people on the West Side and South Side see biking infrastructure as a sign of gentrification. A lot of people think, well, who are these bike lanes really for? It just seems that whenever the city does any kind of improvements in, for example, North Lawndale or Little Village, we get priced out. And I think just seeing that over and over and over again, it just creates suspicion in people that, well, in the past, everything they’ve done was not for me. So why is this for me now?

“Different communities in Chicago have different needs and people who live here know what’s needed, know what’s working, know what isn’t. However, we just keep seeing a lack of engagement from city agencies when it comes to creating a plan around infrastructure. A lot of our communities have been here for a very long time, so there’s a lot of history in it, and it seems like a lot of that history isn’t taken into consideration.” Almanza said.

For Reed, advocacy, education and improving biking infrastructure are all integral to Equiticity’s mission of getting Black and Brown people on bikes — and having them feel safe riding.

“How are we going to convince somebody not to drive and they should walk or bike, and there’s no sidewalk? This is not a rural community. This is the city of Chicago. People consider this the welcome center to the country,” Reed said.

“Corporations are headquartered here. And we’ve got a neighborhood in our city with no sidewalk. And it’s been like that for decades. The intersection [at] 79^th and Stony [Island] is one of the most dangerous intersections in the state of Illinois. It’s been like that for generations. And we’re supposed to convince somebody in that neighborhood to ride a bike. I wouldn’t dare tell somebody to ride a bike on Stony Island. I wouldn’t ride a bike on Stony Island. So, we’ve got to improve the quality of our infrastructure. We’ve got to use infrastructure to reduce all types of violence, interpersonal, police, and vehicular. And this is taking place.”

Black-led Chicago nonprofit sees cycling as a tool for building healthy communities is an article from Energy News Network, a nonprofit news service covering the clean energy transition. If you would like to support us please make a donation.

A Chicago-area engineer and CEO with roots in Ghana, Senyo Ador has a unique perspective on promoting clean energy and sustainable development. 

“You can come into a space like Chicago that has been built, caught on fire and rebuilt, and you juxtapose that against Ghana, [which] still is more like a blank slate that’s continuing to build its own infrastructure,” said Ador, who is the co-founder of Sẽsẽnergi Eco Solutions Enterprise in Berwyn, Illinois. “It’s almost like I’m cheating because I’ve seen a finished product and now I’m in a space where I have access to a work in progress.” 

Sẽsẽnergi offers advisory and energy modeling services to developers to build, design, and finance net-zero or high-efficiency projects. Ador is also committed to providing career opportunities in the clean energy economy to members of BIPOC communities. 

Ador and his company collaborate with Elevate, a clean energy nonprofit based in Chicago. Through its workforce development program, Elevate provides financial and logistical support for community-based service providers like Sẽsẽnergi to increase diversity among clean-energy operations — and thereby increase employment opportunities for members of traditionally disinvested communities.

Elevate’s program recruits business owners from marginalized communities in a number of specialties, including general contracting, heating and cooling, electrification, weatherization and plumbing. Companies and their owners receive capacity and growth planning, community-based clean energy skills training, business development, job and life skills training, networking opportunities, and stipends to cover lost income and certification fees. The program also provides access to sources of vital working capital. 

Collaboration with Elevate has been vital for Ador and Sẽsẽnergi, providing additional support to help the company secure contracts that might otherwise have been out of reach. 

“Being able to stabilize yourself with a relationship [with] Elevate means a lot,” Ador said. “I think pairing [the two] together gives a lot of folks that are looking at a two-and-a-half-year-old company, and wondering how it’s going to work, some peace of mind.”

Moving into clean energy

Ador is a third-generation engineer. His grandfather was trained as a civil engineer in Germany, and his father worked as a welder on the first hydroelectric dam in Ghana. He began his career with GE building gas plants, and later worked on a rural electrification project through his family-owned business, TMG Ghana. 

“After 10 years, it really got me understanding process,” Ador said. “Like what is the cycle from saying, ‘Hey, I want to put a solar farm in this part of the world’ to your interconnection with a utility. From that I started to grow confidence and feel like this is something I could do. Not only on my own, but with people that have the same kind of worldview and background as myself.”

Even while working with projects using fossil fuels, Ador was inspired by the possibilities of clean energy. But it was while working on a rural electrification project in Ghana that Ador observed the transformational power of clean energy on the ground. 

“I would build gas turbines, but I was aware of wind turbines and so I would tinker,” Ador said. “I had an opportunity to visit a farm in Pembroke 10 years ago — maybe even more than that — Black Oaks Center for Sustainable Living. And they were really deep in the solar conversation, energy storage, biofuel. And to see folks from Chicago — African Americans with corporate backgrounds that just decided, ‘We’re going to unplug from the world as we know it, and just burrow down this adventure of clean energy and sustainability’ — it was inspiring.

“But the international piece was on the rural electrification projects that I was working on [in Ghana]. The grid could only go so far because of the terrain. You have to carry poles and wires and transformers deep into these areas. The only way to really get meaningful access to electricity to people is solar. 

“So, we started doing island communities there, and that’s what really got my wheels turning. I was like, okay, this is an island community that their livelihood is based around fishery. So, they need cold storage. Now [I was] moving out of the aid conversation into, ‘What’s your bottom line?’ And you guys are losing a bunch of fish because you can’t store it. This solution can actually impact your ability to store and sell fish that otherwise would’ve been considered a loss.” 

Workforce training 

Sẽsẽnergi, which has three full-time and four part-time employees, launched its workforce training program in 2021, recruiting cohorts of 10 to 14 trainees. The 16-week curriculum covers solar array installation, site assessment, system design and preparation for the North American Board of Certified Energy Practitioners exam. 

Sẽsẽnergi also provides cross-training, such as water heater and heat pump installation. To date, three cohort members have found employment within the company while six have landed external positions with an inverter manufacturer and a solar installer company. 

Providing clean energy workforce opportunities for members of environmental justice communities — where opportunities for formal employment are scarce — is an essential element of Sẽsẽnergi’s mission. Honoring this mission has meant that the bottom line has sometimes, at least temporarily, taken a back seat to grant grace to less-than-optimal employee performance. In one instance, a no-show employee put an important heater replacement job on the line. Nonetheless, the worker is still with the company, Ador said.

“Having somebody that’s 25 years old for 14 weeks, you get attached to them; you get attached to their potential,” Ador said. “You have a vision for what they can be in your company, but that’s 25 years of life that’s been lived. You have to afford people the opportunity to be human, with all that entails. 

“So, on that particular project, it was a no call, no show, [on] the pipeline deal. Obviously being disappointed and doing your best to try to smooth that over, so that you can maintain your book of business, but then also not throwing human beings away because one opportunity just didn’t work out. It’s a painful process, but it’s something that we’re committed to. It’s part of who we are and we can’t turn away from it.”

With his experience working on bigger projects, Ador recognizes there are limits to what a small company can take on. 

“Our team will get frustrated with having missed out on the opportunity and we’ll look in the mirror and say, ‘Hey, we know what it takes to ultimately be at that table,” Ador said. “It takes time; it takes tenacity and you can’t really quit.’” 

On the other hand, as a Black entrepreneur, Ador still encounters obstacles that White-owned companies may not deal with, despite his extensive expertise and experience. 

“I’m happy to see more and more of us [BIPOC] in those spaces,” Ador said. “But even with my experience, I can come on a job, and you will feel like you’re being shut out or frozen out or taken for granted in certain ways. So, it’s a constant fight, but I think that’s part of being an entrepreneur is not taking that fight sitting down.” 

Looking toward the future 

Collaboration with Elevate will continue to play a significant role in the future of the company as it continues to build capacity for hands-on projects, Ador said.

“I feel good about the company,” Ador said. “We’re a BIPOC company by makeup, but I think energy is an everybody issue and everybody needs those solutions. So, we want to cross-collaborate as much as possible. We obviously will always be in tune with the community’s needs. It’s not even a mandate. It’s part of our DNA that we’re going to be supporting Black and Brown communities and disenfranchised portions of not just Illinois, Chicago, the U.S., but globally.

“There’s always a continuing dialogue about how we can utilize sustainability as a tool to unlock value for the built environment, but also the human environment.”

For this immigrant-led clean energy company, perspective is everything is an article from Energy News Network, a nonprofit news service covering the clean energy transition. If you would like to support us please make a donation.