Brad Rouse, executive director of Asheville’s Energy Savers Network, will present the Climate Reality Project, an organization founded by Al Gore with the mission to build a mass movement of concerned climate activists. Brad first attended the Climate Reality training in 2012 in San Francisco, and in March of this year he served as a mentor to local Asheville residents who attended the training in Atlanta with VP Gore and Rev. William Barber. Many of the slides in the presentation, much shorter than the original due to time constraints, came from Gore’s presentation with additional content that Brad developed around a way of thinking about how the listener can be involved in climate action. Basically, climate action should be taken at every level of a person’s influence, from self-understanding and awareness to carbon footprint to associations in the local community to influence that can be brought to bear  at the state, national, and global level. The presentation focuses on starting where you are, looking at actions that have side benefits beyond climate, taking actions every day, and never giving up, even as we try to convince government to change course.

A native of NC, Brad holds a BA in economics from Yale and an MBA in finance from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. Brad spent his entire professional career involved in the fields of energy forecasting, electric utility resource planning, and personal financial planning. He has worked with over 100 utilities on utility planning issues, including Duke Energy, Virginia Power, Georgia Power, Florida Power & Light, and others.

After 25 years working in energy, Brad sold his financial practice to focus 100% of his time on climate change solutions. When he and his wife, Karen, moved to Asheville in 2015, he and Alice Wyndham co-founded Energy Savers Network (ESN) to expand low-income energy efficiency in our area. Since 2017, ESN has helped over 300 income qualified families in Buncombe County reduce their energy consumption. in 2018 ESN was awarded Western NC Sierra Club’s “Environmental Organization of the Year Award”, and in 2019 they received the “Energy Innovator Award from the Energy Innovation Task Force.”