Climate Resilience

The City of Harrisonburg, Virginia is a vibrant community full of people who care about their neighbors and are committed to making their city, and the world, a better place.

Working together to effectively and continually deal with the climate crisis by introducing new adaptations, managing threats, and protecting assets shared by the community.

In other words, resilience means the capacity to maintain or regain functionality and vitality in the face of short-term disruptions and long-term stressors caused by climate change, so that community members can not only survive, but thrive.

Harrisonburg is already home to so many examples of community climate resilience, pointing the way forward for more local solutions to help make sure our community weathers the coming decades' changes well. These range from supporting healthier ecosystems in our parks and waterways to promoting sustainable, carbon-free transportation, reducing waste, and more.

Climate Action Alliance of the Valley is launching a crowd-sourced map to identify, share, and celebrate all of our community's climate resilience successes to date.

Some of our brightest examples so far lie in harnessing the sun's energy to power our city!

Please refer to this Quick Orientation graphic to help navigate the Community Climate Resilience Map, plus see other tips below.

1. Use the Success Finder Key in the bottom left-hand corner to locate community successes by resilience area. You can click on an Area to sort results by the given topic.
2. Lost? Click the house-shaped icon in the bottom right-hand corner to snap back to an overview of Harrisonburg City. You can also use the +/- buttons to zoom in or out.
3. Want to find your house? Click the tan mini-map in the upper right-hand corner to toggle a Street view of the city.
4. If you're still having trouble navigating on the map, you can click the icon in the upper right-hand corner to view in a new window. (Psst: you can also share this link as a stand-alone resource!)

As of Spring 2019, Harrisonburg has at least 135 solar customers hooked into the municipal power grid. This includes both businesses and residences. According to officials, that gives the city one of the highest proportions of distributed solar power in Virginia, especially for its size. Eastern Mennonite University's solar installation by Secure Futures in 2011 was the  single largest array across the state at that time , and now the  City's school system is planning  some of the largest solar projects yet placed on Virginia public schools. There has been so much movement in solar power that the city's public utility recently moved to  raise the cap on net-metering  (the ability for solar users to sell excess electricity back to the grid) up from 1% to 2% of peak load. This will serve as an experiment for other utilities in the state hoping to see how they can better support the clean energy revolution.

This progress certainly didn't happen overnight. We achieved it as a community because of the tireless efforts of solar advocates, local organizations, concerned citizens, conscientious leaders, and friendly neighbors. Think of how much more we can achieve with more people on board this journey to secure a climate resilient future!

  Climate Action Alliance of the Valley  is one of Harrisonburg's longest-standing grassroots group in this effort. This all-volunteer community organization, known as CAAV for short, has been working on climate action in the Harrisonburg-Rockingham area and beyond since 2008.

CAAV organizes rallies and events, advocates for climate-smart policies and legislation, and offers training and resources on everything climate-related, from individual actions to reduce your carbon footprint, to fossil fuel opposition and systems-level solutions.

CAAV's Mission is to limit the impact of humans on Earth’s climate and minimize the effects of inevitable climate change in order to protect the future for Earth and its inhabitants.

Our Vision is to create and nurture climate action in our Shenandoah Valley community so that we can become a regional leader in promoting climate change mitigation and resilience.

In 2014-2015, Climate Action Alliance of the Valley helped create Solarize Harrisonburg, a solar co-op that helped 66 Harrisonburg households achieve their dreams of harnessing the sun’s renewable energy more affordably.

We were able to pull this off because we partnered with outside experts, including Virginia Solar United Neighbors (VA-SUN) and local government to facilitate this grassroots effort. People quickly joined, not only to do something good for the climate, but also for their wallets! Switching to solar can mean serious savings on monthly energy bills. The problem that keeps most people from "going solar" is the upfront costs of buying and installing solar panels, but joining a solar co-op(erative) makes it cheaper because you negotiate a shared price for you and a bunch of your neighbors at the same time.

The community was energized by the idea that an opportunity finally came to turn their dreams of energy self-sufficiency into reality. The project offered a series of low-stakes ways to explore the option, such as free, public information sessions and a free satellite roof analysis to determine solar suitability. Plus, having the support of several advocacy organizations (not to mention numerous neighbors) helped them navigate what could have been a challenging and intimidating process alone. There's strength in numbers!

Solarize Harrisonburg sparked two more iterations of Solar Co-ops in the county and surrounding region - the Massanutten Regional Solar Co-op and the Mountain and Valley Co-op - which helped 89 more users go solar, adding almost 800 more KW of sun-generated power to local energy grids.

An Old Tradition with a New Twist: Solar Barn Raisings

Harrisonburg's Mennonite community introduced the concept of the Solar Barn Raising where volunteers pitch in to help set up a solar array. This makes less work, and therefore lower costs, for the solar installer and turns the project into a shared community affair.

The short video below shows a Solar Barn Raising on top of Gift and Thift, a local thrift store supported by 9 Mennonite congregations, in 2016. The approach has also been used at Eastern Mennonite University and other crowd-funded solar projects in the community. Lately, an awesome initiative led by  Give Solar  is installing more solar on local non-profits using this approach.

So much! These have just represented a small portion of all the successes led by CAAV, climate action allies, and other organizations in the community.

The map above is just a beginning. Take a look at current entries, and consider what else you would like to lift up and share with fellow community members.

Help us tell our story of climate resilience by contributing more examples of our community's successes in the short survey below:

The opportunities are almost endless to help Harrisonburg prepare to thrive in the face of our climate change challenges. We need advocates, activists, educators, event planners, artists, caretakers, counselors, builders, accountants, and all other sorts of influencers on board.

WANTED : Someone who appreciates all the wonderful things about our city; who likes to connect with fellow community members and learn together; and who has a spare 1-2 hours a week to help keep Harrisonburg a great place to live, work, visit, and enjoy

No matter how much or little you know about climate change, how much experience you have in community organizing, or how you hope to pitch in, please reach out to us at Climate Action Alliance of the Valley (CAAV) and we can guide you on your path.

Visit our website at  https://climateactionallianceofthevalley.org/  to check out our past events, members, partners, and find additional resources.

• Email us at contactcaav@gmail.com to let us know you'd like to be added! You will receive our invaluable Weekly Roundup of Climate and Energy News which synthesizes local, regional, and global developments, plus occasional updates and event announcements from us.

You can choose to focus on community events and projects, legislation and elections, communication and coalition-building, or training and education. Contact one of our Committee Chairs if you're interested in getting more involved ( Contact info here ).