Here are some of climatetech’s best online communities

Canary Media’s Friday Social column explores the intersection of energy, climate and social media. Canary thanks Silverline Communications for its support of the column.

When the world entered its pandemic pause, in-person events and networking took a huge hit. No sector was spared, including climatetech. However, climate folks are a resilient bunch, and they quickly found new ways to network, including through online communities. These digital spaces continue to proliferate today, even as many of us are returning to live events and trade shows.

I’ve covered #energytwitter and Reddit before, so in this article, I’m going to highlight forums on the messaging apps Slack and Discord, which prioritize topic-based conversations (often conducted on ​“channels”).

To help sell you all on the importance of online communities, I decided to tap a few experts who I’ve met through…online communities, of course.

Sophia Cowles is the chief of staff at David Energy and is also on the leadership team of DER Task Force. When asked about the importance of online communities, Cowles noted that they are a great vehicle to meet similarly motivated people, they’re not constrained by geography, and they help founders and employees think through and validate new ideas. ​“I think it really helps build momentum and credibility,” she added.

Bettina Grab, partner and president of cleantech marketing agency Alder & Co., which runs the online forum Tofu for climatetech marketers, had this to say: ​“People working in climate are passionate, and the work can be both extremely rewarding and exhausting in the face of the enormity of the problem. Online communities offer a place to find like-minded people who will support and motivate you, and create a powerful sense of action.”

Below are a few of the online communities that you might consider joining. Cowles suggests that you shouldn’t join all of them at once, however. Her advice is to ​“find the one or two where you receive and provide the most value and focus on those, rather than getting involved with several and not getting to experience the deep benefits of any.”

Work on Climate

Work on Climate bills itself as ​“the world’s largest and most active climate Slack community.” Its more than 10,000 members would probably agree.

It offers dozens of discussion channels, including 30 that are specific to cities around the world. I joined the ​“meet-boston” channel and have already caught wind of a Greentown Labs networking event happening next week.

Join Work on Climate here.

DER Task Force

DER Task Force is perhaps — and I say this lovingly — the nerdiest of the climatetech communities. If you’re looking for fellow renewables wonks, look no further than this site, where discussions revolve around the topic of distributed energy resources. They even go so far as to crowdsource comments to be submitted to state public utility commissions.

You’ll find channels to discuss jobs, events and policy, as well as one called ​“ministry of DER propaganda” that serves up renewables memes.

Join DER Task Force here.

Climate Town

Speaking of memes, the most active climate memes channel I’ve seen is on Rollie Williams’ Climate Town, an offshoot of his popular YouTube channel. This Discord-based community is more generally focused on climate than climatetech specifically and tends to skew toward a younger demographic than the other communities on this list. Channels run the gamut from ​“are we screwed” to ​“utopian thoughts” and everything in between.

Join Climate Town here.

MCJ Collective

MCJ stands for My Climate Journey and its online community is a spinoff of the podcast of the same name. According to the welcome email I received, ​“MCJ Collective is an entrepreneurial commons that brings people together to solve climate solutions.” Over 2,000 people have joined the online community from 25 different countries.

There is a fee to join MCJ Collective that works out to be $8.33 per month if you pay on an annual basis.

Join MCJ Collective here.

Tofu

Tofu is short for ​“top of funnel,” a nod to the sales and marketing pipeline. According to Melanie Adamson, founder and chief marketing strategist at Alder & Co., ​“Tofu is a biweekly newsletter and online community for climatetech marketers to gather and learn from each other by sharing ideas and engaging with like-minded peers.”

Grab added that Tofu participants ​“have started meeting up in real life and formed friendships globally, including Berlin, Warsaw and across the U.S. Our jobs board is very active. The Tofus are generous with their time, consult with deep knowledge, and are open and humble about their challenges. And it’s fun!”

If you’re looking to meet other marketers in the space and talk strategy, Tofu is the forum for you.

Join Tofu here.

What online communities did we miss? Let us know below in the comments or tweet at us.

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Silverline Communications, the supporter of this column, is a climatetech and ESG communications firm with deep experience in all facets of the clean economy. Learn more about how Silverline connects clients with stakeholders on social channels and beyond.