Climate Change and Business Workshops

How California’s Business Community Can Survive and Prosper in as Era of Climate Change--Meeting the Challenge of Reduced Greenhouse Gas Emissions

Workshop Co-Sponsors:
Bank of America Foundation
Center for Law, Energy & the Environment (Berkeley Law)
Emmett Center on Climate Change and the Environment (UCLA Law)
UCLA Environmental Law Center (UCLA Law)
California Attorney General's Office

This initiative is a sector-by-sector series of workshops that bring together leaders of California's business community, along with key academics, scientists and policymakers to explore ways in which California businesses can respond in a timely and cost-effective manner to the multiple risks and opportunities presented by climate change. This includes identifying the particular challenges, uncertainties and business opportunities that climate change presents for the identified, targeted sectors, as well as the potential means by which those sectors can most effectively reduce their greenhouse gas emission levels and persuade consumers of their products and services to ultimately do the same.

This policy initiative has two discrete products: 1) a series of four one-day workshops convened on the UC Berkeley and UCLA campuses; and 2) a set of written policy recommendations that would capture and memorialize the key outcomes of each of those workshops. These recommendations take the form of industry best practices; needed scientific and technical research initiatives for a particular business sector; and legislation/regulatory reforms by government designed to assist that sector in achieving climate change-related objectives.


Workshop One
Building Smart and Green: A New Direction for Climate-Friendly Growth and Sustainability in California – March 2009

Workshop Abstract
Participant List

White Paper: Removing the Roadblocks – How to Make Sustainable Development Happen Now –  August 2009

Workshop Two
Big Buildings, Big Opportunities: Overcoming Barriers to Renewable Energy Generation on Large Public and Private Facilities – June 2009

Workshop Abstract
Participant List

White Paper: Coming October 2009

Workshop Three
Agriculture and Climate Change: Toward Greater Sustainability – September 2009

Workshop Abstract
Participant List

Workshop Four
Upgrading the Built Environment: Retrofitting and Improving Existing Structures to Reduce Greenhouse Gas Emissions – November 2009

Workshop Abstract

For more information about these workshops, please contact Bank of America Fellow Ethan Elkind at eelkind@law.berkeley.edu.