Windward Fund

The Heartland Fund’s Resource Rural initiative, a project of the Windward Fund, is focused on the successful implementation of federal climate investment laws in rural communities. The initiative will improve access to federal funding by expanding place-based technical assistance addressing barriers to clean energy deployment. It will also build stronger civic infrastructure for rural communities to take advantage of federal investments, diversify rural economies, create new economic opportunities, and reduce carbon and other greenhouse gas emissions. (Substrategy: U.S. National Policy)

Rewiring America, a project of the Windward Fund, is building a hub for electrification in the U.S., aiming to reach at least 50 million households over the next three years to drive down the cost of electrification, build a civic movement for electrification, and aggregate demand in local markets. The Rewiring Communities program will bring this work to the local level, driving local consumer education campaigns to recruit households to make electrification plans and create market density, and to design and deliver end-to-end electrification packages for low-income and energy-burdened communities. (Substrategy: U.S. National Policy)

In the past decade, global methane emissions have risen at a rate faster than at any time in the past 30 years. Moving quickly to rapidly decrease methane emissions could reduce warming by as much as 0.3 degrees Celsius by the 2040s, and by more than 0.5 C by 2100. Strategies specifically targeting methane from all sectors need to be implemented to achieve sufficient methane mitigation, yet the current field of methane advocacy is insufficiently funded, and strategies are not yet fully developed to address the scale of the problem. Housed at the Windward Fund, the Methane Hub will move quickly to leverage new monitoring tools and growing ambition and commitments from policymakers, while developing the next set of strategies and building new analytical and advocacy capacity globally. (Substrategy: Philanthropic Capacity)