About us

OUR Mission

Climate Clubs are non-judgmental, educational spaces to come together with your neighbors, coworkers, or friends to discuss climate change, learn about sustainability, and be accountable for action. Climate Clubs fill the gap between climate policy and individual action, leveraging the power of local knowledge and relationships to help us meet a key challenge of our time: how to live well and in harmony with our planet.

Started in Washington, DC, by Matt Malinowski, Gautam Jayaraman and Tim Lyons, Climate Club is a growing network of small groups focused on climate action at the local and personal levels.

Despite working in the clean energy field, we found ourselves stressed out by the slow pace of progress and endless bad news. What’s worse, we didn’t always know what was our impact or how we should prioritize our actions to do better.

Our answer was to reach out to our neighbors and find ways to support each other during this unprecedented time. From calculating our carbon footprints to finding local providers of clean electricity and composting, there was a lot we could learn from each other. And doing this with a group of real-life neighbors kept the discussion respectful and focused on things we could do today!

We hope you will join us and many of your neighbors by either participating in a local club or starting a new one of your own. And stay in touch by emailing us at info@climateclub.us, or through social media at @ClimateClubUS.

Matt Malinowski works on energy efficiency, advising governments around the world on how to make appliances more sustainable. But he is worried about not doing enough at home. What began as a review of his family’s carbon footprinting is growing into a network of Climate Clubs working to help others make meaningful change to stop our climate crisis.

Gautam Jayaraman is CTO of Greenwork, which connects skilled workers with jobs in clean energy and new infrastructure. In the past he’s started companies focused on efficient delivery routing and social music remixing. Through it all he has learned to launch early, listen to the audience, and revise plans. He lives in San Francisco with his family, and wishes his electrical engineering degree made him an electrician.

Tim Lyons works as the director of Innovation at a PK-12 independent school in Washington, DC. Not a practiced expert in sustainability or efficiency, Tim & his 4-person family are actively “transitioning” to sustainable lives, & strive to be professional learners regarding reducing their negative environmental impact.

Want to Learn More?

We recently presented the experiences and results from our first two Climate Clubs at the Behavior, Energy, and Climate Change (BECC) conference. Not only are members of the longer-running club engaged and excited to join future meetings, they would also recommend it to a friend.

Meanwhile, members have been taking actions to reduce their climate-changing emissions. On average, between July and October, members and their households reduced their CO2 emissions by 0.5 tons/person/year or roughly 5% of our local average. Not bad for four months’ effort! You can check out our full presentation here.

Action	CO2e Reduction (tons/person/year)	Number of Participants Surveyed	Number of Household Members Impacted	Total CO2e Impact (tons/year)
Renewable Electricity	1.6	2	5	8
Bicycle Commuting	1
ENERGY STAR Fridge	0.04	1	2.5	0.1
Reducing (Red) Meat	1	1	2.5	2.5
Composting	0.2	3	7.5	1.5
Total		9	22.5	12.1
Total Per Household Member				0.5