Mission and Values
Mission:
The Climate Economy Action Center works with partners to promote a healthy, sustainable local economy. Our mission is to achieve deep reductions in local greenhouse gas emissions as a result of community awareness and actions.

Core Values:
Economy – Cultivating a thriving, diverse, inclusive, and resilient economy comprised of many low-carbon enterprises and small businesses.

Energy – Serving as a Vermont leader in home and business participation in energy efficiency, energy transformation, and renewable energy generation opportunities, while ensuring these opportunities are available to all socio-economic sectors of the community.

Mobility and a Healthy Downtown – Creating and supporting a transportation system that provides great, efficient and affordable mobility choices including walking, biking, transit, rail and ride-sharing. Maintaining a vibrant downtown and developing other high-density areas are essential to the success of this effort.

Youth – Engaging the young people of the Middlebury area by putting their energy and creativity to work in tackling the climate challenge and also attracting younger residents and families to settle in the area. Mentorship, apprenticeship, and job training are key strategies to create multiple pathways towards community engagement and employment.

Working Lands – Preserving and utilizing the productive lands and natural areas in and around the community to provide ecological services, forest and food production and recreational opportunities. Forestry and agricultural practices should minimize environmental impacts and maximize carbon sequestration. Preserving, using and expanding our productive lands and natural areas to provide healthy agricultural practices, ecological services, forest and food production, and recreational opportunities. We support forestry and farming practices that minimize environmental impacts and maximize carbon sequestration.

Inclusivity – Respecting the dignity of each individual in our community, and ensuring that good food, housing, and other necessities are affordable and that all individuals and families have what they need to thrive.

Infrastructure – Investing in resilient, efficient, and ecologically sensitive infrastructure that can withstand an increase in extreme weather, facilitate energy efficiency and reduce environmental impacts.

Sustainable community – Meeting economic, environmental, and social health challenges through integrated solutions rather than through fragmented approaches that meet one of those goals at the expense of the others.