Letter From The Lab - October 2023
To our community members,
I have had the pleasure of meeting so many of VertueLab’s stalwart supporters and friends since I took over in May as the new President and Executive Director. Some of you attended our September events in Portland and Seattle, where I shared our evolving vision. Since then, we’ve encountered some setbacks with our longstanding state funder, but are undaunted in our quest towards our vision of a just and equitable climate future.
Some of that vision is shaped by the urgency of the moment: 2023 was the hottest year in recorded history [1] and also the year poised to be the largest in clean energy investment [2]. The Pacific Northwest has long been at the forefront of the green transition, with bold public investments across Washington and Oregon over the last decade, forging the path for this region to meet aggressive decarbonization targets by 2030.
We are all on edge navigating the crisis because time is short, and we feel it together. There is no question we must move swiftly, and we must leave no one behind. At VertueLab, we have doubled down on our commitment to shortening the time to market for critical innovations, especially for overlooked markets and entrepreneurs who have been historically underserved.
For that reason, we are launching the Just Future Climate Labs (JFC Labs), a year-long journey to rapidly iterate and prototype a way forward that is radically inclusive all the way from lab to market and community. Radical for us means we are an open, justice-first lab, in conversation with many stakeholders (including you), building in public and sharing our experiments and findings as we discover the best way to do our work.
It’s important to note that our evolution does not mean we have abandoned our core mission to support innovators and entrepreneurs – quite the opposite, in fact - we are digging deeper into our effectiveness quotient by asking: How can we be better at delivering a just transition in our region? How can we be absolutely sure we are building with communities that have been historically harmed by large-scale infrastructure projects? How can we be a global leader in justice and equity-centered, place-based climate innovation and technology?
I moved to the PNW to do this work because I was inspired by your commitment, public and private, to solve our shared planetary crisis. As a climate entrepreneur who recently returned from living and working in Europe, I bring a strong conviction in the power of place-based innovation. And now, as I walk the stunning shores of Puget Sound, where I live, I am both in awe of the gift of our piece of the planet and anxious for the future of this ecosystem.
We are confident that our work in the Pacific Northwest will unlock historic opportunities for a group of climate entrepreneurs, innovators, and communities actively working on climate solutions, but we can’t do this alone.
Sign up here to engage with us in the Just Future Climate Labs and support our journey.
Aina Abiodun
President & Executive Director
VertueLab
[1] NASA. (2023, September 14). NASA Announces Summer 2023 Hottest on Record. Climate Change: Vital Signs of the Planet. https://climate.nasa.gov/news/3282/nasa-announces-summer-2023-hottest-on-record/
[2] Annex, M. (2023, August 21). Renewable Energy Investment Hits Record-Breaking $358 Billion in 1H 2023. BloombergNEF. https://about.bnef.com/blog/renewable-energy-investment-hits-record-breaking-358-billion-in-1h-2023/