Name: Brenna Cohen
Title: Community development officer in Island Institute’s Center for Climate and Community
Focus: The Energy Transitions Team collaborates with state and national experts to help island and coastal communities build energy resilience. We work to reduce power outages, boost the local energy supply to support electrification and minimize storm impacts on the grid to ensure islanders can thrive.
Currently, we’re partnering with 15 communities across the Eastern Coast and Great Lakes to create affordable, reliable electric and heating systems through microgrids, energy efficiency measures like energy audits and heat pumps, and solar arrays. I serve as the liaison between national renewable energy labs, community teams, and regional and local utilities.
In this photo: On Wednesday, Oct. 30, I assisted Islesboro’s Energy Committee and other residents with a Window Dressers build at the Community Center, where we crafted window inserts to provide extra protection from cold and wind in residents’ homes. Weatherization is essential for community adoption of efficiency measures and locally generated electricity. Islesboro, as part of the first group of the U.S. Department of Energy’s Energy Transitions in Partnership Program, developed a roadmap to energy independence that includes weatherization, an energy hub, a community solar program and plans for a microgrid.
