Why do African American families use less energy than white households, but pay more for it—literally and figuratively? It’s true. The average African American family emits 20% less carbon dioxide than the average white household does, yet we are more susceptible to increases in energy and water costs that result from climate change. As extreme weather events like blizzards, droughts, and heat waves become almost routine, more and more black families can’t afford to heat and cool their homes. Communities of color also pay more of the hidden costs of our fossil-fuel based economy. Climate change has an outsized impact on the health and economic security of African American families, who are far more likely to breathe polluted air and live next to sources of pollution like coal plants.

But today, a revolution in clean energy gives us the chance to correct this injustice and level the playing field for communities of color. For decades, renewable energy was out of reach for most Americans. Only the wealthiest could afford innovations like solar panels and electric cars. Not anymore. Now clean energy sources like solar and wind are not only economical—they’re huge cost-savers for businesses and families alike.

In less than a decade, the United States has multiplied its production of wind power threefold, and solar power more than twentyfold. In many places, clean energy is already cheaper than conventional power. Further, consumers have more choice and more control over how much energy they use through smartphone apps and new technology. But we still have a long way to go.

Every American deserves access to clean, affordable energy. If we transition to an economy that’s fueled by 50% clean energy by 2030, electric bills in the United States will be reduced by more than $40 billion. Subsequently, families would see their disposable income increase by as much as $650 annually. The biggest beneficiaries would be low-income families, who spend a much greater share of their income on electricity than higher income households do. Just imagine: millions of Americans would no longer be at the mercy of their utility bills. Black families in particular would have a brighter and more secure energy story to tell.

Investing in clean energy does more than save money on bills—it also creates jobs that communities of color sorely need. Last year the solar industry added jobs 12 times faster than the overall economy. More than twice as many Americans now work in the solar industry than in coal mining—and a quarter of workers in the solar industry are people of color. When these clean energy jobs are created—which they absolutely must be—we have an opportunity to make sure that these are good-paying jobs and that they are available to communities of color.

In the Washington, DC, area, Mark Davis created WDC Solar to provide low-income citizens of Washington, DC, with a solar program. Since 2012, WDC has installed more than 125 solar systems in DC through tax credits and private funds, at no cost to low-income homeowners with good credit. Through his partnership with DC Sustainable Energy Utility, Mark started a program that has funded solar panel installation provided funding to install panels on more than 300 homes. And once the panels are installed, the extra power results in a profit every month—money going back into the community he’s working to transform. Mark is just getting started; this year he plans on launching programs in New York, Pennsylvania, and Georgia.

While Mark is training a new solar work force and bringing solar to the DC community, Wahleah Johns is working to bring clean energy to places that often times don’t even have electricity. Wahleah, a member of the Navajo (Dine) tribe and the community of Forest Lake atop Black Mesa, Arizona, has been advocating for native communities to diversify to renewable energy for the last decade. As a tribal member of the Navajo Nation, she’s watched resources from tribal homelands provides cheap electricity for California, Nevada, and Arizona, while her people are left to deal with pollution and dwindling water.

Working with the Black Mesa Water Coalition and Navajo Green Economy Coalition, Wahleah helped win legislative victories protecting groundwater, expanding green jobs, and advancing environmental justice. As vice chair of the Navajo Green Economy Commission, Wahleah develops economic opportunities in clean energy and traditional economic practices on the Navajo reservation.

Wahleah’s community education efforts helped establish a Just Transition Fund through the California Public Utilities Commission. This fund provides $4 million to renewable energy development on tribal lands. Wahleah helps bring solar to reservation schools and communities, and is developing a residential solar program for the 50% of Navajo Nation residents who don’t have access to electricity.

The clean energy revolution is an incredible opportunity to give African Americans a better, more just seat at the table in our new economy. Now more than ever we must seize the opportunity to reverse energy injustice and shift power to the very communities that have historically been left out.

At Green For All we see a number of ways in which we can drive this investment. There is a tremendous opportunity held within the Environmental Protection Agency’s recent clean power plan implementation at the state level. States will be developing and implementing plans to bring down carbon in the coming months and years. We must ensure that as we look at curbing carbon, we do so in a way that drives growth across green sectors, and focuses investments in the communities most impacted by carbon and pollution. We also believe strongly that polluting industries should pay for the privilege of dumping carbon into the atmosphere. In California, the value collected from the cap-and-trade system has created a fund that has been used for everything from free solar panels for low-income families, to free bus passes for youth and seniors, to millions of dollars for new affordable housing. We must cap carbon (and make sure there are environmental protections for all communities in those programs), and we can’t give away that value; we must invest in our communities.

The clean power movement is gaining steam—now is the time for us to make our voices heard. Investing in clean energy will lower our energy bills, improve the health of black communities, and create more, better-paying jobs for people of color. Now that’s real power. Throughout our network, we see individuals, businesses and organizations committed to people and the planet. We need to re-up our investment in these people and follow their lead to a future that is truly green for all.

The floods that struck São Paulo in early 2015 quickly overwhelmed urban infrastructure, transforming roads into rivers and washing cars away. The region as a whole, however, suffered from severe drought. São Paulo, whose 12 million inhabitants make it the largest city in the Southern Hemisphere, was watching its reservoirs dry up. When the storm abided, the reservoirs were still dry—and the drought continued for months.

Climate change is increasing the frequency and severity of weather events in São Paulo, and many municipalities lack the resources to stave off the worst effects. Moreover, marginalized communities are often hit the hardest: São Paulo’s slums (also known as favelas), neglected by the government for decades, witness a disproportionate amount of destruction when flooding hits. Already lacking infrastructure for water and waste, favelas face increased threats with the accumulation of standing water. Across Brazil, particularly strong storms have displaced entire communities. For millions of citizens in the Global South, the effective mitigation of climate change is a necessity for everyday life.

At the University of São Paulo, a group of architecture students is combatting climate change head-on. Led by Professor Lara Leite Barbosa at the College of Architecture and Urbanism, the students hope to alleviate the effects of flooding by providing stations where citizens can escape high water. Since levees break and river diversion causes untold ecological damage, the students work directly with people where they live rather than modify the landscape. Their solution? Portable bathrooms designed to ship across Brazil when flooding strikes.

Photo Credit: Apis Project

The bathroom scheme, titled Project Apis, is named after the Latin word for bees. “The Apis Project bears this name because its biggest goal is to promote a boon for society that’s carried out in a collaborative way, from its conception to its construction,” says Dr. Barbosa. Her architecture students are not just sitting in classrooms mulling over blueprints, but are venturing out to communities affected by the flooding and assessing human need.

“The inspiration for this project came from my doctoral thesis,” explains Dr. Barbosa. “I studied the relationship between nomadism and sustainability, analyzing projects that combined mobility with thoughtful use of material and energy resources.” She points out that when floods strike, getting people out of flooded areas and into shelter is essential. But shelters quickly become unsanitary if there aren’t bathroom facilities for everyone. Shelters are also difficult to move, and of little use in the face of sudden, sporadic floods. This is where the students’ designs come in.

Dr. Barbosa challenges her students to think outside the box of single-location structures, and simultaneously pushes them to use local materials. Twenty-first-century disaster response in Brazil may yet incorporate ecological, human-centric design—in fact, these elements are necessary to bolster resilience against climate change.

Most government relief programs rely on citizens getting themselves to shelter. In the favelas, though, poor road and nonexistent transportation leave many residents stranded. “The bathrooms can function independently of the existing urban infrastructure,” says Marina Lima Medeiros, a student working on Project Apis. In concept, the bathrooms can be deployed anywhere there is need, circumventing established relief routes and directly reaching citizens.

Each bathroom contains single-sex showers, sinks, toilets, and dressing rooms. Designed to serve around 60 people per day, a single bathroom functions as an independent unit and eliminates the need to connect to municipal water or sewage systems. Therefore, says Dr. Barbosa, the bathrooms “reduce the spread of infectious diseases and other health problems due to lack of public health accommodations.”

Portability is key to the project’s success, so the bathrooms are designed to be compact, fitting into shipping containers for easy transportation. They use built-in hydraulic and electric systems in order to operate away from the grid, so rooftop solar panels heat water and produce electricity. (Energy generators provide backup power.) An “ultrafiltration system” collects water from the flooded area, then cleans the water to make it suitable for use in the showers and toilets.

Producing the bathrooms provides a windfall for the local economy, the students insist. Many materials inside the bathrooms are locally sourced: the partitions between the bathroom stalls are made of banana fiber, as is the exterior paneling. Banana fiber is abundant in São Paulo. “From a sustainability perspective,” explains Dr. Barbosa, “the use of local resources both diminishes the environmental impact of [the bathrooms] and facilitates the acceptance of banana fiber as a building material because it is culturally familiar.” Dr. Barbosa hopes that the more people see structures made of banana fiber, the more they’ll latch on to local, homegrown construction—and demand for the fiber will grow.

The São Paulo students have partnered with several businesses to transform their designs into a functioning reality.  Contain[it], a construction company, builds the shipping containers for the bathrooms, while Imperveg—a company that produces polymers—donates leftover resin for the project, which is mixed with the banana fiber for construction purposes. Sociedade do Sol (Society of the Sun) is a local company that donated the solar panels, and another company, Sansuy, helped develop the flexible reservoirs for blackwater and graywater in the bathrooms. A company called Caldeplás, meanwhile, produced the reservoirs for cold water and hot water. If one thing is certain, building bathrooms is a dynamic process that engages whole communities.

Students are working directly with the community of Eldorado, a São Paulo municipality with a population of 15,000. According to The Economist, Eldorado is one of the poorest and most violent of São Paulo’s slums—and the area has been hit by successive flooding year after year. “Despite the fact that these floods have occurred periodically for many years now, it is still very difficult for the government to organize response teams in the aftermath of natural disasters,” notes Dr. Barbosa. “Each time we get a new mayor, we also get new officials, and that brings problems for the continuity of actions in the long term.” The team at Project Apis hopes that once their working models are complete, they can turn over the bathrooms to the Ministry of Civil Defense, which can roll out the emergency units when storms strike urban areas of Brazil.

Project Apis holds profound lessons for community engagement as well as the human response to climate change. When human need is made the central goal of design, architecture becomes a means of service. As these students demonstrate, architects themselves can respond to disaster while regenerating places and communities.

“Architects need to organize together with affected communities to collaborate in multidisciplinary teams,” says Ms. Medeiros. “First and foremost, architects need to listen to the people who are suffering from natural disasters, because many times the local people suggest solutions that are most efficient and appropriate for the areas where these storm events occur, since they live there and know the risk areas very well.”

By listening to local residents, architects’ work becomes more like that of bees: a communal process wherein each individual lends a hand to shape the built environment. Structures, when they emulate hives, provide ample resources for all individuals—not just a select few.