Building Climate-Solution Communities from Our Backyard

Climate shocks are often viewed through a global lens: rising sea levels, megafires, and their impact on GDP. But for many low-income and under-resourced communities, the crisis arrives much sooner, much closer to home. Climate change means lung-stinging smoke in winter, mold-causing humidity in homes, and a lack of health data to contest a megaproject. These are daily struggles of various communities around the world. 

Addressing the urgency of climate change in the most impacted communities, a new wave of startups, AirVitalize, Aris Hydronics, and Applied Impact, are stepping in to build place-based, community-focused solutions.

AirVitalize: Clearing the Air in Fairbanks

In Fairbanks, Alaska, winters plunge to -40°F. As a result of temperature inversions, “pollution gets trapped in the ‘bowl’ of the valley,” says Serena Allen, CEO and founder of AirVitalize. "One mother told us that burning wood for heat, instead of paying for other fuels, saved her enough money to feed her family fresh food for the winter. Simultaneously, another mother’s son collapsed on the way to school because the air was so polluted he couldn’t breathe."

AirVitalize is tackling one of the most urgent, yet overlooked, climate issues: indoor and outdoor air pollution in low-income neighborhoods. According to the team, asthma rates in the rural and low-income communities they serve are two to three times higher than the national average in the US. That reality drives their mission to make clean air a basic right, not a luxury.

To achieve this, AirVitalize develops low-cost, energy-efficient air filtration systems that can be installed in homes, schools, and community centres. They emphasise co-design, working with residents to adapt technology to the lived realities of housing stock and utility costs. “If people can’t afford to run it, it’s not a solution,” the founder explained.

Promising Reductions in Air Pollution

So far, AirVitalize pilots have shown promising results: homes using their system recorded a 40% reduction in airborne particulate matter compared to baseline levels. Families reported fewer missed school and work days due to asthma flare-ups, and community centres noted greater attendance among children who previously struggled with respiratory triggers. 

Air pollution is a global problem: 99% of the world’s population breathes air exceeding the World Health Organization’s guideline limits. In communities like Fairbanks, this is not abstract; it's daily and urgent. AirVitalize is going beyond developing a device and is building trust locally by responding to the community’s needs. “We even pivoted our product one year into development because our original design wouldn’t have solved the community’s real needs,” Allen shares. 

Today, her team runs air-quality awareness campaigns at local festivals and libraries, and consults with state senators to ensure sizing, energy use, and usability reflect what actually works in Fairbanks's harsh context. 

Allen’s team emphasizes that devices can only go so far without the scaffolding of policy and public awareness. Long-term resilience is enabled in product design, legislation, and communities that come together to drive impact.

Aris Hydronics: Affordable Comfort Across the Pacific Northwest

While Aris Hydronics’ technology is designed for northern climate zones across the US, their primary base is Oregon, where aging housing stock and rising energy costs create persistent challenges. Many multifamily buildings in the Pacific Northwest were not constructed to withstand the extreme weather conditions we experience today. These buildings face increasingly prolonged heat waves and more severe winters. In 2024, according to the Oregon Department of Energy’s Cooling Needs Study, “58% of homes surveyed lack sufficient cooling devices.” 

Aris Hydronics’ Thermal Plant Pod system addresses these gaps with modular, efficient hydronic systems that make retrofits more affordable. “Most low-income families in our region live in buildings that were never meant to handle the kind of weather we’re now experiencing,” explains founder Robert Benjamin. “Our goal is to give property owners a way to upgrade without passing the cost on to tenants.”

The company is now collaborating with housing authorities and nonprofit developers in Oregon and Washington state to bring resilient heating and cooling to older buildings. Their approach is lowering bills and stabilising communities too, allowing owners to upgrade infrastructure without displacing tenants or raising rents.

Workforce Capacity Scaled Alongside Technology

For Aris Hydronics, solving the retrofit challenge is about how equipment interacts with people. Hydronics is a highly specialised trade, and shortages of trained technicians slow projects and raise costs. To address this, the startup is developing partnerships with community colleges and local unions in Oregon to build a training pipeline.

“Our technology can only be as successful as the workforce that installs it,” says Benjamin. “By training people from the same neighborhoods we serve, we not only build capacity but also create well-paying jobs that stay in the community.”

This focus on workforce development makes Aris Hydronics’s model distinct: rather than outsourcing installations to large contractors, they emphasise training local workers who will maintain the systems for decades. It’s an approach designed to ensure longevity, affordability, and trust in under-resourced neighborhoods.

At the same time, Aris Hydronics is experimenting with new financing structures to make adoption easier for building owners. By demonstrating long-term operational savings, they’re working to unlock funding streams that can cover upfront retrofit costs. As Benjamin puts it, “If we can show that these systems save owners money from day one, adoption scales naturally.”

Looking ahead, Aris Hydronics aims to expand from small-scale pilots like the Veterans’ Place project in Vermont to a regional portfolio of retrofits. By scaling gradually and deliberately, they can train local technicians, refine manufacturing partnerships, and demonstrate the cost savings needed to unlock financing for wider adoption.

Applied Impact: The Role of Data in Advancing Climate Solutions

Sometimes, the impact of climate change is visible. But more often, it is baked into dense permit reports or absent health data. This hides the human impact from those of us who are not climate experts. Victoria Pisini founded Applied Impact on the belief that access to information is essential for empowerment. “Communities often lack access to data that would help them understand risks. This leaves both communities and developers dealing with the consequences, like air pollution, after the fact.”

Applied Impact uses visualizations to make key risks clear, showing where pollution will affect residents, how many people are impacted, and the projected severity of exposure. Pisini notes that this approach has already influenced decisions. It made a tangible difference during the review of a proposed 3,500 MW natural gas plant in Pittsylvania County, Virginia. After Applied Impact shared its findings, “the community voted against the project,” Pisini states.

Victoria Pisini notes that providing earlier, independent, and scientifically rigorous data doesn’t slow the process; it actually helps communities and developers find win-win solutions faster.

Pisini’s goal is systemic. “A working system would make rigorous, independent health-impact data public early. It wouldn’t need to add delays; in fact, it could streamline discussions by centering health and environment from the start.” Though only commercialized in spring 2025, Applied Impact has already supported issues in four communities and one state agency, reportedly through inbound demand alone.

Engaging Communities Early

Applied Impact has worked with four communities on specific projects in Massachusetts on planning-level analysis. Pisini emphasizes that giving communities critical data earlier accelerates discussions around mitigation strategies. 

This emphasis on collaboration with developers, regulators, legal advocates, and residents, and Pisini’s team focusing on “what’s at stake,” is what makes such complex environmental data actionable for local stakeholders.

The company launched commercially in spring 2025, and early demand has been entirely inbound – no advertising was necessary. Moreover, participation in Village Capital’s Thriving Communities accelerator has helped Applied Impact refine its messaging and scale more quickly, while planning to engage developers earlier so projects include public health mitigations from the start. 

From Local Roots to Broader Impact

Each of these startups closes facets of the climate vulnerability gap – air, energy, or voice – with one shared strength: they begin at home. They’re not waiting around. They are taking action, building sustainable, community-anchored solutions from the ground up.

Allen, Benjamin, and Pisini all emphasise the importance of meeting communities where they are. What unites these approaches is the ripple effect of starting small but with intent. Local engagement builds trust, solutions are tailored to real needs, and early wins – whether reduced energy bills, cleaner air, or more equitable permitting – set the stage for broader systemic change.

These startups, all participants in Village Capital’s Thriving Communities program, demonstrate that climate action affects every corner of our world. It can begin on your street, in your living room, or at your town hall. When it begins where it’s felt, climate action creates a foundation of resilience and shared responsibility that can expand far beyond the neighbourhood where it started.