Renew Our Power: the renewables revolution is unstoppable
There’s something magical about bringing 200+ activists together. It’s not just about having everyone in the same room to learn new skills and plan for next steps. It’s about the energy – and synergy – it creates: being able to recognize ourselves and our struggles in someone else, and find hope in each other; create connection, supercharge our resolve and realize we are much stronger than we think. It’s about being human, sharing joy, finding community – unlocking a kind of power that cannot be overstated, and shouldn’t be underestimated.
Throughout this last week, people from 70 different countries came together in Brazil for the Renew Our Power, a global multilingual gathering organized by 350.org and partners to spark community-led renewable energy projects across the world.
Our 5 panels were broadcasted online, in 4 languages, to ensure that the energy and momentum of this gathering reaches even further. During this week, we were joined online by people from over 50 countries – and if you were not one of them, you can still watch them here.
Here are some highlights of this last week:
Building collective ownership and connection
Visual facilitation: Arte da Conversa
Renew Our Power was a beautiful reminder that being together in a fight means big, but also small things – from helping tidy up the rooms after meetings, to proposing sessions, thoughtfully engaging, respecting each other and being open to learn from and honor different perspectives and experiences. Everyone at the event was actively involved with something, bringing a strong sense of collective ownership and collaboration.
And that translates into stronger sync too! Connection is found in every detail: at meals, doing art together, in group discussions, taking action, exchanging contact details and signing partnership agreements. All that happened this week, and the ripple effects of this newly found collective network will be felt and keep being translated into action for a long time.
Decolonizing our fights
Photo: Kathleen Lei Limayo
More than activists fighting to protect our climate, the people who joined Renew Our Power are justice defenders. The intersections between the climate crisis and all surrounding injustices were at the heart of this gathering, and permeated all discussions.
Honoring the original owners of the land where it happened, the Karajá people, we took leadership from Indigenous and Traditional communities from across Brazil and around the world. We upheld space for ancestral knowledge and practices, and elevated women’s leadership. On the last day, we held a Popular Assembly (Asemblea Popular) to create consensus over how we can break free from systems of oppression and extractivist practices in our fight for a cleaner energy future. There was strong alignment that the solutions to the climate crisis will only be just if they put most impacted people and communities front and center.
Renew Our Power also supported language diversity, and was held in a multilingual setup with hosts and speakers talking in several different languages.
Imagining our future
Photo: Kathleen Lei Limayo
Throughout our days together, we learned from our lived experiences. But we also reimagined our future: a world shaped around shared values of community and belonging, where energy systems are organized around people, not profit.
We learned about how locally based renewable energy is already creating a positive revolution on the lives of individuals, families and communities. And we explored how to create, finance and win local campaigns to scale up renewable energy in our countries and globally.
The panel “Radical futures: building community by transforming the energy system” explored what roots us and what drives our dreams: resilience, action, justice, care, love. And several sessions also discussed our vision of what we would like to build together and in our own communities. Strength comes from anger, but also from hope – at Renew Our Power we were intentional in grounding ourselves in what we fight for.
Deepening our alignment
Photo: Kathleen Lei Limayo
Building bridges across the world was one of the objectives of this gathering, and seeing connecting lines emerging and strengthening as days went by was very inspiring and motivating. To allow synergy-building discussions to go deeper, we intentionally build spaces for thematic and regional learning and planning.
The momentum is growing for a global day of action in September 2025, when people from all around the world will come together to call for climate justice ahead of COP30 in Brazil. This mobilization will show that despite wars, climate impacts and deepening inequalities, we continue to dream, to organize across movements — in solidarity and support, to remake our collective future.
Sign up here to be part of it!
Making strides on the political agenda
Photo: Kathleen Lei Limayo
This may be the final decisive decade to act on behalf of all life on the planet and limit global heating to safe levels. At Renew Our Power it became clear that we are leading the way — and we need decision-makers to follow suit.
Representing our wide global diversity, a delegation of Renew Our Power participants went to Brasília on April 15th to call for a direct response to the letter delivered to the COP30 presidency during the Free Land Camp (Acampamento Terra Livre), demanding the just energy transition to be part of the agenda for this year’s UN Climate Summit. We held a peaceful protest at the doors of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, where the office of COP30’s presidency is located.
Our demands resonated far and beyond our gathering. On the last day, the Brazilian Environment and Climate Change Minister and longtime environment defender, Marina Silva, gave the closing keynote speech at Renew Our Power and her presence is a sign that our call is being heard.
As Marina Silva said at the her speech at Renew Our Power:
“In 2025 we’ll meet in Belém and we’ve already decided that given the imminence of the point of no return of the climate crisis, we’re going to implement what we’ve discussed over the last few decades.
The idea of climate justice and a just energy transition needs to be increasingly reinforced and considered at all stages of the negotiation and planning process. And this must be done with wisdom. What we need is a new perspective. It may sound dreamy, but it’s the only thing that will save us.”
It’s time for us and for governments to radically reimagine our future – a future that is led by and for the people. Join us!
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