Building Trust and Legitimacy: A Discussion and Cocktail Reception on the Next Frontier of Climate Action
What makes a climate future feel worth building and worth consenting to?
As climate moves from ambition to implementation, the hardest challenge is no longer only what to build, but how to build in ways that people experience as legitimate, credible, and worth supporting.
Across climate infrastructure and policy, public legitimacy is becoming an increasingly decisive factor in whether projects move forward, stall, or collapse. For project developers, investors, and public leaders alike, legitimacy is no longer peripheral to deployment: it shapes timelines, cost, political durability, and, increasingly, feasibility itself.
Join Accelerating The Transition for a special SF Climate Week evening convening with leaders from government, industry, investment, and civil society on one of the defining challenges of climate progress: how trust, public engagement, and narrative shape the legitimacy required for durable climate solutions deployment.
The evening will begin with a panel exploring three questions: why legitimacy has become a real deployment factor for climate infrastructure projects; why it so often breaks down in practice; and what more legitimate project development looks like in operational terms, from earlier engagement and meaningful local influence to clearer public purpose, community benefit, and narratives that reflect reality rather than mask tension.
It will be followed by closing remarks Tyrone Jue, Director of the San Francisco Environment Department, on what public trust, civic legitimacy, and durable climate leadership look like from the city’s perspective, and what it takes to build futures people can actually see themselves in.
We will then continue the conversation over cocktails with speakers and guests across the climate ecosystem.
Date: April 20, 2026, 5:30 PM–9:30 PM
Location: Nixon Peabody, 1 Embarcadero Center, 32nd Floor, San Francisco, CA 94111
Agenda
5:45–6:00 PM | Arrival and Welcome
6:00–7:00 PM | Panel Discussion: Building Legitimacy: How Public Engagement and Narratives Can Unlock Climate Infrastructure Deployment
Speakers:
Nathalie Birac, U.S. Managing Director at Laketricity (floating solar development perspective)
Ms. Margaret Gordon, Co-Founder of the West Oakland Environmental Indicators Project & Recipient of the White House Champion of Change award (environmental justice perspective)
Kim Grob, Co-founder, Creative Services Partner, Right On (storytelling perspective)
Adam Kurland, Federal Energy Attorney, Environmental Defense fund (electricity transmission infrastructure perspective)
7:00–7:15 PM | Closing remarks by Tyrone Jue, Director of the San Francisco Environment Department.
7:15-9:15 PM | Cocktail Reception: Guests will then continue the discussion over cocktails with speakers, decision-makers, and fellow climate leaders.
Moderator & Organizer: Tuong-Vi An-Gourfinkel, Accelerating the Transition.
Sponsor: Our sincere thanks to Nixon Peabody LLP for generously supporting this event through the provision of the venue and catering.
By registering for this event, you agree to share your registration information with the organizers of SF Climate Week.