Joel Makower

AI is the collision point.

• They point out that big tech companies' emissions are rising even after public net-zero commitments because skyrocketing compute demand is outpacing efficiency and clean-energy gains.
• The backlash is unexpected, they argue, because people were not afraid of PCs, smartphones, or the early internet the way they are of data centers and AI.
• In the U.S., they see this becoming a bipartisan political issue heading into the 2026 midterms because data centers intrude on both red and blue communities.

In a podcast announcement with Dr.

• Sally Uren of Forum for the Future and Dr.
• Wayne Visser, Makower says we can now measure emissions and planetary impact far better than we can reduce them, so measurement and accountability infrastructure is racing ahead of real-world change.
• They frame the fix as hyperscalers engaging communities and increasing transparency, with regulation and social pressure making practices like "bring your own clean power" and waterless cooling the norm rather than the exception.

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The numbers they cite show the scale of local opposition, and they say energy gets the headlines while water, land use, noise, and e-waste are less-discussed sleeping giants.

• The encouraging part, in their view, is that solutions exist across the impact areas.
• What is missing is disclosure standards, procurement requirements, and the will to do things differently.
• They add that most enterprise AI buyers have far more leverage over hyperscalers than they are exercising.

Makower opens with a Gallup finding that more Americans say they would rather live near a nuclear power plant than a data center. They cite figures for the pushback: since mid-2024, community opposition has blocked or delayed $64 billion in U.S. data center projects; at least 188 local opposition groups are active across 40 states; and twelve states filed moratorium bills in a single year.

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The group agreed on high-bar goals: community agency and buy-in early and often, with community benefit agreements; clean energy and water-positive operations; common standards and transparency; and self-funded initiatives.

• The group said changes were needed to modernize the grid, include sustainability in procurement conversations, prove and articulate the benefits of AI, and rebuild trust.
• Makower notes that front-line communities, regulators, and local authorities were missing from the room, and says to ask whether they will be included next time.

At Trellis Impact 26, Makower and Hana Kajimura convened the AI x Sustainable Infrastructure Forum. They frame the task as bending a trillion-dollar infrastructure investment wave in the right direction quickly, while the window is still open.

Makower notes that the event was planned months earlier and proved prescient as community pushback accelerated in the U.S. and beyond in the intervening months.

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They also relay a guest's argument that the most valuable sustainability contributions will not come from consultants or conservation nonprofits using chatbots, which mainly helps organizational efficiency, but from applied AI embedded in industrial systems. That is where the large gains are likely to come from, according to the guest.

In the podcast recap, Makower quotes Anna Lerner Nesbitt, CEO of Climate Collective, saying the biggest improvements will come from applied AI optimizing logistics, improving smart grids, finding new protein sources, and accelerating carbon removal investments. They present this as a more articulate version of their argument about the value of AI to sustainability.

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The sessions center on practical questions and named practitioners, not vendor pitches. They moderate and host sessions for the Music Sustainability Alliance and related programmes, covering responsible merch, waste across the music business, and how the music industry should use AI for recordings, concerts, and festivals rather than for creating music itself.

For a webinar on responsible merch, Makower framed the questions as what responsibly produced merch means in practice, what the real timelines, costs, and tradeoffs are, and what merch teams should consider when selecting suppliers.

• The session introduced the Responsible Merch Guide co-authored by REVERB, The CSO Shop, and Green Music Australia, and paired guide authors Luke Logemann, Micki Weiner, and Madeline Weir with suppliers Ecofashion Corp., TS Designs, Everybody.World, and Recover Brands.
• A Climate Week NYC fishbowl session Makower hosted focused on waste in vinyl pressing, packaging and merch, catering, concessions, staging, freight, and disposable cups, with experts from Greener by Default, REVERB, Green Disco, and r.World.

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Makower opens with a Gallup finding — more Americans say they would rather live near a nuclear power plant than a data center — and uses it to explain why data centers have become the physical target of AI distrust: energy hogs, water guzzlers, noise machines, job displacers.

• The post puts numbers on the pushback: since mid-2024, community opposition has blocked or delayed $64 billion in U.S. data center projects; at least 188 local opposition groups are active across 40 states; twelve states filed moratorium bills in a single year.
• They note that energy gets the headlines while water, land use, noise, and e-waste are less-discussed "sleeping giants."
• The conclusion is not that the problems are unsolvable, but that disclosure standards, procurement requirements, and the will to use the leverage most enterprise AI buyers already have over hyperscalers are needed.

For brands planning a campaign

Good framing for a campaign positioning a vendor around disclosure or procurement rather than pure technology: it gives a webinar a ready thesis (buyer leverage) and concrete statistics to discuss.

At Trellis Impact 26, Makower and Hana Kajimura co-hosted an invitation-only AI x Sustainable Infrastructure Forum of 65 people drawn from hyperscalers, utilities, developers, financiers, certification bodies, investors, and community-engagement specialists.

• Makower is explicit about who was missing — front-line communities, regulators, and local authorities — and adds "Next time."
• The group settled on non-negotiable goals: community agency and buy-in, early and often, with community benefit agreements; clean energy and water positive operations; common standards and transparency; self-funded initiatives.
• Participants said change was needed to modernize the grid, include sustainability in procurement conversations, prove and articulate the benefits of AI, and rebuild trust.
• An article summarizing further findings was published, and Makower frames the task as bending a trillion-dollar infrastructure investment wave quickly while the window is open.

For brands planning a campaign

A campaign built around a roundtable, advisory board, or closed-door convening can point to this as a model Makower already runs, and to the absence of communities and regulators as an angle a sponsor could credibly own.

Announcing a premiere episode of Dancing with Systems alongside Dr.

• Sally Uren of Forum for the Future and Dr.
• Wayne Visser, Makower argues that tech is unusual among sectors because it is simultaneously an enabler of every other systems transition — climate, energy, nature, supply chains — and a sector with a fast-growing footprint of its own, with AI as "ground zero."
• Three observations carry the post: emissions and planetary impact can now be measured far better than they can actually be reduced, so measurement and accountability infrastructure is racing ahead of real-world change; big tech companies' emissions are rising even after public net-zero commitments because compute demand is outpacing efficiency and clean-energy gains; and the backlash is real and largely unexpected, since people were not afraid of PCs, smartphones, or the early internet the way they are afraid of data centers and AI now.
• They call this a genuinely bipartisan U.S. political issue heading into the 2026 midterms because data centers intrude on both red and blue communities, and frame the fix as hyperscalers engaging communities with more transparency, while regulation and social pressure make practices like "bring your own clean power" and waterless cooling the norm rather than the exception.
• The post quotes Anna Lerner Nesbitt of Climate Collective arguing that the biggest sustainability gains will come from applied AI embedded in industrial systems — logistics, smart grids, new protein sources, carbon removal — not from consultants or conservation nonprofits using chatbots.

For brands planning a campaign

Useful if a campaign's audience is skeptical that AI can be green: the post separates efficiency-tool claims from industrial applications and gives a sponsor a defensible position on where AI helps and where it does not.

Makower announces two Music Sustainability Alliance sessions.

• In the first, they moderate a webinar on how the music industry should embrace AI, scoped deliberately to recordings, concerts, and festivals rather than AI-generated music, with Marawan Ibrahim of Nimblist, Alison Colwell of Okta, and Rachael Riggs of Visit Seattle, covering how AI can improve efficiencies and foster innovation and how to use it responsibly.
• In the second, a "fishbowl"-style session at the Music Biz Climate Hub during Climate Week NYC, they host a discussion of waste across the music business — vinyl pressing, packaging and merch, catering, concessions, staging, freight, and disposable cups — starting with named experts from Greener by Default, REVERB, Green Disco, and r.World, then inviting others into the conversation.

For brands planning a campaign

Demonstrates a proven moderated-session format with a defined scope and named panelists. A sponsor planning a webinar can copy the structure, while the AI-in-music framing shows how Makower narrows a broad topic to keep a panel useful.

Starting from the proliferation of t-shirts, hoodies, and other concert merchandise, Makower frames the practical questions rather than the principle: what responsibly produced merch means in practice, what the real timelines, costs, and tradeoffs are, what merch teams should weigh when selecting suppliers, and which examples or lessons stand out.

• The webinar they moderate introduces a Responsible Merch Guide co-authored by REVERB, The CSO Shop, and Green Music Australia, and pairs three guide authors — Luke Logemann of Green Music Australia, Micki Weiner of The CSO Shop, and Madeline Weir of REVERB — with four suppliers: Ecofashion Corp., TS Designs, Everybody.World, and Recover Brands.
• The stated subject is how merch is being reimagined through reuse, remanufacturing, and supply-chain innovation, and what it takes to align commercial ambition with genuine responsibility.

For brands planning a campaign

A template for supplier-facing content: pair the people who wrote the guidance with the suppliers who have to execute it, and lead with cost and timeline questions rather than commitments — a structure a B2B vendor could reuse for its own buyer-education session.

In the podcast recap, they write that big tech companies' emissions are rising rather than falling after public net-zero commitments because skyrocketing AI compute demand is outpacing efficiency and clean energy gains.

• In the data center post, they cite a Gallup finding that more Americans say they would rather live near a nuclear power plant than a data center, alongside figures for community opposition: $64 billion in U.S. data center projects blocked or delayed since mid-2024, at least 188 local opposition groups active across 40 states, and twelve states with moratorium bills.
• They argue the backlash is unusual because people were not afraid of PCs, smartphones or the early internet the way they are of data centers and AI, and that it is shaping up as a bipartisan political issue.

Leads with a single arresting statistic, then widens to the structural pattern and names the missing fixes—disclosure standards, procurement requirements and willingness to change—rather than the technology.

For brands planning a campaign

For a climate tech or data center infrastructure company, Makower reframes the sale from engineering performance to disclosure, procurement and community trust. A webinar or advisory collaboration built on this framing speaks to buyers' reputational risk, not just their efficiency targets.

Examples: Source 1 · Source 2

The changes needed were modernizing the grid, putting sustainability into procurement conversations, proving and articulating the benefits of AI, and rebuilding trust. They also name who was absent from the room—front-line communities, regulators and local authorities—and say they will be included next time.

Convenes a closed-door cross-section of the value chain, asks the group to set high-bar goals and identify the changes required, then publishes the consensus and the roster of who was missing.

Makower says not everyone was represented at the forum, making the published consensus a partial view. Ask who was missing.

For brands planning a campaign

A brand can genuinely contribute to the standards, disclosure and community-engagement work Makower keeps returning to, and demonstrate that work in a credible room. This suits infrastructure, energy and enterprise AI buyers with procurement leverage over hyperscalers.

Examples: Source 1 · Source 2

Makower also relays a point from Climate Collective CEO Anna Lerner Nesbitt: the most valuable sustainability contributions will not come from consultants or conservation nonprofits using chatbots, which mainly help organizational efficiency, but from applied AI embedded in industrial systems—optimizing logistics, improving smart grids, finding new protein sources and accelerating carbon removal investment.

Sets measurement capability against actual reduction to show where the gap sits, then uses a named practitioner's quote to point to the leverage.

For brands planning a campaign

Applied AI vendors in logistics, grid optimization, protein or carbon removal have a direct hook: Makower quotes these as high-value uses of AI, and the accountability gap gives such a brand a problem statement for a session.

Examples: Source 1

A webinar on responsible merch, tied to the Responsible Merch Guide co-authored by REVERB, The CSO Shop and Green Music Australia, explored what responsibly produced merch means in practice: real timelines, costs and tradeoffs, how merch teams should choose suppliers, and standout examples.

• Suppliers Ecofashion Corp., TS Designs, Everybody.World and Recover Brands joined.
• A Climate Week NYC fishbowl session they host focuses on waste across vinyl pressing, packaging and merch, catering, concessions, staging, freight and disposable cups, with experts including Greener by Default, REVERB, Green Disco and r.World.
• A third session they moderate covers how the music industry should use AI for recordings, concerts and festivals, not for creating music itself.

Question-driven session design: states the practical questions the audience faces—cost, timing and supplier selection—and puts named practitioners and suppliers on the panel to answer them in public.

For brands planning a campaign

Brands in live events, reuse systems, apparel and merch supply chains, or music-industry technology can reach a defined practitioner audience through a session Makower moderates, with sponsorship attached to a working guide or moderated panel rather than a paid endorsement.

Examples: Source 1 · Source 2

The forum was invitation-only and closed-door, with a guest list spanning financiers, certification bodies and community-engagement specialists.

• The music sessions are webinars and a fishbowl format in which a starting panel of experts invites others to add perspectives, share experiences and ask questions.
• The podcast episode was a premiere episode recorded with two co-hosts.
• In each case, the agenda is framed as a set of questions to work through in the room.

The posts mainly promote or recap events Makower is running or joining, making the agenda-setting format clear. Ask for examples of long-form writing or one-to-one interviews if those formats matter to the campaign.

For brands planning a campaign

If a brand wants agenda influence rather than a straight endorsement, the fit is co-hosting or sponsoring a session, helping set the questions and participant mix, and being present in the room. This is a curation-and-convening proposition more than a publishing one.

Examples: Source 1 · Source 2 · Source 3 · Source 4

In one post, they write that “we just published an article” summarizing the forum’s findings and link to it on Trellis; a later post directs readers to a Trellis article and describes convening a follow-up group at the same event. Ask whether the relationship is staff employment, a contributor arrangement or an event partnership.

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They moderated a June 16 webinar on responsible concert merchandise, sponsored by the alliance and introducing its Responsible Merch Guide, and a September 10 webinar on how the music industry should approach AI.

• They also hosted a Music Biz Climate Hub fishbowl session at Climate Week NYC covering waste in the music industry.
• Ask whether the arrangement is paid.

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The posts present REVERB as a collaborator and panelist, not as a sponsor of Makower’s own work.

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The post presents the organization as a collaborator on the guide rather than as a sponsor or client of Makower.

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The organization appears as a guide collaborator and panelist, not as a sponsor of Makower’s own work.

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Rappa explains how today's Greenhouse Gas Protocol assigns a product's manufacturing emissions entirely to its first owner, so companies that reuse or refurbish get no reporting credit, and points to the Ellen MacArthur Foundation's push to amortise those emissions across a product's life. Both write about the accounting and policy mechanics that decide whether sustainable practice is rewarded, rather than advocacy in the abstract.

Rappa's material sits in the circular economy and durable goods, read through EU policy: the Circular Economy Act, Digital Product Passports under ESPR, and CSRD disclosure, with reuse measured as embodied carbon in the built environment.

• Makower focuses on the tech and AI footprint, plus music-industry operations.
• Follow Rappa for circularity and reporting rules; Makower for data centers, AI and convening.

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Announcing RouteZero's presence at the UN Global Compact Network UK summit, Brown lists decarbonising supply chains, financing the transition and AI for sustainability as the day's agenda; at the EAUC conference, Brown argues that sustainability is no longer about measuring emissions but about turning the data into decisions across estates, finance, procurement, staff, students and leadership. That echoes Makower's point that the gap is disclosure and procurement rather than technology.

Brown's subject is net-zero travel and campus operations in universities and colleges, seen through RouteZero's travel-data product and Scope 3 reporting.

• Makower focuses on the tech and AI side of the same problem and works as a host and convenor rather than a vendor.
• Follow Brown for travel emissions and higher-education operations; Makower for AI infrastructure and industry convening.

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Both post short, question-driven pieces that promote a practical resource or session, lead with the answer, and name details readers can use: Kiner asks every candidate what they love doing most and would delegate, and lists the benchmarking, survey and pay-range steps that belong in a compensation review before Q1. Makower builds sessions around the questions merch teams or data center buyers actually face.

Kiner's subject is hiring, compensation and people operations for startups, nonprofits and small businesses, with no climate or technology angle.

• The overlap with Makower is in format and in an audience of people running organisations, not in topic.
• Follow Makower for sustainability and AI; Kiner does not cover those interests.

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Rappa's posts explain the mechanics of circularity: the GHG Protocol does not fully account for reuse, refurbishment or remanufacturing, and manufacturing emissions are usually assigned entirely to a product's first owner, even when it is reused and resold several times.

• Rappa points to the Ellen MacArthur Foundation's proposal to amortise initial manufacturing emissions over an asset's expected life, so companies that keep products in circulation can report the benefit.
• Rappa also maps the European rules that will force the issue: the Circular Economy Act, the Ecodesign for Sustainable Products Regulation and its Digital Product Passports, and the Corporate Sustainability Reporting Directive, which covers around 11,000 large companies and requires circular-economy performance to be disclosed.
• Rappa is the closer match if the sponsor's buyers are sustainability, procurement or finance teams in the built environment seeking to justify a reuse programme, or if the webinar targets EU-facing compliance.

Rappa's posts do not address AI, data-centre energy or water use, community opposition, or the leverage enterprise buyers hold over hyperscalers—the topics the sponsor's audience is being invited to discuss.

• Neither post shows Rappa hosting a forum, moderating a panel or running a closed-door session, so the sponsor would need to design the format from scratch.
• Both posts date from late January and early February 2025.
• Ask for audience figures, commercial terms and confirmation that Rappa takes on paid engagements.

Examples: Source 1 · Source 2

Written in RouteZero's voice, Brown's posts describe the challenge in post-16 education: travel is usually the largest part of a university's footprint and is fragmented across bookings, expenses, departments and policies.

• The work is to turn that scattered data into decisions that hold across estates, finance, procurement, staff, students and leadership.
• Brown names the questions buyers need to answer, including where travel emissions and cost opportunities actually sit and which reductions people will adopt without slowing academic work.
• Brown also appears at events where those buyers gather, including the UN Global Compact Network UK annual summit and the EAUC conference.
• For a sponsor selling travel, campus or reporting tools, Brown speaks to buyers who already have a budget and a mandate for that spend.

Brown's posts do not cover AI, compute, data-centre siting or community consent, so Brown cannot carry the technical core of a campaign on those topics.

• Both posts are event notices about where the RouteZero team will be and what its data offers.
• A sponsor would inherit a promotional register, not the independent analysis a thought-leadership session needs.
• The posts date from October 2025 and June 2026, and show where Brown turns up, not what Brown has argued publicly.

Examples: Source 1 · Source 2

Kiner's posts draw on recruiting roles at Kaiser Permanente, Microsoft and Amazon, and on the interview question Kiner now asks every time: what do you love doing most, and what would you delegate?

• Reverb's compensation work also covers gathering market data, benchmarking salary surveys and building transparent pay ranges in the planning window before a hiring year.
• Kiner is the better moderator for that part of the conversation if the sponsor's webinar targets HR, operations or talent leaders, or if the panel needs to address who will staff a data-centre, grid or climate-tech build-out and how they will be paid.

Kiner's posts do not touch sustainability, energy, water, AI or community trust, so Kiner cannot replace Makower on a campaign about those topics.

• The realistic use is as a second voice adding a workforce layer to a session Makower anchors.
• The posts are promotional: one promotes The Reverb Way book and another offers Reverb's compensation services.
• There is no independent analysis of hiring practice to quote.
• The posts date from April and September 2026.

Examples: Source 1 · Source 2