RECESS26
RECESS (Resilience and Equity in the Clean Energy Sector Summit)
is a national clean energy conference, nonprofit, and movement advancing an equitable, regenerative clean energy economy. Founded in Detroit, RECESS intentionally invites Black, Indigenous, Brown, and other historically underrepresented communities into meaningful participation, understanding, and awareness of the clean energy ecosystem. By bringing together community members, students, entrepreneurs, researchers, policymakers, and industry leaders, RECESS helps ensure the clean energy transition is inclusive and delivers benefits to the people most impacted by climate change, economic exclusion, and energy injustice.
Mission: Possible - The Regenerative Power of Clean Energy
re·gen·er·a·tive /ruh·jeh·nr·uh·tuhv/ adjective - tending to the characteristic to regrow, renew, or restore something to a better or original state, often through natural processes.
Join the RECESS Movement. RECESS is open to all: students, professionals, academics, advocates, corporations, researchers, policymakers, entrepreneurs, and the clean energy curious. Bring your story. Build your future. Help shape a regenerative clean energy economy.
Why Attend
Theme: Mission: Possible – A Regenerative Clean Energy Ecosystem
We are at a pivotal moment: one that invites us to reimagine how our economy grows, adapts, and serves people. The clean energy transition presents a powerful opportunity to build something better: an economy rooted in renewal, inclusion, and shared benefit.
This moment allows us to co-create a regenerative economy powered by clean energy, one that expands opportunity, strengthens communities, and delivers lasting, net positive impact. Mission: Possible reflects the promise of a regenerative clean energy future; one that restores communities, strengthens local economies, improves health outcomes, mitigates climate disruption, and creates enduring pathways to prosperity.
By centering collaboration, lived experience, and innovation, RECESS helps expose the possibilities, making the clean energy transition a pathway to economic mobility, new opportunities, and inclusive growth for current and future generations.
Empowering Historically Excluded Voices
RECESS elevates Black, Indigenous, Brown, and other historically underrepresented voices; empowering people and communities to shape a more inviting, collaborative clean energy ecosystem.
The Future of Clean Energy
RECESS explores innovation through a regenerative lens; centering people, community solutions, and technology that creates lasting impact.
Where
Clean Energy Innovation
Meets People
Attendees are exposed to the systems and solutions actively shaping the clean energy economy, including heat pumps, community solar, agrivoltaics, virtual power plants, building science and energy auditing, AI and data centers, carbon capture and accounting, and clean energy project financing.
RECESS is not a traditional clean energy conference; it’s a regenerative convening where innovation meets opportunity, and technology meets people. These technologies are explored through real-world applications that connect innovation to careers, business growth, research, and community benefit.
Why Detroit.
Why Now.
Because people are the center of the transition.
RECESS is rooted in Detroit, a city shaped by Indigenous stewardship, Black migration and labor, and generations of immigrants who came seeking safety, opportunity, and prosperity. From Southwest Detroit’s vibrant Hispanic and Latino communities, to Hamtramck’s rich mosaic of immigrant cultures, to Dearborn’s nationally significant Arab and Arab American population, Michigan reflects a living, evolving tapestry of cultures, histories, and lived experience.
This is not a single-story place; it’s a region defined by resilience, contribution, and continual reinvention. And it’s exactly where a people-powered clean energy future belongs.
Because Detroit embodies regeneration.
Detroit has always been a city of reinvention. From Motown’s global cultural influence to the automotive industry that put the world on wheels, innovation here has never been abstract; it has been built by ingenuity, creativity, labor, and grit. When industries shifted, Detroit adapted. When narratives failed, Detroit rewrote them.
Because sustainability isn’t enough.
With access to the Great Lakes, deep engineering talent, and bold climate goals, Michigan is a center of clean energy innovation, a top startup ecosystem, and a future climate refuge. The question is not whether transformation will happen, but how we will make sure everyone benefits.
Mission: Possible was born here.
