The Sierra Club Vermont Chapter formed a Ready for 100 (Rf100) team after the People’s Climate March in April of 2017 from a subset of the Vermont Chapter volunteer leadership. The Rf100 Team decided that a strategy of focusing its efforts within communities as a means of building grassroots support to address climate change made more sense than focusing on state or federal officials. In July, four of the Vermont leaders formed the Burlington (Vermont) Ready for 100 Team. Steve Crowley has been an active member of the Sierra Club leadership team for the last 20 years, Jonathan Bond has held various Chapter and Sierra Club National leadership positions, and Rick Wackernagel was recruited over a year ago to work on energy issues for the Vermont Chapter Energy Committee and has been an active leader since. Katelyn Ellerman, an attorney in Burlington, started volunteering a year ago, and, following the People’s Climate March, has upgraded her leadership involvement to focus on Burlington-based issues and solutions.What is the purpose of the group?The Sierra Club Vermont Chapter is working to inspire communities throughout Vermont to commit to transitioning to 100 percent clean, renewable energy through a Ready for 100 campaign. Poll after poll shows that a broad majority of Americans support clean energy. Eighty-three percent of respondents to a national online survey of American adults conducted by Global Strategy Group in August 2015 supported a goal of 100 percent clean and renewable energy for the United States. We now need to mobilize that public support and get our leaders to start planning the transition and taking action to complete it. That will set the stage for individuals, families, businesses, and other organizations to plan and start their own transitions away from fossil fuels and toward clean energy. Burlington stood out as a good candidate in early discussions. Three of the members of the state Rf100 team live in Burlington and one in neighboring South Burlington. Burlington has the largest population base and concentration of Sierra Club members in Vermont. It can become a regional model to inspire other communities inside and outside Vermont to reach the goal of 100 percent clean, renewable energy in all three energy uses - electricity, heating, and transportation. Burlington is already an energy-transition model, with all of its electricity classified as renewable. To continue to be a model, it will need to update and extend its transition plans. The city sources its electricity from a variety of clean and dirty sources, buying and selling electricity and renewable energy credits (RECs), so that it ends up with a renewable blend. One of the renewable sources is large-scale hydro; another is biomass, which accounts for 10 to 30 percent of Vermont’s sustainable forest yield. The city produces and buys electricity from fossil energy, then applies RECs to that electricity. Burlington Electric's Integrated Resource Plan includes a vision of Burlington becoming a net-zero fossil energy city in transportation and heating. However, some of the strategies being considered include offsetting fossil fuel use with RECs. Other opportunities for strengthening Burlington’s transition plan also exist. Burlington’s sustainability office is currently looking for programs and policies to make energy efficiency and renewable energy accessible to residents with low and moderate incomes. Burlington has accomplished a great deal. It is not yet, however, a model of where we need to be in 2050. We believe that with the right encouragement, Burlington can become a true model city. The Burlington Ready for 100 campaign will be adapting the Sierra Club’s Ready for 100 methodology, which has been used successfully in more than 20 towns and cities around the United States, to a community that has already taken significant steps toward full renewability. We will build an inclusive, public-private-nonprofit partnership based on deep understandings of Burlington’s energy system, its energy policy decision-making process, and impacts on stakeholders in its energy system. The Burlington Ready for 100 core group is meeting with local grasstops and potential partners from diverse groups and backgrounds to learn who is doing what in climate and energy in Burlington. This exercise will identify opportunities for and barriers to strengthening Burlington’s energy transition plan, as well as partners and allies. Additional core group members will be drawn from this diverse group so the core group represents low-income households and other vulnerable populations, as well as environmental activists. Building on a base of knowledge of Burlington's current energy system, this larger core group will develop a common vision of a clean, just, equitable, financially feasible 100 percent renewable energy system. Building on an understanding of how decisions about public energy programs and policies are made, it will develop strategies for getting Burlington’s energy transition plan revised to meet the clean, 100 percent renewable goal. These will likely include educational and informational activities, such as study groups, film showings, panel discussions and presentations, as well as meetings with elected and appointed officials. Our goals are a just, financially feasible and equitable transition plan, and expanded understanding of how a community can move equitably through the latter stages of reaching 100 percent renewability.