An Action-Packed First Half of the Year

The Clean Energy Transition Institute team has had quite a productive year to date. In January, we launched Operation 2030, which is aimed at scaling equitable building decarbonization in Washington and which builds upon the building sector technical and economic analysis we provided for the Washington 2021 State Energy Strategy.

We are working with key building sector stakeholders, including the Washington State Department of Commerce, identifying the groundwork that must be put in place between now and 2030 to ensure that the state is prepared to retrofit commercial and residential buildings at the scale and pace that Washington’s net-zero by 2050 emission reduction target requires.

Clean Energy and Northwest Rural Communities

We have two projects underway with our Clean Energy and Northwest Rural Communities program. The first is Community-Defined Decarbonization, which has two aims: (1) understand the drivers of energy disparities in low-income rural and Tribal households, and (2) identify ways that decarbonization strategies and clean energy can address these inequities based on rural and Tribal communities’ priorities.

Our paper, in which we synthesize the findings from interviews with 24 rural and Tribal community leaders and provide quantitative context for rural energy in Washington, will be released in early September.

The goal of the second rural clean energy program, Claiming Power: Stories of Rural Communities and Clean Energy, is to hear how rural communities are navigating the opportunities and challenges of renewable energy projects as they are developing in Washington. Our first video will be released in early fall.

Northwest Clean Energy Atlas

In May, we launched the Northwest Clean Energy Atlas, which uses data visualization to explores energy data and decarbonization in the Northwest. The Atlas currently offers visualizations about emissions, energy, and utilities, and will soon include maps from the Community-Defined Decarbonization project mentioned above. Our University of Washington Research Fellows have been hard at work updating the visualizations with 2020 data.

Industrial Decarbonization in Washington

We pursued two Industrial Decarbonization projects for the first part of 2022. The first is Clean Materials Manufacturing, which analyzed how to decarbonize six manufacturing sectors—aluminum, concrete and cement, glass, iron and steel, pulp and paper, and wood products.

These overviews provided background material for our second industrial project, the Building Washington’s Clean Materials Manufacturing Summit that we held with BlueGreen Alliance (Washington), the University of Washington’s Carbon Leadership Forum, and SEI-US on June 23 (virtual) and June 28 (in-person).

Closing Out the Year

Our major focus for the second half of 2022 will be on our Net-Zero Northwest project that will offer both new analysis for how the Northwest can get on a path to accelerating the clean energy transition, as well as how transforming the region's energy systems might impact jobs in the region.