A major way the Clean Energy Transition Institute carries out its mission is to convene diverse stakeholders to examine opportunities and challenges related to transitioning off fossil fuels. We were quite busy in June doing just that, hosting a manufacturing summit with the BlueGreen Alliance, the University of Washington’s Carbon Leadership Forum, and SEI-US. We also conducted outreach to building decarbonization stakeholders and rural and Tribal community leaders. Read on to learn more.
The Building Washington’s Clean Materials Manufacturing Summit on June 23 and June 28 was a great success. The first day was virtual, which enabled participation from some of the nation’s top industrial decarbonization authorities, who joined our Washington experts in explaining different considerations for producing low-carbon manufacturing materials.
On day two, manufacturers, government agencies, and labor and environmental leaders gathered at the downtown Seattle law offices of K&L Gates to talk about how to create a clean materials manufacturing economy and develop a clean industrial policy for Washington. We will post recordings of the virtual presentations, slides from the in-person panels, and a summary of the Summit’s outcomes later in July.
From February 7 until June 8, CETI and 2050 Institute's Poppy Storm conducted stakeholder outreach with a wide range of key players in the Northwest building sector. We shared the findings of the Operation 2030: Scaling Building Decarbonization in Washington State white paper and sought input for prioritized actions.
We synthesized the feedback we received and are working on Phase 2, which will offer recommendations for strategic priorities, a research agenda, and policies required to make progress during the 2022-2025 timeframe. We aim to release this work in late July/early August.
It was an unexpected surprise to receive a second grant of $10,000 from the Sustainable Path Foundation this month in support of our Operation 2030 work.
On June 7, the Clean Energy States Alliance awarded the Washington State Department of Commerce one of its six 2022 State Leadership in Clean Energy Awards for the Washington 2021 State Energy Strategy. The team of consultants that CETI led provided the technical and economic analysis in support of the strategy. Huge congratulations to our colleagues at Commerce.
Earlier this month, President Biden invoked the Defense Production Act to increase U.S. manufacturing of five energy technologies including heat pumps, a critical technology for decarbonizing the building sector. In the first of a two-part blog, CETI Researcher Ruby Moore-Bloom explains how heat pumps work and details the benefits and challenges to widespread adoption. In the second post, she describes the status of policies to expand heat pump adoption in the Northwest and across the country.
On June 15, I spoke to the K&L Gates Environmental Law Practice Group and described the evolution and common findings of deep decarbonization pathways studies performed in the Northwest since 2018.
Thank you to everyone who has engaged with our work on Clean Materials Manufacturing. Please note that we have updated the overviews first released in May. We incorrectly stated that pulp/paper is Washington’s highest emitting industrial sector. It is the highest emitting sector of the six sectors that we examined, but petroleum refining is the state's overall highest emitting industrial sector.
We also changed the Figure 1 labels from “Fossil CO2” to “Fossil and Process CO2” for concrete/cement and iron/steel to accurately reflect the fact that a portion of the emissions come from chemical transformations during the industrial process, not only the combustion of fossil fuels.
We are putting the finishing touches on our paper: Community-Defined Decarbonization: Reflecting Rural and Tribal Desires for an Equitable Clean Energy Transition in Washington. Earlier this month, we disseminated the draft manuscript to the 24 rural and Tribal community leaders, nonprofit staffers, and government agency representatives that we interviewed last year and are currently making revisions based on their comments. We aim to release the paper and unveil the first of our Claiming Power videos, Harvesting the Sun, this summer.
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