I am excited to share the news that the CETI team is growing just at a time when we most need to be resourced to continue our important work. Jeanna Deforeit joined the team on February 10 as Development & Operations Director. Jeanna brings over a decade of nonprofit management experience in operations, finance, and development, including grants management, fundraising campaigns, and event planning. She will play a critical role supporting all aspects of CETI’s development and operations.
We will welcome Stacia Dreyer on March 3 as our Research Director. Stacia is a social and behavioral scientist with over 15 years of research experience analyzing and synthesizing insights from quantitative and qualitative datasets; communicating analysis in accessible presentations, reports, and peer-reviewed publications; and mentoring junior researchers. Stacia will direct CETI’s research programs and projects to ensure those efforts continue to drive forward our mission to accelerate an equitable clean energy transition in the Northwest.
The CETI Board approved our 2025 budget on February 5. I will bring the team together for an offsite on March 12 to map our strategic path forward for the rest of the year. While Jeanne, Ruby, Jamie, and I took stock of our work at the end of 2024, I wanted to hold off finalizing our 2025 strategy until the new team was in place and we had a sense of where the country might be headed when it came to clean energy. We have our marching orders now and know that CETI’s work will be more important than ever in the coming year and beyond.
Part of the team’s program assessment included analyzing how effective our outreach and communications were in 2024. We were pleased to see that total engagement across all three of our websites (CETI, Net-Zero Northwest, and Northwest Clean Energy Atlas) more than doubled in users, sessions, and page views from the previous year. If you are one of the many people who clicked through to one of our websites this year, we invite you to drop us a line or two in our contact form to tell us how our work has helped you.
Eileen V. Quigley
Executive Director
Over the past several years, geothermal has emerged as a clean, firm resource with the potential to be scalable and cost-effective. Research Analyst Jeanne Currie wrote a blog that explores geothermal as a clean energy resource and assesses the current state of play, the promise and challenges of emerging technologies, and the outlook for the future of geothermal in the United States. Learn about geothermal's role in clean and reliable energy.
This month, Jamie Ptacek synthesized the key findings, insights, and recommendations from the Rural Clean Energy Study and Report that CETI collaborated on with Ross Strategic and Industrial Economics Inc. for the Washington Department of Commerce. Read Jamie's synthesis to learn more.
Our work providing the Oregon Department of Energy (ODOE) with technical and economic analysis to support the state’s Energy Strategy achieved important milestones since our last newsletter. The CETI team traveled to Portland on January 31, 2025 where Jeremy Hargreaves presented the results of Evolved Energy Research’s energy pathways modeling to a public audience at the Oregon Museum of Science and Industry. Jeremy also presented modeling results at the first plenary meeting for the policy working groups on February 12, 2025. These working groups will reflect on the results of the technical modeling and help identify policy gaps and opportunities.
We have entered the final production phase of two exciting SCALE 2030 deliverables for Washington state: a Clean Buildings Ecosystem Assessment and a Clean Buildings Transition Framework. We will share these resources with the CETI community in the spring, so stay tuned.
Yesterday, February 26, 2025, Jeanne Currie attended a WestTEC all-committee meeting in Portland, where committee members gave feedback on scenario choices to be included in the 20-year study and on the capacity expansion modeling effort that is underway to develop an actionable transmission plan that will support the needs of the region’s future energy grid.
We are working with the Washington Department of Commerce to provide technical and economic support for the state’s Comprehensive Climate Action Plan. There will be a series of public meetings at which Washingtonians will be asked to share their views about how the state should meet its emission reduction targets. If interested, you can register for the events, which will be held via Zoom on the dates listed below:
Next month, CETI will finalize our 2025 plan with our new staff members. We look forward to sharing where the organization is headed this year.
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