In December 2022, the Clean Energy Transition Institute (CETI) Board and staff decided to step back to conduct a lay-of-the-land assessment of the clean energy economy in the Northwest and evaluate our role and impact to guide our work going forward.
Several factors drove this decision last winter. Nationally, the country was at an inflection point to accelerate decarbonization, due to both the undeniable impact that climate change was having, and the passage of three massive federal funding bills1 aimed at transforming the economy from reliance on fossil to clean energy.
Regionally, Western states could drive deep decarbonization by achieving net-zero emission targets in California, Colorado, Nevada, Oregon, and Washington. While lacking ambitious emission reduction targets, Montana and Idaho could play a critical role due to their significant potential clean energy resources.
Finally, CETI was to mark its fifth anniversary on February 7, 2023, and it seemed an appropriate time to assess our role and impact in the region to date, as well as how to focus efforts to implement carbon emission reduction strategies.
From January 6-February 13, 2023, CETI solicited the views of 43 regional stakeholders from 30 organizations. The top-level conclusions that guide our strategic focus for 2023 include:
The top six areas from our research that drive our strategic thinking for 2023 are: 1) Equity and affordability; 2) Siting renewable energy and transmission; 3) Electricity resource adequacy and reliability; 4) Workforce development; 5) Lack of institutional capacity; 6) East-west differences, both eastern and western Washington and Oregon, as well as the eastern states of Montana and Idaho compared to the coastal states of Washington and Oregon.
As for CETI’s role and impact, respondents affirmed our value proposition. Interviewees particularly called out the unique and critical role we play providing unbiased analysis, convening stakeholders to resolve difficult decarbonization issues, and developing accessible communications that demystify the complexities of deep decarbonization.
Respondents also cited our primary weaknesses: small size; lack of resources; and minimal marketing, which keeps our work from reaching and influencing a wider group of stakeholders.
In the coming year, CETI will build on the groundwork we have laid since our inception; sharpen our definition of an equitable clean energy transition and how we apply it to our work; and focus on the regional decarbonization implementation strategies where we can provide the most value.
The CETI Team and Board will finalize and publish our definition of an equitable clean energy transition and adhere to it in executing our mission to accelerate equitable decarbonization in the Northwest.
Our 2023 Program Goal is: CETI’s research/analysis, convenings, and communications materials provide specific ways to address barriers to equitably decarbonize the electricity grid, the building sector, and rural communities in the Northwest and to build a clean energy workforce.
Here are the projects we will pursue:
For the first half of the year, we are working to land the Net-Zero Northwest (NZNW) analysis with significant impact. The pathways study will address equity; siting and transmission; resource adequacy; affordability; and the relationship between states and communities east and west of the mountains.
The NZNW scenarios will shed valuable light on important decarbonization pathway questions: clean fuels development; transportation electrification; gas versus electricity in buildings; and distributed energy resources. In addition, it will examine the challenges posed by the lack of a regional grid and a regional governance structure that would enable collaboration across the 11 Western states.
The NZNW study will also provide policymakers and stakeholders insights into the potential for improved health metrics due to reduced tailpipe and smokestack emissions, as well as how the clean energy transition will impact today’s workforce and create tomorrow’s jobs.
We will release the NZNW study before mid-year and anticipate disseminating the results throughout 2023 in a variety of forums.
Meeting 2050 greenhouse gas emissions limits requires scaling equitable building decarbonization at pace by 2030, which in turn requires systemic change and large-scale mobilization not in place with current policies, programs, or incentives. CETI and 2050 Institute have been working on this challenge since 2021, when we created our highly successful Operation 2030 project.
In 2023, we will partner again with 2050 Institute on SCALE 2030, which is guided by five key organizing principles: (1) Simplicity, (2) Cost Reductions, (3) Alignment, (4) Leverage, and (5) Equity. This project will rely on the NZNW data and fits with three of the top areas from CETI’s ecosystem assessment: equity, affordability, and regional collaboration.
In 2023, we will continue to expand the two projects in our Rural and Tribal Decarbonization program area. For the first, we want to build on the findings of our Community-Defined Decarbonization report by helping rural and Tribal communities take advantage of federal funding opportunities for projects that match their clean energy goals.
In March, we released our second Claiming Power short film, and we hope to produce one additional film this year that chronicles examples of clean energy development, potentially with federal funding, in rural communities. Funds permitting, we would like to produce a third film.
With the Rural and Tribal Decarbonization program area, we aim to address equity and affordability; east-west divide issues; renewable energy project siting; and possibly transmission. This is also where we might contribute usefully to the challenge of capacity on the ground and at Washington state agencies to take advantage of federal funding. We would need funding for full-time staff dedicated to our rural and Tribal decarbonization work to fully accomplish our goals for this project.
Workforce development ranked fifth in number of mentions from interviewees in our assessment. The NZNW employment and workforce analysis we are conducting with BW Research will provide the Northwest’s first ever regional jobs analysis and will offer valuable guidance to many of our key stakeholders who want to understand what jobs will be created or changed as the transition unfolds.
This analysis will provide baseline data from which to build a workforce program that we would like to launch in the latter half of the year, funding permitted. We would map the various actors and organizations involved in workforce development in Washington and Oregon and perform a gap analysis of the pipelines for developing clean energy skillsets and transition workers whose jobs will change as a result of the clean energy transition.
This year CETI aims to address a significant area for improvement that our ecosystem assessment revealed—we produce excellent and valuable content that not enough key stakeholders know about or act upon. We hope to significantly improve our communications and marketing efforts in 2023 with this goal: Marketing of CETI’s research/analysis, communications materials, and convenings results in key stakeholders acting on decarbonization solutions and a measurable increase in CETI’s influence in the region.
Funding permitted, we would hire Communications Manager and potentially a marketing consultant to support impactful marketing and communications of our products: the NZNW study; the Claiming Power short films; SCALE 2030 outcomes; our blogs, newsletters, and project release webinars; an active presence on social media outlets; and participation in leveraged conferences.
The Northwest Clean Energy Atlas will be a key component of our marketing and communications strategy, hosting interactive tools for stakeholders to explore energy data related to equitable deep decarbonization. We hope that stakeholders will use the Atlas to drive regionally focused energy system planning. In 2023, the Atlas will include the energy, health, and workforce data of the NZNW study, SCALE 2030 analytics, and other equity-focused visualizations.
To have the resources to achieve our 2023 goals, we have set a development goal of doubling the funds we received in 2022. While our goals and agenda are ambitious, we know that this is the time to throw our collective shoulders to the wheel to do everything humanly possible to get the Northwest on the path to equitable decarbonization as swiftly as the climate crisis requires.
We thank all of you who have been on this journey with us for the past five years—particularly our funders without whom CETI would not exist—and look forward to a dynamic and successful 2023 together.
1 The Bipartisan Infrastructure Law–$1.2 trillion for infrastructure (November 15, 2021); CHIPS and Sciences Act–$280 billion for scientific research about and manufacturing of semiconductors (August 9, 2022); and the Inflation Reduction Act–$369 billion to address climate change and energy security (August 16, 2022).
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