The time has come for me to bid farewell to the Clean Energy Transition Institute (CETI) community. A decade ago, I left my position as Climate Solutions’ Director of Strategic Innovation determined to answer what I thought at the time was a relatively simple question—namely, was it possible for the four Northwest states to decarbonize technically, economically, and equitably within the time that the climate science indicated we must?
The quest to understand the multifaceted answer(s) to that question became the animating vision for CETI and with the support of this community and our very generous funders, I and the CETI Team have worked very hard for the past eight years researching, analyzing, and communicating what we learned. Despite tremendous improvements in the viability of renewable and other clean energy resources, storage, and a wide range of decarbonization solutions, that question still bears examination. I am therefore thrilled that the CETI Board has chosen Becky Kelley to succeed me as I believe that she has exactly the expertise and skill to skipper the CETI ship into the future.
I am doing everything in my power to enable a seamless transition this month and next and will be on call as needed in the months ahead. I feel quite confident that CETI is in excellent hands not only with Becky at the helm, but also with our superb Board and talented team. My last day is Friday, July 31, and Becky will be at my desk on Monday morning, August 3. I will provide support in August as Becky and the team transition.
Speaking of the team, I am incredibly excited to share the news that CETI’s Director of Operations and Communications Jamie Ptacek will attend the UC Berkeley School of Law starting August 17 on a full-ride scholarship for students dedicated to public interest law. While losing Jamie’s brilliant communication skills and steady operations support is hard, we are so pleased she is able to pursue her professional goals and confident that she is going to make an astounding lawyer.
We kicked off our Buildings Don’t Decarbonize Themselves, People Do webinar series on July 21 with an excellent webinar that CETI Research Director Stacia Dreyer moderated. The panelists talked about how to apply behavioral science to building decarbonization. See below for more information on this, how you can watch the recording, and how to register for the next session.
Stacia is serving on the NW Energy Coalition’s Data Center Working Group, the goal of which is to identify points of consensus with this rapidly emerging policy issue and support resource sharing among members.
As I close my final CETI Newsletter and this chapter of my life, I want to express my deep appreciation for every CETI staff member and contractor, past and present, who comprise the team that built CETI. During my tenure, we had a total of 16 staff and interns, seven Research Fellows, and 27 contractors who did the hard work to produce CETI’s research and analytics. I learned so much from every single person. I was also blessed with 10 skilled and dedicated Board members and an eight-member Advisory Council that helped launch CETI with the Northwest Deep Decarbonization Pathways Study, which set us off on this journey together.
Thank you to everyone from the bottom of my heart for your support and engagement since we opened for business on February 7, 2018. CETI is the crowning achievement of my now rather long career, and I could not have built it without the CETI community. I cannot wait to see where CETI goes from here.
With immense gratitude,
Eileen V. Quigley
CETI Executive Director
Next week, Poppy Storm will present the SCALE 2030 Clean Buildings Roadmap for Washington at ACEEE’s 2026 Summer Study on Energy Efficiency in Buildings on behalf of the SCALE 2030 team. The team continues to focus on Roadmap implementation and is scoping out next steps and funding opportunities to advance each of the actions in the Roadmap.
We launched our Buildings Don’t Decarbonize Themselves, People Do webinar series this month with presentations from Dr. Reuven Sussman (ACEEE) and Dr. Beth Karlin (See Change Institute), moderated by Stacia. The session provided a broad view of behavioral science theories and methods and their relevance to building decarbonization, digging into residential electrification decision making and how behavioral science can enhance electrification efforts across the customer journey.
The next session, The Human Side of Heat Pumps: Behavioral Insights for Customers and Contractors, will take place on Wednesday, August 26 from 9:30-10:30am PT. The webinar will provide two parallel perspectives on the heat pump journey–that of a customer and a contractor. Four core questions will be answered from both perspectives based on social and behavioral science research informed by the technical specificities of heat pumps: 1) What are heat pumps and why should I care?; 2) Will they work in my/this house?; 3) What will it cost/how much should I charge?; and 4) How do I get one?
The Washington Transmission Assessment Brief that CETI Research Analyst Jeanne Currie and Eileen have been working on since May is in its final stages as we incorporate feedback from our readers. We will be releasing this product early in the fall, and it will also provide fodder for the Transmission 101 document we will write to accompany a Transmission Decarbonization Forum we plan to hold this fall.
Dr. Jeremy Hargreaves did an excellent job presenting the final modeling results for the Washington Comprehensive Climate Action Plan (CCAP) at the July 27, 2026 Summer 2026 Quarterly Public meeting. Jeremy completed the final Technical Report in December 2025, which modeled the impact of the Trump Administration’s rollback of the Biden Administration’s clean energy incentives. Materials from all prior public meetings since the CCAP process kicked off on October 23, 2023 can be accessed here and the modeling data can be found here. Modeling work with Washington’s departments of Commerce and Ecology will continue into 2027.
Aiko Chang finalized their work under CETI Research Fellow Mariah Caballero and with Eileen’s guidance, exploring the equity implications of data center development in the Northwest, particularly its impact on rural communities. They presented their poster the second week of this month at Wellesley College. Should final materials be made public in the future, CETI will post them on our website.
Yesterday, Front and Centered released a Communities Centered: Frontline Perspectives on Hyperscale Data Centers in Washington State with a public webinar. The report is the culmination of months of work by the organization and details lessons learned from conversations with frontline community leaders as well as potential strategies for addressing data center impacts on communities. Download the report below and check out the website for more information.
Modeling finds that the final clean energy generation added to achieve a zero-emission electricity system produces a “hockey stick” graphic of sharply rising costs in the late 2040’s and early 2050s. Planners often use an undefined, clean, firm resource as a general proxy for the resources that will close the gap, but there is a range of existing technologies increasingly positioned to go the final mile on the way to a zero-emissions grid.
For this month's Demystifying Decarbonization blog, Jeanne reviews some of the most often-discussed technologies, covering their progress towards commercialization and development in the Northwest region, as well as the role they might eventually play in cleaning our grid.
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