With President Biden signing the Inflation Reduction Act (IRA) on August 16, we commence a new chapter that will hopefully begin to bend carbon emissions curves downward in the United States and avert a complete climate crisis. We’re still unpacking how the IRA might help accelerate decarbonization in the Northwest, but this victory snatched from the jaws of defeat has certainly buoyed the CETI team.

Net-Zero Northwest

We are excited to announce the kick-off of our Net-Zero Northwest project, which has two components: (1) updating least-cost pathways modeling for the Northwest as a region and for Idaho, Montana, Oregon, and Washington individually, and (2) assessing how the clean energy transition could impact employment in the region over the coming three decades.

Evolved Energy Research will conduct the pathways analysis, building upon the previous deep decarbonization pathways analyses the firm has conducted for CETI: Meeting the Challenge (2019), the first Northwest Deep Decarbonization Pathways study; Montana Climate Solutions Council (2020); Washington 2021 State Energy Strategy; and Oregon Clean Energy Pathways (2021).

BW Research will perform the jobs analysis with outputs from the pathways analysis. The firm has produced the U.S. Energy & Employment Jobs Report (USEER) since its inception in 2016. BW Research also produced the jobs analysis related to the clean energy transition for New York State (December 2021), and for Massachusetts (June 2022).

Both Evolved and BW have been modeling the impact of the IRA nationally, in the case of Evolved for Princeton's REPEAT project and in BW's, for The Nature Conservancy. We aim for the Net-Zero Northwest analysis to guide actions from now until 2030 that will put the region on the path to achieving net-zero emissions by 2050.

Federal Funding Opportunities for Industrial Decarbonization

On August 17, Researcher Ruby Moore-Bloom presented at a BlueGreen Alliance workshop focused on federal funding opportunities from the Bipartisan Infrastructure Law (BIL) for Washington industry. Ruby’s presentation highlighted several strategies from our Clean Materials Manufacturing project that could be opportunities to take advantage of incoming BIL funding for industrial emissions demonstration projects.

Scaling Building Decarbonization in Washington

Operation 2030, a joint CETI and 2050 Institute project, was developed to jumpstart mobilization to fully scaled building decarbonization activities in Washington by 2030. Since we released the white paper that framed this opportunity on January 5, we have conducted 18 interviews with 30 organizations; synthesized the themes from that outreach; developed a list of strategic priorities and a research agenda; and held two workshops with the Department of Commerce Buildings Team.

Mid-Year Reflections

As we start the second half of 2022, I share a summary of what we have accomplished so far this year as we dug deeply into building and industrial decarbonization, as well as clean energy in rural Northwest communities.

What We’ve Been Learning

We work hard to stay current on the rapidly evolving research and technical developments in clean energy, particularly those related to this year’s focus on buildings and industry. Ruby offers two blogs, one a rundown of the best podcasts and webinars that the CETI team engaged with in the past few months, and a separate post devoted solely to building decarbonization podcasts and webinars.

NEEA Board Appointment

I am very honored to have been appointed to the board of the Northwest Energy Efficiency Alliance (NEEA), an alliance of utilities and energy efficiency organizations that have worked for more than 25 years to enact market changes to drive energy efficiency and benefit 13 million energy consumers in the Northwest. I am filling NEEA's one slot reserved for a public interest representative.

Mark Your Calendars

We are putting the finishing touches on Community-Defined Decarbonization: Reflecting Rural and Tribal Desires for an Equitable Clean Energy Transition in Washington for a September 7 release. We incorporated feedback from the 24 rural and Tribal community leaders, nonprofit staffers, and government agency representatives that we interviewed last year. We will also add the maps created for the paper, which explore the community-level relationship between energy burden and various socioeconomic factors, to our Northwest Clean Energy Atlas.

All in all, a very busy month since I last wrote. The fall looks to be even busier, if that is possible!