On February 15, 2022, the Biden administration announced a clean manufacturing initiative to reduce carbon emissions and reinvigorate American manufacturing. The Clean Energy Transition Institute welcomes this federal effort to spur production of low-carbon industrial processes that will tackle the climate crisis; revitalize local economies; lower prices for consumers; provide jobs; and boost economic competitiveness.
We hope that funding from the Biden initiative will support development of clean manufacturing in Washington state, which is the focus of the clean materials manufacturing summit we are planning with the Blue-Green Alliance, the Carbon Leadership Forum, and SEI-US later this year.
Buy Clean/Buy Fair is a procurement policy focused on building materials purchased with government funding that would require prioritizing construction supplies to be manufactured with lower greenhouse gas emissions. CETI Researcher Ruby Moore-Bloom explains how this important climate policy works and describes its status in both Washington state and Washington, DC.
Research Fellow Claire Buysse examined 76 studies that assessed the impact of clean energy jobs investments in the decades since the 2009 American Recovery and Reinvestment Act. She synthesized what she learned in Investing in Clean Energy: A Literature Review, dividing her analysis into four sections: job creation; workforce transition; cost and benefit development; and public policy impact.
February found us continuing to field calls from a range of enthusiastic building decarbonization stakeholders about our Operation 2030: Scaling Building Decarbonization in Washington collaboration with Poppy Storm of 2050 Institute. Poppy penned a piece for the CETI blog that summarizes why efforts must get underway right now to align policies, programs, and market transformation to achieve the building decarbonization speed and scale required by 2030.
Poppy also testified at the Washington State Building Code Council last week in support of including commercial heat pump proposals in the 2021 energy code. Her testimony is summarized in New Buildings Are Key to Scaling Decarbonization by 2030. We are hard at work defining the next steps for the Operation 2030 project, which include refining and operationalizing the key strategies outlined in the white paper; designing criteria for keystone policies in advance of the 2023 legislative sessions in Washington and Oregon; and additional research and analysis.
Poppy and I presented the Operation 2030 framework at the Sustainable Path Grantee Virtual Lunch on February 24, outlining how we plan to keep the momentum growing for scaling building decarbonization regionally by 2030.
We welcome three new Research Fellows from the University of Washington Program on Climate Change’s Actionable Community-Oriented Research eNgagement (ACORN) Project: To-Nhu (Leslie) Nguyen is pursuing her Master of Marine and Environmental Affairs; Cassidy Quigley (no relation to me!) is studying for his Master of Mechanical Engineering; and Jade Sauvé is working toward her doctorate in Oceanography.
All of the ACORN Research Fellows are data analysts and want to work on our Northwest Clean Energy Atlas project. We are thrilled to have them on board. We are putting the finishing touches on the Atlas in anticipation of a beta launch in March and a public launch in April. Stay tuned!
Please do not hesitate to contact CETI if you want to get involved in our work, and please also forward this newsletter along to others you think might be interested in learning about our efforts to decarbonize the Northwest as swiftly and equitably as the climate science tells us we must.
In closing, I want to acknowledge the tragedy that is unfolding as Russian forces advance on Ukraine. I hope there will be a swift end to this aggression and the heartbreaking devastation that the Ukrainian people are experiencing.
Thank you very much,
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