The Clean Energy Transition Institute (CETI) had another exceptionally full year of impactful engagement in the Northwest clean energy ecosystem. For such a small team, we sure put out a lot of great work! We will take stock of our full list of accomplishments in the January newsletter, but for now I reflect on a few projects in 2025 where we kept making progress accelerating an equitable clean energy transition despite significant federal backpedaling:
I barely scratched the surface with this list of projects from 2025. I am so very proud of my incredible team for its focus, dedication, and deep expertise; so grateful to my Board for its leadership and guidance; and so indebted to our funders who make our work possible.
I am honored to announce that I was reappointed to the Northwest Energy Efficiency Alliance (NEEA) Board for an additional three-year term. I appreciate this opportunity to continue to learn from the knowledgeable and collaborative NEEA utility members and representatives from the four Northwest states with whom I have the pleasure of serving over the past three years.
We are coming to the end of an extremely tough year for our nation, our region, and the clean energy economy we are striving to build. I thank the many people in the Northwest who are working so hard to make progress reducing our dependence on fossil fuels for our energy needs. I wish everyone in the CETI community a safe and meaningful holiday season.
Eileen V. Quigley
Executive Director
CETI worked in partnership with the University of Washington to create The Sun Also Rises in Washington, which we released on December 4. This engaging StoryMap explores the benefits of community-scale solar and highlights existing projects throughout the state with a series of interactive visualizations.
This month, we compiled several of our favorite energy-related podcasts from 2025. Despite federal headwinds, the clean energy transition is still going strong in the world and in our region. We tracked several critical topics, including how to handle explosive forecasted growth on the grid, emerging technologies, supply chains and transmission challenges, distributed energy, and so much more. Check out our roundup and let us know what you have been listening to.
On December 17, the Oregon Department of Energy hosted a public webinar to present the Oregon Energy Strategy. A recording of the webinar – Presenting the Oregon Energy Strategy: Charting the Course to Oregon's Energy Future – can be found here when available.
The Washington Department of Commerce submitted the state’s CCAP to the Environmental Protection Agency on time on December 1. Commerce will hold a series of meetings in 2026 that explore how Washington state will achieve its ambitious action plan, and we will share the dates as they are announced. It is important that these plans not sit on the shelf but are used to guide action. CETI will stay engaged in the implementation of several aspects of the plan, particularly those that have to do with our program areas of focus–buildings, rural communities, and the electricity grid.
The next public meeting for WestTEC will take place on February 4 from 1-3pm PT. This webinar will be the release of the much-awaited WestTEC 10-year Horizon Report, which is the result of a year’s worth of technical modeling and engagement with electricity grid actors throughout the Western United States.
This work is critically important as it will shed light on how to address the region’s transmission bottleneck in the face of rapidly increasing demand for electricity. The modelers have already begun work on the WestTEC 20-Year Horizon Report, and they will talk about that as well at the webinar. You can register here.
Over the last two months, the CETI Research Team hosted a series of Northwest Clean Energy Atlas Lunch and Learns with advocates and local and state government officials to increase knowledge of this very cool CETI project. Research Analyst Ruby Moore-Bloom walked through the various resources on the Atlas, explaining how to interact with the visualizations and revealing the depth of data that underly each depiction and that can deepen understanding of our region’s energy systems. Ruby also collected input on future data visualizations that people working on energy issues in the Northwest would like CETI to create.
Research Analyst Jeanne Currie and Ruby presented to an energy policy class at the University of Washington Evans School, focusing on our energy pathways modeling work and SCALE 2030 while attempting to provide a dose of optimism about how to achieve an equitable clean energy economy in the Northwest. They enjoyed spending time with 30 sharp UW graduate students eager to engage in the critical issues shaping the region’s energy future. You can find the presentation slide deck here.
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