Today the Clean Energy Transition Institute is releasing Community-Defined Decarbonization: Reflecting Rural and Tribal Desires for an Equitable Clean Energy Transition in Washington.

The culmination of 22 months of research and analysis, this report had two goals: (1) to understand the barriers to decarbonizing buildings for the state’s rural and Tribal low-income, energy-burdened households, and (2) to determine whether decarbonization strategies and clean energy development could address energy inequities in these communities.

The CETI team engaged in both qualitative and quantitative research in developing this project. Former CETI Research and Policy Analyst Aditi Bansal interviewed 24 community leaders, nonprofit staffers, and government agency representatives who work with rural and Tribal communities in Washington State, producing the first draft of this report in June 2021.

CETI Research Fellow Mariah Caballero, the primary analyst and author of the report, performed quantitative analysis of U.S. Census tracts to develop data visualizations that explore the relationship between energy burden and various socioeconomic factors. Mariah also applied theoretical frameworks to the interviews and wrote the final report.

You can read more about this release on our blog, and find the Full Report, the Executive Summary, and the Key Findings on our website. We have also updated our Northwest Clean Energy Atlas with the maps created for the report. We invite you to explore interactive visualizations showing Weatherization Assistance Program eligible households, as well as the community-level relationship between poverty and energy burden; manufactured housing and energy burden; and access to internet and personal vehicles.

We hope that this report makes a compelling case that rural and Tribal communities must co-create the solutions for housing, infrastructure, and energy as Washington State attempts to meet its ambitious decarbonization goals. Further, state and federal funders should invest in long-term administrative capacity so that rural and Tribal communities can systemically address energy insecurity and housing challenges.

We are deeply indebted to the rural and Tribal community leaders who generously shared their experiences and ideas and made the Community-Defined Decarbonization report possible.