The CETI team is thinking hard about how to make progress on the clean energy transition in the context of all that the Trump Administration is attempting to derail and undo. We’re focused on what needs to be done in our region by 2030, gleaning all that we have learned from our Net-Zero Northwest analysis, as well as the projects we have been fortunate to work on with the Oregon and Washington state agencies that are writing policies and developing programs to create an equitable clean energy economy in their respective states.
We are mapping the Northwest’s clean energy ecosystem and identifying barriers to implementing clean energy solutions that exist today, particularly those concerning affordability, workforce readiness, and behavior change, and developing actionable plans to scale decarbonization regionally. We are sifting through our research and analysis and that of the clean energy organizations we track across the country, as well as consulting with our many regional partners, to develop recommendations for actionable implementation steps that we can take with our regional assets and without federal support.
The recent release of our SCALE 2030 papers is Exhibit A of our approach. The swift and enthusiastic response to this work has been intensely gratifying. Thank you to all who reached out to share your excitement about these papers and your willingness to work with us to develop an implementation roadmap to scale clean buildings throughout Washington state. We are very excited to hear more from you at our June 4, 2025 webinar. Read more below on this event or head straight to the register page here.
Operationally, we filed our 2024 Form 990 with the IRS earlier this month and we will be sharing our 2024 Impact Report with you in next month’s newsletter.
Breaking news: As a Washington Green Bank (WAGB) Board member, I’m thrilled to announce that Eli Lieberman has been selected as the first WAGB Executive Director. I met Eli six years ago when CETI was working on what became our Community-Defined Decarbonization work. Eli most recently served as the Director of Clean Energy Financing and Interim Chief Investment Officer for Michigan Saves. The WAGB’s mission is to provide accessible financing for energy efficiency and renewable energy projects to ensure equitable distribution of clean energy for Washingtonians, especially low-income and underserved communities.
Eileen V. Quigley
Executive Director
SCALE 2030 is a Clean Energy Transition Institute and 2050 Institute project that aims to shift Washington’s building sector from an approach focused on incremental energy efficiency and emissions reductions to a systemic framework that will enable the rapid market transformation needed to decarbonize buildings in 25 years.
Earlier this month, we released two papers that frame Washington’s opportunity to get serious about transitioning all types of buildings to clean energy: SCALE 2030: Clean Buildings Ecosystem Assessment for Washington and SCALE 2030: Clean Buildings Transition Framework for Washington. The Ecosystem Assessment analyzes the state’s current building sector landscape, and the Transition Framework proposes a new strategy to accelerate an equitable clean buildings transition in Washington to meet the state’s statutory emissions reduction limits.
Check them out, share them with your networks, and join us for a webinar on Wednesday, June 4, 2025 at 11am PT to learn about key insights from the SCALE 2030 team.
CETI has had the privilege of supporting the Oregon Department of Energy (ODOE) with technical and economic analysis to guide development of an Oregon Energy Strategy since April 2024. Our work these days is largely focused on modeling the jobs implications of different clean energy pathways with our partner, BW Research Partnership. We are also finalizing the technical reports for the energy pathways, air quality, and energy wallet modeling that Evolved Energy Research performed over the past 12 months and that informs the policy recommendations that the agency staff are currently drafting, which they aim to release for public input by the end of June.
Evolved Energy Research’s modeling to support Washington’s Comprehensive Climate Action Plan is moving along at a clip, aiming for a June 15 completion date. Jeremy Hargreaves presented the energy pathways modeling at the Washington Department of Commerce’s April 28 Washington Climate Partnership Quarterly Meeting (passcode .DY86P6V), which had 530 registered participants.
For all of you who are concerned about how much transmission the region needs to build to meet projected load growth, the Western Transmission Expansion Coalition (WestTEC) project continues to make excellent strides in developing the modeling to inform the region’s transmission needs. The team has documented its progress in a series of polished videos that describe where the project has been over the past year and where it is headed with modeling 10-year and 20-year transmission scenarios. WestTEC also held a public meeting on May 27 that included an overview of initial capacity expansion results and status of the 10-year reference case that Energy Strategies and Energy + Environmental Economics (E3), the two modeling teams, are developing.
Last month, CETI held a Decarbonization Forum that explored the impact of data center energy use on the Northwest electricity grid and the clean energy transition. You can find a recording of the event, panelist slide decks, and our Data Centers, Artificial Intelligence, and Energy Use 101 resource here. If you are hungry for good research and analysis on this important topic, please read our Sightline colleague Emily Moore’s piece, Northwest Data Centers: A Climate Test and Potential Opportunity.
In May, the CETI team was invited to give the following presentations:
We thank the University of Washington and Seattle City Light for their interest in our work and for giving us the opportunity to share.
This month, the Pacific Northwest Utilities Conference Committee released its 2025 Northwest Regional Forecast of Power Loads and Resources. The report aggregates forecasts of loads and resources provided by Northwest utilities, PNGC Power, and the Bonneville Power Administration. In line with the PNUCC 2024 forecast, this year’s projection anticipates load growth of more than 30% over the next 10 years.
The CETI team has been tracking the 2025 legislative sessions in Idaho, Montana, Oregon, and Washington. Next month, we will share our take on legislation related to the clean energy transition that made it across the finish line in each state.
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