Summer is upon us, bringing much-appreciated funding news for the Clean Energy Transition Institute (CETI). The Sustainable Path Foundation granted $15,000 for our SCALE 2030 project, and the Stolte Family Foundation has granted $50,000 in core support. We are so grateful for this funding at this critical time when federal money for clean energy is paused or canceled.
We released our 2024 Impact Report at the start of June, which details all that we accomplished in that action-packed year. If you have not yet read it, please see below where it is this month’s Featured Report.
Our SCALE 2030 webinar was well-attended and kicked off the process now underway to develop a buildings decarbonization roadmap in collaboration with Washington state building actors. With federal action aimed at upending clean energy and energy efficiency standards, local efforts to scale clean buildings are more important than ever.
Three of the Northwest state legislatures concluded their sessions—Oregon will finish next week—and Jamie Ptacek has written up how each addressed climate and clean energy policies. Please see our Demystifying Decarbonization section below for links to each blog.
We eagerly await the unveiling of Washington’s draft Comprehensive Climate Action Plan (CCAP) next Monday. We describe our engagement in that below and offer details for how to learn about this important work.
We have begun work on our next two Decarbonization Forums. We will explore the wide range of carbon dioxide removal (CDR) strategies in September and aim to hold a forum on maritime decarbonization in January. We are excited to dig into these meaty topics.
The CETI Team hopes you are able to get out and about to enjoy the beautiful Northwest that we all are working so hard to protect against the worst impacts of climate change.
Eileen V. Quigley
Executive Director
This month, we shared our 2024 Impact Report with the CETI community. We engaged in more mission-consistent projects last year than in our combined prior six years, making 2024 our most significant year yet. We hope you take some time to peruse the report to see the breadth and depth of all we achieved.
Evolved Energy Research and CETI have been working with Washington’s Department of Commerce since April 2024 to provide technical and economic analysis in support of the state’s CCAP, which will serve as a roadmap for reducing emissions and building a sustainable future for the Evergreen State.
Commerce will post the draft CCAP on June 30, 2025 and is holding a meeting to kick off the public comment period that same day from 2:00-2:45pm PT. You can register here, and a recording will also be made available. Public comments can be submitted here. The CCAP will be finalized on December 1, 2025.
CETI wrapped up a focused literature review and in-depth interviews as part of a project with Ross Strategic that explores opportunities, barriers, and best practices for establishing Community Benefits Agreements (CBAs) and Tribal Benefits Agreements (TBAs) as commonly accepted components of clean energy projects. The project team also hosted two public meetings on CBAs, as well as two meetings for Tribes to learn more about TBAs and provide input.
This project supplements the Rural Clean Energy Economics and Community Engagement Study and Report produced last year for Commerce. Ross Strategic and CETI will deliver an internal report to Commerce by the end of this month.
Since the release of our SCALE 2030 Ecosystem Assessment and Transition Framework papers in May, CETI and 2050 Institute presented key insights at a webinar on June 4 (more on this below) and at a meeting of the Shift Zero alliance. We look forward to sharing this work with more partners in the coming months.
We have also initiated the next step of the SCALE 2030 project—a Clean Buildings Transition Roadmap that analyzes and prioritizes more detailed actions drawing on each of the strategies in the Transition Framework. Please reach out to Jeanne Currie if you are interested in learning more about the project or discussing the challenges and opportunities to decarbonizing buildings in Washington.
We continue to support the Oregon Department of Energy (ODOE) with technical and economic analysis to guide development of the Oregon Energy Strategy. We are currently focused on modeling the implications of different clean energy pathways on jobs with BW Research Partnership, who will present results at a public webinar in August.
ODOE aims to release draft policy recommendations later this summer along with finalized technical reports for the energy pathways, air quality, and energy wallet modeling that Evolved Energy Research performed over the past year.
CETI is partnering with University of Washington researchers investigating community-scale solar development. The project aims to produce an interactive dataset examining data layers such as energy burden, socioeconomic indicators, and solar profiles in an easy-to-use map of Washington.
Over the past couple of months, we have reviewed relevant literature and conducted several staff interviews with organizations that work on distributed solar to guide the development of this project.
The Western Transmission Expansion Coalition (WestTEC) secured full funding, a major achievement. The analysis team presented initial capacity and transmission expansion results at the June 12 Regional Engagement Committee (REC) meeting. CETI continues to participate on the REC as a public interest organization, and we are encouraged by the progress being made towards regional coordination of transmission as an essential piece of the clean energy transition.
At the beginning of June, the SCALE 2030 team hosted a webinar to share key insights from our recently released papers – SCALE 2030: Clean Buildings Ecosystem Assessment for Washington and SCALE 2030: Clean Buildings Transition Framework for Washington. In case you missed it, the webinar recording, slide deck, and a transcription of the Q&A can be found here.
The CETI team has been tracking all four Northwest legislative sessions this year, focusing on legislation related to the clean energy transition. With the sessions in Idaho, Montana, and Washington now officially concluded, we are sharing our recaps of the bills that made it over the finish line, and which did not, in each state:
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