On April 22, 2025, the Clean Energy Transition Institute (CETI) hosted a Decarbonization Forum during which a panel of experts explored the impact of data center energy use on the Northwest’s energy grid and clean energy transition.

In the past several years, geothermal has emerged as a clean, firm resource with the potential to be scalable and cost-effective.

We explore the mix of utilities—including investor-owned, public utility districts, municipal utilities, Tribal utilities, and cooperatives—that make up the Northwest’s electric utility landscape.

Greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions accounting is a critical tool for governments, businesses, and climate advocates to understand progress toward emission reduction goals over time, but local, state, national, corporate, and global methods use varying types of accounting systems, which creates complexity.

As part of our Demystifying Decarbonization project, CETI’s 2024 Summer Intern, Richa Nevatia, created three infographics to explain what electricity is, how it is measured, how it gets from a generation facility to homes, businesses, or industrial facilities, and what it means for it to be behind-the-meter.

As utilities look to meet higher electricity demand driven by increased electrification and data center growth, a day-ahead market could be a key tool to maintaining low-cost, reliable power. In the Northwest, utilities are considering two different day-ahead markets. This blog dives into the two options that Northwest utilities are weighing.

With Northwest utilities considering changing how they buy and sell power, it is a great time to understand our current system and various electricity market options. This blog explores four different types of market organization relevant to the Northwest.

Research Analyst Jeanne Currie takes a deep dive into transmission – what it is, why it matters for the clean energy transition, and how a more effective, centralized process for transmission planning could help the Northwest achieve decarbonization.

This month, Eileen explains why decarbonizing buildings is so important to hit Washington’s emissions reduction goals and how SCALE 2030 aims to produce an analytical roadmap to drive the systemic changes needed for the state’s building sector ecosystem to deliver a rapid ramp-up of electrification by 2030.

The clean energy transition poses particular challenges and opportunities for rural communities. In our second 'Decarbcast' blog, CETI shares some of the best podcasts we have listened to that shed light on this nuanced aspect of decarbonization.

For this month's 'Demystifying Decarbonization' installment, the CETI team will be sharing a multi-part series that aggregates the most educational podcasts that we have listened to recently by topic. These pods have helped us unpack and understand some of the latest decarbonization developments as they relate to our program areas. First up, a look at U.S. industrial policy, green hydrogen, and biofuels.

In the first installment of CETI's 'Demystifying Decarbonization' series, Eileen explains the five pillars of deep decarbonization and how they interact with one another.