Are You Philanthropy-Ready? How to Work with Foundations on Mission-Aligned Community Solar

Community solar is emerging as a popular way to deliver a range of economic and social benefits that go beyond clean energy. The US Department of Energy (DOE) has set a goal for America to deploy enough community solar projects to power the equivalent of five million households by 2025 and create $1 billion in energy bill savings. To reach the goal, DOE has created the Community Power Accelerator, as part of the National Community Solar Partnership (NCSP). The Accelerator is an online ecosystem bringing together developers, lenders, foundations, community organizations, and other stakeholders to support the deployment of mission-aligned …

Offshore Wind and Equity: State of the States Report

This report provides an overview of how states with offshore wind potential have begun to include and operationalize principles of equity in their offshore wind policies and related economic development programs. States, local communities, and other stakeholders can use this report to learn about options to incorporate equity provisions into state offshore wind policies and programs.

The development of large-scale energy infrastructure has the potential to impact already marginalized communities, including environmental justice communities, low-income communities, and communities of color, in both positive and negative ways. For that reason alone, careful integration of equity principles into all facets of …

Supply Chain Traceability: Looking Beyond Greenhouse Gases

Metals and minerals like steel, aluminum, cobalt, and lithium form the backbone of the energy transition. Steel and aluminum production alone account for roughly the same annual CO2 emissions as all global passenger road and air transit, including buses, cars, motorcycles, and commercial flights. Decarbonization to meet climate targets will significantly increase the need for critical minerals. For example, demand for battery materials, including aluminum, cobalt, and lithium, is projected to grow sevenfold by 2030 relative to 2020. At the same time, the social and environmental impacts of producing these materials threaten to undermine the credibility of the climate movement. …

California’s Solar for Multifamily Affordable Housing (SOMAH) Program

California’s Solar for Multifamily Affordable Housing (SOMAH) program is an excellent example of how state energy agencies and community-based organizations (CBOs) can work together to create more impactful and sustainable solar programs that provide the maximum benefit to environmental justice communities.

This white paper, written by CESA Project Director Abbe Ramanan with contributions by Ayesha Abbasi of the Asian Pacific Environmental Network (APEN), details the program’s creation, structure, and impact. It includes key take-aways and recommendations on how state energy agencies and community-based organizations can work together to design and implement effective solar programs.…

The Pathway to Industrial Decarbonization

According to the latest report released by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, global greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions must peak by 2025 to limit global warming to 1.5 degrees Celsius above preindustrial levels. Every year of continued carbon pollution increases the peak temperatures that will be inflicted on the planet, threatening environmental degradation and social upheaval that can never be undone. The industrial sector is currently responsible for nearly one-third of global carbon emissions and 30 percent of U.S. emissions. By 2030, it will be the largest source of domestic emissions. Just three industries—iron and steel, chemicals, and cement-making—account for …

Resilient Solar and Battery Storage for Cooling Centers

This report, prepared by Clean Energy Group (CEG) with American Microgrid Solutions (AMS), examines the opportunity for resilient power, solar PV paired with battery storage (solar+storage), to provide reliable backup power to cooling centers when times of extreme heat coincide with power outages. Health impacts of extreme heat, the implications of extreme heat on the electric grid, and future extreme heat trends are also discussed. The report includes seven case studies, a critical facility in each region of the country, each with a technoeconomic analysis for installing and operating solar+storage. The report concludes with a discussion of project economics and …

Engineered Carbon Dioxide Removal: Scalability and Durability

Given the scale of the climate crisis, the short timeframe for action, and insufficient progress in reducing greenhouse gas emissions, there is broad scientific agreement that large-scale deployment of carbon dioxide removal (CDR) technologies and approaches are needed to counter rising atmospheric concentrations of carbon dioxide. CDR encompasses a suite of solutions, both engineered and nature-based, that remove carbon dioxide from the atmosphere and durably store it. 

This paper focuses on engineered carbon removal technologies. In particular, it focuses on bioenergy with carbon capture and storage (BECCS) and direct air capture (DAC) because these methods have been included in many …

Decarbonization Will Lead to More Equitable Air Quality in California

Air quality associated public health co-benefit may emerge from climate and energy policies aimed at reducing greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions. However, the distribution of these co-benefits has not been carefully studied, despite the opportunity to tailor mitigation efforts so they achieve maximum benefits within socially and economically disadvantaged communities (DACs). Here, we quantify such health co-benefits from different long-term, low-carbon scenarios in California and their distribution in the context of social vulnerability. The magnitude and distribution of health benefits, including within impacted communities, is found to varies among scenarios which reduce economy wide GHG emissions by 80% in 2050 depending …

Clean Electricity Tax Credits in the Inflation Reduction Act Will Reduce Emissions, Grow Jobs, and Lower Bills

On August 16, 2022, President Biden signed the Inflation Reduction Act of 2022 (IRA) into law. The IRA provides $369 billion in strategic investment to promote clean energy and climate justice. It is the strongest congressional climate action plan yet, one that will reduce energy bills, create hundreds of thousands of jobs, spur clean energy innovation, and strengthen domestic manufacturing.

NRDC analyzed the potential energy, emissions, and economic benefits of the IRA’s extension and enhancement of clean electricity credits. To do so, we evaluated a modeled package very similar to the IRA’s final tax package, including the bulk of the …

9 Million Good Jobs from Climate Action: The Inflation Reduction Act of 2022

A new analysis commissioned by the BlueGreen Alliance from the Political Economy Research Institute (PERI) at the University of Massachusetts Amherst finds that the more than 100 climate, energy, and environmental investments in the Inflation Reduction Act will create more than 9 million good jobs over the next decade—an average of nearly 1 million jobs each year. That includes more than 6 million jobs created over the next 10 years by grants, loans, and tax credits and nearly 3 million jobs stimulated by new loan guarantee authority for the U.S. Department of Energy. The bill’s broad investments will also help …