So You Want to Build a Wind Farm

Power growth until 2040 will be driven by manufacturing, data centers, and electrification in heating and transportation. The next five years may see a supply and demand imbalance due to limited short-term supply response. Renewables’ share of energy supply will grow, while natural gas and batteries will be essential for capacity and balance.

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The Future of NEPA and Federal Permitting After Eagle County

The decision in Eagle County reflects bipartisan interest in reducing what many perceive as unnecessary barriers to development. It is not clear that the decision or the regulatory changes in progress will achieve that goal, but they may result in NEPA reviews that fail to capture the full picture of projects’ environmental effects. And if agencies rely on Eagle County to justify significantly abbreviating the NEPA process and public comment in particular, these processes may be more drawn out than before due to increased litigation and other forms of opposition.…

Economic Impacts of U.S. Senate “One Big Beautiful Bill Act” Energy Provisions

The U.S. Senate’s Budget Committee released its version of the “One Big Beautiful Bill Act” on June 28th, with text building upon the U.S. House of Representatives-passed version to add an excise tax to new wind and solar energy facilities, on top of other policies that increase oil and gas leasing, cut fossil fuel royalty rates, repeal clean energy tax credits, and delay funding for agricultural and forestry conservation. The bill will harm America by cutting new electricity capacity additions, increasing consumer power prices, and reducing U.S. GDP and job growth…

The Future of Geothermal in New Mexico

New Mexico’s combination of abundant subsurface heat, technical expertise from the oil and gas and geothermal industries, and support from political leaders make the state well suited to exponentially grow its geothermal development. It has the potential to produce 163 gigawatts of geothermal power, more than 15 times the state’s installed capacity in 2023.…

Brazil’s Green Iron Opportunity

As global demand for lower-emissions products rises, Brazil is uniquely positioned to thrive in the renewable hydrogen and green iron and steel transformation, thanks to its natural resources. This Insight Brief explores Brazil’s cost-competitive advantage in producing green iron for steelmaking via hydrogen-based direct reduction (H2-DRI), the leading large-scale, commercially viable technology for eliminating all iron production emissions. With renewable hydrogen constituting up to 50% of the final cost of steel made from H2-DRI, Brazil’s abundant and grid-connected renewable energy resources enable globally cost-competitive production, with costs up to 65% cheaper than other steelmaking countries.

Brazil’s emerging landscape of renewable …

A New Path for Natural Gas: A Pragmatic Strategy for Climate, Security, and Economic Leadership

From surging electricity demand to climbing greenhouse gas emissions to rising energy prices for working families, policymakers face competing challenges that demand thoughtful, rigorous answers. Both the Democratic and Republican Parties’ energy plans often miss the mark, as they default to platitudes and blanket statements instead of the pragmatic policies Americans want. This challenge is particularly acute for Democrats, whose emphasis on clean energy can read as unrealistic and out-of-touch with the median American, whose daily life almost invariably depends on fossil fuels and for whom cost concerns are paramount.…

Harnessing Carbon Removal Opportunities in Desalination

Commercial and climate imperatives for integrating carbon removal activities into existing industrial processes and value chains are becoming ever more apparent. Opportunities to integrate carbon removal can help businesses grow and diversify, increase operational efficiencies, and adhere to evolving regulations. Simultaneously, climate stabilization demands rapid, large-scale carbon removal, positioning established industries as vital contributors. Forward-thinking industry leaders are beginning to strategically invest in a variety of carbon removal methods that align with their operational capabilities.

This series explores the economic and environmental incentives for integrating carbon removal into the wider industrial landscape. Through this series, we examine the potential for …

Big Impact of Small Solar Quarterly: 2025 Q1

In 2025 we changed the name of this quarterly series to Big Impact of Small Solar to better reflect its aim of showing just how much distributed, small-scale (community, residential, and commercial) solar is contributing to new power capacity additions in the United States. The bottom line: it’s a lot! Especially considering that it still undercounts utility-scale solar in the 1 to 5 MW range. We are also now combining gas and coal-fired power into a single “fossil” category in the chart below.

More than 11 gigawatts of new power capacity went online in the first quarter of 2025 and …

Strategy at the Geopolitical Crossroads

The geopolitical restructuring triggered by Russia’s aggression in Ukraine has positioned Central and Eastern Europe (CEE) at the core of Europe’s energy security reassessment – including the climate-driven transition toward clean energy systems. The region serves as a critical geopolitical zone and corridor connecting Western Europe, the Black Sea, and the post-Soviet space, managing a complex equilibrium among energy diversification, geopolitical alliances, and industrial modernisation. The disruption of traditional energy dependencies has revealed CEE’s vulnerabilities while simultaneously establishing it as a strategic focal point for the European Union’s (EU) decarbonisation objectives and its wider global impact, including the economic reorientation …

Opportunities for Industrial Modernization in Washington

Washington’s Cap-and-Invest program is a popular and powerful tool for meeting the state’s greenhouse gas targets and funding investments that support Washington’s businesses and residents. But how the program considers industrial emissions beyond 2034 will have to be revisited by Washington’s legislative and regulatory bodies in order for the program to function efficiently and equitably in the long term.

RMI has performed a technical pathways analysis for each of Washington’s “Emission-Intensive, Trade-Exposed” (EITE) industrial sectors, which produce paper, food, beverages, steel, aluminum, glass, cement, building materials, airplanes, semiconductors, fertilizer, and transportation fuels. We found that existing and near-term technologies could …