Unlocking New Opportunities for Carbon Neutrality in China’s Building Sector

Achieving a net-zero building sector is critical to China’s carbon neutrality. In 2022, the building sector was responsible for 32 percent of the country’s CO2 emissions. While emissions have plateaued since 2014, the continued growth of the sector underscores the need for immediate action to decouple emissions from expansion. As major consumers of energy and significant users of industrial materials, buildings play a key role in the transition to net zero, not only supporting the goal of carbon neutrality, but also improving quality of life, promoting social equity, and contributing to a green economy.

This report provides sector-level analyses of …

Accelerating Country-led Air Quality Reporting to Achieve Clean Air

There is no single, authoritative, comprehensive, regularly updated, database that provides recent national air pollution levels around the world — not even for fine particulate matter, known as PM2.5, the deadliest and one of the most commonly tracked air pollutants. Access to basic, timely, recurring global air quality data is essential to identify hotspots for action, provide supporting resources, and track progress on pollution reduction across space and time. The invisibility in data, in turn, makes it harder to convince stakeholders to act, and to hold decision-makers accountable for policies, practices, regulations, laws and investments that impact air quality and …

2023 Corporate Citizenship Report

ICF was born out of the belief that companies should do more than make a profit, and that corporate citizenship isn’t separate from their work. Corporate citizenship is at the core of what they do and why they do it. Through our purpose-driven culture, ICF shares one important thing in common—a passion for creating a better tomorrow.

In their latest corporate citizenship report, they share:

– How ICF’s employees are supported—both inside and outside of the office—to ensure their work is meaningful and fulfilling.
– What they’ve accomplished toward minimizing their environmental footprint, including how they continue to achieve their …

Power Shift: How Virtual Power Plants Unlock Cleaner, More Affordable Electricity Systems

Virtual power plants (VPPs) are flexible and quickly deployable resources that are poised to address some of the most pressing, interconnected challenges of our electricity grid: growing loads, a retiring conventional generation fleet, and the need for rapid deployment of new, utility-scale renewable generation. Power Shift: How Virtual Power Plants Unlock Cleaner, More Affordable Electricity Systems shows how distributed technologies, aggregated into virtual power plants, can reduce emissions and costs for ratepayers by managing peak demand, reducing the need for expensive, emissions-intensive gas generation, and unlocking renewable portfolios.

Power Shift provides a vision for what’s possible for VPPs in grid …

Federal Incentive for Alternative Fuel Refueling Infrastructure, IRC § 30C

The Energy Policy Act (EPAct) of 2005 (PL 109–58, § 1342, 26 USC 30C) created an income tax credit equal to 30 percent of the cost of installing alternative fuel refueling equipment including equipment used to dispense natural gas and hydrogen. To qualify for the credit, the fueling equipment also must be used to refuel motor vehicles, which are defined as vehicles that have been manufactured primarily for “use on public streets, roads, and highways.” Over the years various improvements have been enacted by Congress.

Most recently, the Inflation Reduction Act (IRA) of 2022 (PL 117–169, § 13404) amended section …

Green Iron Corridors: Transforming the Steel Supply Chains for a Sustainable Future

To reduce emissions and meet increasing global demand, we must shift our approach to making steel. The steel sector currently produces 11% of global CO2 equivalent emissions, and demand is expected to increase between 12% and 36% by 2050. To meet new demand while reducing emissions, we must ramp up renewable hydrogen-based ironmaking this decade.

Green iron corridors can offer significant benefits along the supply chain including cost savings, increased efficiency, and economic opportunity for both importing and exporting countries. Restructuring half of primary steelmaking to use green iron could save $25 billion annually across the 10 highest priority importers …

The Energy Infrastructure Reinvestment Opportunity: Accelerating the Transition of the Oil and Gas Sector

The Energy Infrastructure Reinvestment (EIR) program of the Loan Program Office (LPO), coupled with Inflation Reduction Act (IRA) tax incentives, provides a unique and time-sensitive opportunity for the US oil and gas sector to accelerate its transition toward cleaner sources of energy and away from oil and gas.

Through the EIR, the LPO can provide financing for projects that retool, repower, repurpose or replace energy infrastructure that has ceased operations or projects that reduce operational emissions of existing energy infrastructure (for a detailed description see Appendix A), providing the opportunity not only for emissions reductions but also for reinvestment in …

Leverage Modern Artificial Intelligence (AI) Enabled Systems for Waste Reduction

Waste in manufacturing processes can often be difficult to reduce as compared to investigating alternate management options such as recycling. Upstream strategies in the waste management hierarchy are more impactful but need a deeper understanding and analysis of underlying manufacturing processes. Significant material savings can be achieved through waste reduction techniques of product redesign, various source reduction techniques, and optimal waste management. Newer research in circular economy, sustainability, and machine learning (ML) has made it feasible to apply artificial intelligence (AI) techniques to the established methods to simplify the approach as well as achieve results quickly.…

Enhancing Action & Cooperation for Early Warning Systems

In order to implement the GST targets and signals through enhanced NDC ambition and implementation, major barriers must be meaningfully addressed, turned into opportunities for enhanced international cooperation, and translated into development priorities and domestic policies. In the context of making the case for clear leadership to enable such action, this paper:

– focuses on the GST decision’s call to Parties to strengthen adaptation action by building accessible, user-driven early warning systems (EWS) for all by 2027
– sets out barriers and solutions, as identified by our work and others, that must be addressed and implemented to enable real action …

Emergence Strategy in Action: Gogoro Seizes Opportunity in the Transition to Sustainable Mobility

How did Gogoro go from stealth startup to being the largest worldwide provider of light EV battery swapping — all in a little over a decade? The company, which vastly simplifies the charging experience for the rapidly growing two-wheeled electric scooter market, now operates in nine countries.

Gogoro’s success story has all the hallmarks of emergence strategy, including deft system sensing to identify strategic opportunities aligned with its vision and a flexible partnership strategy to increase the company’s influence in a rapidly evolving business ecosystem.

At almost every turn, Gogoro has outpaced bigger potential rivals by taking strategic decisions based …