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 …

A Framework for Private Sector-Led Offshore Wind Projects in Viet Nam

This report was funded by ESMAP and the Australian Government’s Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade (DFAT), and developed in close collaboration with the International Finance Corporation (IFC). The World Bank Group acknowledges the valuable cooperation of Viet Nam’s Ministry of Industry and Trade (MoIT) and Ministry of Agriculture and Environment (MAE).

Since its launch in 2019, the World Bank Group’s Offshore Wind program has provided technical assistance to 26 client countries to assess their offshore wind potential and is ready to help support the success of additional emerging offshore wind markets.…

Wildfire: an Updated Look at Utility Risk and Mitigation

Evidence suggests that several of the catastrophic wildfires that struck Los Angeles earlier this year may have been sparked by electric utility infrastructure. As utilities prepare for record infrastructure demand driven by electrification, data centers, and renewables, the cost of inaction in the face of rising wildfire risk is mounting. Wildfires can cause billions of dollars in damages to communities, bankrupt utilities, and ultimately drive up rates for customers.…

Regulatory Agility

Utility grids in the United States are at an inflection point, and equipping regulators to be more agile can help ensure we are prepared for the future. State public utilities commissions (PUCs) are critical for ensuring the health and economic vitality of households and businesses across the country. State PUCs have historically been tasked with ensuring access to safe, reliable, and affordable energy services. Now, they face new and more complex responsibilities due to shifting economics, aging and fragile infrastructure, and new customer demands for cleaner and more transparent service.…

From Silos to Systems

We surveyed over 1,100 senior energy professionals and spoke with leaders from the National Energy System Operator, the Energy Transitions Commission, Iberdrola, and TenneT to understand how the industry is addressing the scale and complexity of the energy transition.

One message is clear: navigating the path forward requires a fundamental shift in how we design, manage, and think about energy systems. That shift means moving beyond silos, and towards greater integration and collaboration across the entire energy value chain.…

ICDE Project Report

Common cause failure (CCF) events can significantly impact the availability of the safety systems of nuclear power plants. For this reason, several countries initiated the International Common-Cause Failure Data Exchange (ICDE) Project in 1994. In 1997, the Nuclear Energy Agency (NEA) Committee on the Safety of Nuclear Installations (CSNI) formally approved this project to be carried out within the NEA framework. Since then, the project has operated over eight consecutive terms. Phase 9 started in January 2023 and will end in December 2026.

The purpose of the ICDE Project is to allow multiple countries to collaborate and exchange common cause …

Initiatives of Low-Dose Research Co-ordination

This joint workshop on low-dose research co-ordination was co-organised by the Nuclear Energy Agency (NEA) High-Level Group on Low-Dose Research (HLG-LDR) and the Electric Power Research Institute (EPRI) with its International Dose Effect Alliance (IDEA) network. The event was the culmination of ongoing collaboration between both organisations, fostered through a series of workshops and webinars focused on low-dose research.

The HLG-LDR aims to enhance radiological protection policy, regulation and implementation by improving the effectiveness and efficiency of research through global co-ordination of current and future low-dose research projects.

The health effects of low-dose radiation and their biological mechanisms in humans …