Hydrogen Policy’s Narrow Path: Delusions And Solutions

Hydrogen excitement is feverish as billions in federal funds loom, the industry scrambles to get off the ground, and politicians race other governments to gain an investment edge. But things could easily go sideways, turning into a taxpayer boondoggle that increases climate pollution if the policies supporting hydrogen aren’t designed correctly.

Hydrogen will be important for achieving our climate goals, but it can do so if and only if it is truly clean and directed to appropriate applications. Straying from this narrow path can reverse, delay, or raise the cost of emission reductions while failing environmental justice goals, potentially dooming …

RMI’s Community Benefits Catalog

Many federal programs now require applicants to develop Community Benefit Plans, or CBPs. These CBPs are a tool for supporting project developers in ensuring that communities, particularly those historically harmed by energy infrastructure projects, equitably benefit from federal grants and loans. For many applicants and host communities, the development of a CBP is a new process to navigate.

RMI’s Community Benefits Catalog connects community benefit examples both to federal funding program criteria and to stakeholder priorities. The searchable catalog allows users to find which types of benefits might meet federal policy guidelines from DOE and USDA and that also address …

SEPA Resilience Playbook for States and Utilities

SEPA’s Resilience Planning Playbook provides state energy offices and utilities with a starting point to address the role of distribution system resilience in the clean energy transition. This playbook utilizes traditional electric utility best practices (e.g., system reliability and capacity planning) and emerging best practices (e.g., environmental justice, energy equity, and critical infrastructure considerations) to help states and utilities understand the tools needed to ensure resilience in light of changing customer needs and demands. It introduces various tools for improving resilience planning (e.g., grid modernization, grid hardening, and distributed energy resources).

In 2020, the Smart Electric Power Alliance (SEPA) developed …

Lithium and Water

As a key ingredient of batteries for electric vehicles (EVs), lithium plays a significant role in climate change mitigation, but lithium has considerable impacts on water and society across its life cycle. Upstream extraction methods—including open-pit mining, brine evaporation, and novel direct lithium extraction (DLE)—and downstream processes present different impacts on both the quantity and quality of water resources, leading to water depletion and contamination. Regarding upstream extraction, it is critical for a comprehensive assessment of lithium’s life cycle to include cumulative impacts related not only to freshwater, but also mineralized or saline groundwater, also known as brine. Legal frameworks …

RMI’s Community Benefits Catalog

Many federal programs now require applicants to develop Community Benefit Plans, or CBPs. These CBPs are a tool for supporting project developers in ensuring that communities, particularly those historically harmed by energy infrastructure projects, equitably benefit from federal grants and loans. For many applicants and host communities, the development of a CBP is a new process to navigate.

RMI’s Community Benefits Catalog connects community benefit examples both to federal funding program criteria and to stakeholder priorities. The searchable catalog allows users to find which types of benefits might meet federal policy guidelines from DOE and USDA and that also address …

Modeling and Design of Solar + Storage-Powered Community Resilience Hubs Across California

Distributed clean, reliable energy resources like solar plus battery storage (solar + storage) can reduce harmful emissions while supporting resilience. Solar + storage-powered resilience hubs provide energy for critical services during disasters while increasing human adaptive capacity year round. The authors studied where utility rates, local climate, and historical injustice make solar + storage resilience hubs more valuable and more challenging.

The authors modeled the economic and climate impacts of outfitting candidate hub sites across California with solar + storage for everyday operations and identified designs and costs required to withstand a range of outages considering weather impacts on energy …

Extreme Heat in Disadvantaged Communities

Extreme heat is one of the deadliest and most widespread climate change risks. It’s particularly dangerous for disadvantaged communities, which are least able to prepare for, withstand, and recover from the impacts of extreme heat.

Fortunately, the Bipartisan Infrastructure Law (BIL) and Inflation Reduction Act (IRA) include record amounts of funding to address climate change and its impacts. In addition, the federal government’s Justice40 Initiative1 set a goal that 40% of the overall benefits of federal funding for climate change flow to disadvantaged communities that are marginalized by underinvestment and overburdened by pollution.

In this report, the ICF Climate Center …

Perverse Pay: Bonuses at the Tennessee Valley Authority Fuel Gas-Filled Future

Public utility giant Tennessee Valley Authority desperately needs to transform from a dirty fossil fuel polluter to a clean energy leader. But an obstacle stands in the way: TVA’s executive bonus incentive structure, which rewards fossil fuel deployment.

This perverse system pays TVA executives for entrenching fossil fuels in the TVA grid. Climate science has made crystal clear the fact that fossil fuels are driving the climate emergency, and the TVA board has an opportunity to reform its incentives to promote renewable and resilient energy and protect its customers from electricity rate hikes spiked by fossil fuel prices, unreliable fossil …

Building Stronger Community Engagement in Hydrogen Hubs

Building Stronger Community Engagement in Hydrogen Hubs (February 2024) is a factbook reporting the results of a survey of nearly 5,000 respondents from disadvantaged, tribal, labor, and environmental justice communities on their attitudes toward hydrogen hubs and community engagement. It contributes to ongoing efforts by communities, hydrogen hub developers, and the U.S. Department of Energy (DOE) to align on community engagement approaches and best practices for DOE’s $7 billion Regional Clean Hydrogen Hubs (H2Hubs) program. The factbook gives insight into communities’ preferred modes of engagement with hydrogen developers, their attitudes toward hydrogen hubs, and their perceptions of DOE’s community engagement …

Accelerate Now! The Fossil Fuel End Game 2.0

In this report, the PEAK Coalition documents progress made since the coalition was founded and examines the steps taken by state, city, utility, and energy industry stakeholders to hasten or delay the shift from polluting power plants to clean, zero-emissions alternatives. The report details evidence of encouraging progress, however, the transition has not progressed at the pace needed to protect the health of environmental justice communities and meet the state’s climate goals. More than 75 percent of the city’s fossil peaker capacity may remain online and operating beyond 2025, when stricter peaker emissions limits are intended to take full effect.…