RGGI, behind the rhetoric: What we know about the Regional Greenhouse Gas Initiative

Federal tax credits from the Inflation Reduction Act and added incentives from the state of Colorado and its municipalities is drawing in clean energy companies, creating new jobs, and helping the state meet its decarbonization goals.

Enrolling administrators and financial planners in sustainable projects takes proving that investments pay for themselves. With the help of pressure from students and faculty, Penn State Universities administrators have adopted a long-term strategy to reduce the university’s carbon footprint and implement sustainable practices. Students produced the data that illuminated the university’s unsustainable practices; the numbers now show that their efforts are paying off.

An economic shift to renewable energy could take decades, but thanks to rapidly evolving disruptive technologies, dropping prices of solar and wind power sources, and increasing market demand for green business, the new age of renewable energy could encompass the world economy much more quickly.

To increase renewable energy from wind, Texas is the site of many wind turbines across wind farms, which not only produce energy but also provide income to farmers who own the land. There are still some problems but by deregulating the electricity market, making use of the open lands of Texas, and the relaxed attitude of Texans toward living near turbines Texas is a major generator; while other states struggle behind.

The government wants more farmers turning waste methane into biogas to help combat the negative effects of global climate change. California is leading the initiative, largely through a cap-and-trade program.

Three startups in Houston are using a technique similar to fracking, a practice used in the oil and gas industry, to store renewable energy without batteries. They use excess renewable energy to pump pressurized water into manmade caverns underground. When energy is needed, they open the caverns, sending the water back to the surface to turn a turbine and generate power.

Facing sky-high utility costs and accessibility challenges, the community of Molokaʻi, Hawaii, took their energy security into their own hands and developed an energy-resilience-focused action plan. Backed by the primary state utility, the community is installing solar arrays and batteries, some of which are collectively owned and subscription-based. At the same time, the solar cooperative is cultivating a local workforce specialized in solar infrastructure.

California and Texas are among the states in the U.S. installing giant lithium-ion batteries to store renewable energy to use when the sun isn’t shining and the wind isn’t blowing. These batteries are reducing the use of fossil fuels as a backup energy source when demand is high.

The town of Ithaca is working with its local gas utility and area homeowners to reduce greenhouse gas emissions by removing gas pipes from homes and businesses by switching them over to electricity, primarily from renewable sources. While the transition is a long process, the town expects to achieve about a 30% reduction in emissions in the next year.

An abandoned, flooded mine in Bishrampur, India, is now an eco-tourism site where visitors can take a boat ride to a floating restaurant and locals breed fish. The new facilities offer employment for some of the residents who were left out of work when the mine closed.