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2023-04-04
The Clean Energy States Alliance (CESA);
This report explores how philanthropic foundations have supported the deployment of solar and solar plus battery storage (solar+storage) at community-serving institutions, including multifamily affordable housing, community centers, senior care facilities, educational facilities, and health centers in low- and moderate-income (LMI) communities in the United States. It provides a menu of strategies that foundations can use to bring clean energy benefits to LMI households and communities.
2023-01-12
New Jersey Policy Perspective;
The health and safety of every New Jersey resident is threatened by the state's reliance on fossil fuels to power our homes, businesses, and transportation. Fossil fuels — such as gas, oil, and coal — account for a majority of carbon dioxide and greenhouse gas emissions, with a large percentage generated by energy produced for heat and electricity. Air pollution and environmental toxins disproportionately harm New Jersey's low–income families and residents of color, who are more likely to live and work closest to sources of pollution.In recent years, state lawmakers and the Murphy administration have set ambitious goals to reduce emissions that will require a transition to alternative energy sources that are clean, affordable, sustainable, and reliable. Renewable sources of energy have many advantages to fossil fuels — they are abundant, increasingly cost-efficient, healthier, and create jobs — but they require investments in new technology and infrastructure. The state's Clean Energy Fund, which is supported by a surcharge on monthly utility bills, is designed to support these investments in renewable energy, but the fund has been consistently raided by lawmakers to plug holes in the state budget. Since Fiscal Year 2010, lawmakers have raided nearly $2 billion from the fund, hampering the state's ability to meet its clean energy goals, improve air quality, and mitigate against the worst harms of the climate crisis.
2023-02-01
Rockefeller Brothers Fund;
Key TakeawaysIn November 2022, the Rockefeller Brothers Fund (RBF) adopted a plan to spend an additional $100 million over the next ten years to address the climate crisis and the political and economic systems that drive and reflect it.The RBF is committed to reducing emissions from our investment portfolio to align with global climate goals long supported by our grantmaking programs.A recent analysis indicates our endowment portfolio is already a climate outperformer; however, it falls short of the imperative to limit global temperature rise to 1.5 degrees Celsius.Going forward, the RBF will take steps to further decarbonize its endowment, support the development of industry standards, and mobilize peers to help accelerate a just transition to a low-carbon economy.
2023-02-01
Kittleson & Associates;
Cities and towns across Massachusetts are implementing innovations on their streets. Quick and creative projects that prioritize people are having big impacts.These changes are mostly simple: making space for chairs and tables for neighbors to sit and chat, slowing down traffic via cones so kids can play and bike to school, and painting bus lanes for people to travel faster.This toolkit provides practitioners and partners with guidance on carrying forward the important work of measuring projects using low-cost and repeatable evaluation methods. The report includes links to sample templates and surveys to support these efforts.
2023-05-15
Bridgespan Group;
The transition to a green economy offers a bright future for Southeast Asia. It's not only a US$1 trillion market opportunity by 2030 across the region's economies. It's also a pathway to a sustainable future, one that is resilient to the climate crisis, more secure for nations, healthier for residents, and inclusive for all.To guide this radical transformation, we studied employment markets across six countries—Indonesia, Malaysia, the Philippines, Singapore, Thailand, and Vietnam—and conducted 80 interviews with employers, researchers, and nongovernmental organisations (NGOs). This report, supported by J.P. Morgan, identifies steps that leaders across sectors— governments, funders, NGOs, investors, and employers—can take to ensure the emerging green economy achieves a "just transition" that leaves no one behind.
2023-07-11
Center for Strategic and International Studies;
The Issue:Environmental dialogue in the Gulf holds unique promise to test the potential for greater regional cooperation amidst widespread distrust.Environmental issues have not been as politicized as other regional issues; they are a growing priority, and cooperation on them would not be zero sum.Recent steps toward diplomatic normalization provide a ripe arena for exploration.A dialogue on environmental issues would build trust and normalize diplomatic contact.The United States should support regional environmental diplomacy indirectly.It should signal its support for environmental collaboration to its Arab Gulf partners, leverage its climate know-how, and ensure that sanctions on Iran do not undermine opportunities to bolster regional stability.
2023-03-10
Worcester Regional Research Bureau;
The Worcester Regional Transit Authority Advisory Board has suspended fares at the agency since March 2020, as a result of the COVID-19 pandemic and subsequent emergency. It has been extended several times, and the latest extension is set to end at the end of June 2023 unless the Advisory Board adopts a budget that will extend fare-free for a longer period of time. The Worcester Regional Research Bureau previously released two reports: In May 2019, The Implications of a Fare-Free WRTA and in November 2020, Bureau Brief—Addendum to "The Implications of a Fare-Free WRTA." Both reports analyses found a strong argument in favor of a fare-free program at the WRTA. This report on finances serves as an update to those reports after three years of fare-free service.The Commonwealth of Massachusetts is consistently the largest source of revenues used for operating expenses, followed by, in FY22, the Federal Government, and then WRTA member community assessments.According to a 2018 survey of riders, 65% of riders had an income of less than $24,999.Collecting fares, whether fixed or variable, will entail costs of its own that may mitigate the revenues collected by restarting fares.A thought experiment of what different fare collection revenues could look like, including the possibility of discounting fares by income.The Massachusetts' Legislature and the new gubernatorial administration have expressed interest in increasing transportation funding across the state. Moreover, the Regional Transit Authority Caucus in the legislature has begun to put forward bills to raise statewide RTA funding to $150 million a year, nearly $55 million more than funding for FY23. Governor Healey's initial FY24 budget includes $96.8 million for RTAs, in addition to $6 million for operating expenses from a new $25 million grant.The Federal Government will be increasing its transportation funding until 2026.The WRTA experienced a rapid ridership recovery from the COVID-19 pandemic and FY23 ridership is expected to increase. While this report reviews WRTA finances relative to sustaining a fare-free policy, please look forward to a forthcoming report on WRTA ridership from The Research Bureau. It is evident that a fare-free policy at the WRTA has had significant impact, particularly on ridership.
2023-06-06
Alliance of Bioversity International and the International Center for Tropical Agriculture (CIAT);
Three years since the formation of the Alliance of Bioversity International and CIAT, our organization is emerging from a period of global and institutional change. The seeds that we sowed in 2019 – a fresh and ambitious set of Strategic Objectives to transform people's lives during a climate crisis – are now bearing fruit.What do establishing urban gardens (in Kenya), 'mining' cassava alleles (in Colombia), and delivering climate information services (in the Philippines) have in common? The answer is simple: communities, institutions, and people. Urban gardens empower vulnerable consumers to feed their families. Superior cassava traits guarantee farmers sufficient yield so they profit from each harvest. Climate information services provide farmers with forecasts while informing government policies and investments in disaster risk reduction.
2023-06-20
Aspen Institute Energy Environment Program;
The United States currently faces a rapidly shifting global environment that increasingly places strategic importance on responsible and resilient access to critical minerals. These minerals—which are essential inputs to a wide range of applications ranging from clean energy technologies to advanced defense systems—will continue to increase in importance over the coming decades. Global competition over these resources due to the rapidly accelerating energy transition, fragmentation of international supply chains, and rising geopolitical tensions with adversaries is of key importance to the climate, economic, and national security interests of the United States in the 21st century.There is an urgent need for policymakers to define a coordinated critical minerals strategy for the United States. A U.S. critical minerals strategy must set out to achieve two objectives. First, it must seek to responsibly increase domestic and global production and processing of critical minerals at the scale and timeline needed to limit global temperature increases. Second, it must aim to secure responsible and resilient critical mineral supply chains that minimize vulnerability to external risks.
2023-05-06
Oxfam International;
In 2009, high-income countries committed in the Copenhagen Accords to mobilize US$100 billion a year by 2020 in climate finance for low- and middle-income countries. Oxfam reported on the progress of this commitment in 2016, 2018 and 2020. This year's report finds that high-income countries have not only failed to deliver on their commitment, but also – as in previous years – generous accounting practices have allowed them to overstate the level of support they have actually provided. Moreover, much of the finance has been provided as loans, which means that it risks increasing the debt burden of the countries it is supposed to help.This paper calls on high-income countries to accelerate the mobilization and provision of climate finance, and to make up the shortfall from previous years, in a way that is equitable and just. High-income countries must provide finance that is transparent, with genuine accountability mechanisms, and that allows for far more local ownership and responsiveness to the needs of communities it is intended to reach. People on the frontlines of the climate crisis must have the funding they were promised for adaptation and mitigation, and to address the loss and damage they are already experiencing as a result of climate impacts.
2023-06-14
The Gilfoyle Foundation Inc.;
Ocean acidification, a direct consequence of increased carbon dioxide (CO2)emissions, has emerged as a critical area of concern within the scientific community.The world's oceans absorb approximately one-third of human-caused CO2 emissions,leading to chemical reactions that reduce seawater pH, carbonate ion concentration,and saturation states of biologically important calcium carbonate minerals. Thisprocess, known as ocean acidification, has far-reaching implications for marineecosystems, particularly for marine organisms such as fish, whose migratory patternsare integral to the health and function of these ecosystems.Â
2023-09-13
Open Environmental Data Project (OEDP);
On March 23, 2023, the Open Environmental Data Project and the California State Water Resources Control Board co-hosted a Dataset Re-Mix Workshop. We explored and discussed potential improvements to the state's water quality datasets, and their uses in understanding and achieving Human Right to Water and Safe and Affordable Funding for Equity and Resilience (SAFER) program goals. This report contains recommendations synthesized from these conversations.