Learn how we are working to transform how we use and produce energy.
Innovation
Bold innovation is at the heart of everything we do at RMI, because we know that a business-as-usual approach will not solve our global climate challenge. At the root of any market, technology, or policy solution is innovation. We need to unearth the best ideas from the brightest minds to drive a clean energy future. And we need the courage, diligence, and tools to enable these innovations to surface and compete against powerful incumbents.
Why
Energy innovation is key to a clean, prosperous, and secure low-carbon future, but is too often blocked by incumbents. Our market interventions jumpstart innovation, market transformation, and growth.
60
GW of new large-scale wind and solar we can add to the grid by 2025
144B
$ in market potential available for home energy upgrades in the United States
40B
$ the trucking industry could save each year through efficient technologies
The Global Cooling Prize
Residential cooling poses the biggest end-use risk to our climate. To face this challenge head-on, RMI and a global coalition of partners have launched an innovation competition to develop a climate-friendly residential cooling solution that can provide access to cooling to people around the world without warming the planet.
The Energy Web Foundation
The Energy Web Foundation, a market-affiliate of RMI, is developing a groundbreaking open-source, scalable blockchain platform that serves as a foundational, shared, digital infrastructure for the energy and blockchain community to build and run their solutions. Ultimately, it will lead to a network where hundreds of millions of distributed energy resources can make the electric grid less costly, more resilient, and much, much cleaner.
REALIZE
REALIZE is helping to bring the clean industrial revolution to America’s homes by catalyzing the development of a speedy and scalable process for zero-carbon residential retrofits. This innovative model employs a process that combines aggregation of demand coordinated with the supply chain to deploy prefabricated mass-scale retrofits. Think of it like an IKEA© net-zero retrofit!
Driving Innovation Through Collaboration
Breakthrough innovations often come from close collaboration between different stakeholders who bring unique perspectives, values, and interests. The Electricity Innovation Lab was founded in 2012 to convene a bold and diverse set of electricity stakeholders to innovate solutions that solve the industry’s toughest problems. Since its founding, the group has been involved in a powerful blend of thought leadership and on-the-ground consulting engagements that show how systemic changes requiring agreement among disparate parties are possible.
Embodying Innovation in Our Own Office
The RMI Innovation Center, located in Basalt, Colorado, is our 15,610 square-foot office building and state-of-the-art convening center. To advance our mission and propel the industry, we developed the Innovation Center to demonstrate how deep green buildings are designed, contracted, constructed, and occupied. The building achieves beyond-net-zero energy, generating more energy than it needs, through integrative whole system design. The building is intended to serve as a “living lab” with which we’ll share lessons learned so that it can be replicated. Therefore, RMI’s experience will serve as a practical model to inform thousands of buildings that would otherwise contribute significantly to the climate crisis.
Who’s Joining Us to Make a Difference
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We are currently in the race of our lives between the dire trends of a destabilizing climate and growing population on the one hand and the promise of innovations that may well save us on the other. We are pleased to support RMI in its urgent drive for systemic innovation in sustainability.
Jeremy Grantham
Legendary investor, Cofounder and Chief Investment Strategist of GMO, and Cofounder of The Grantham Foundation for the Protection of the Environment
Jeremy Grantham
Legendary investor, Cofounder and Chief Investment Strategist of GMO, and Cofounder of The Grantham Foundation for the Protection of the Environment
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