Electricity
Reality Check: Appalachia Poised to Become Clean Energy Country
When it comes to the clean energy transition, many fear that coal-dependent regions like Appalachia will lose out or be left behind. But a new analysis from RMI challenges that assumption, finding that Appalachia could be the region to see the biggest economic benefit from the deployment of wind and…
Resilience in Louisiana: Lessons from the Military and Islands
Three days after Hurricane Ida made landfall, roughly 2 million people remain without electricity in Louisiana and Mississippi. Even critical facilities, including sewage pumps in New Orleans and a hospital in rural South Louisiana, have seen outages. These and other incidents underscore just how dependent our civilization…
How the California Grid Can Become More Resilient to Wildfire
As the Bootleg Fire in Oregon continues to burn, the impacts of the largest US wildfire of 2021 have been felt well beyond the state’s border. Not only have the Bootleg Fire and other active fires blanketed skies with smoke as far away as New York City, but the…
Powering Rural Economic Development with Renewables
Despite serving only 13 percent of US electricity load, electric cooperatives loom large in conversations about the US energy system’s past, present, and future. The initial vision for nonprofit electric co-ops dates back to the New Deal, when the Rural Electrification Act of 1936 authorized the creation of co-ops…
Clean Energy Is Not a Zero-Sum Game
Both science and our everyday reality are now screaming an inconvenient truth: Our climate is changing and forcing us to urgently respond. To meet this challenge, we must both build resilient infrastructure capable of adapting to extreme, unprecedented weather and quickly transition our energy system away from the fossil fuels…