Learn how we are working to transform how we use and produce energy.
e-Lab Accelerator
Accelerator is e–Lab’s project bootcamp, advancing the work of groundbreaking teams whose projects are critical to realizing the clean energy transition. Accelerator 2022 took place online over the two weeks of May 2–13 during three-hour sessions on Monday, Tuesday, and Thursday of each week. All-participant gatherings took place for one hour on Wednesday and Friday of each week.
2022 Topics
We seek to support project teams working in the following three categories:
Building the missing links needed to accelerate the transition of our energy infrastructure:
- Planning a material deployment of distributed energy resources (DERs) including energy efficiency, demand response, and electrification technologies with a multistakeholder team as a virtual power plant test case
- Applying open-source tools to a grid planning study to streamline grid modeling approaches, and demonstrating how easier access to definitive tools for stakeholders and policymakers benefits grid analysis
- Creating next-generation principles for integrated resource planning and looking for test cases to demonstrate how IRPs can support equitable economy-wide decarbonization with community and stakeholder input
- Working with state utilities and departments of transportation to leverage existing highway rights of way in siting key transmission lines to support new wind and solar projects
- Strategizing how utilities can reduce emissions in one of the more challenging sectors: building heating
- Advocating for community-driven participation and renewable energy in crafting a state target of net-zero carbon by 2030
Aligning utility regulations and incentives to work toward equitable and affordable clean energy:
- Defining regulatory best practices for improving equity, minimizing harmful impacts, and prioritizing benefits to communities when considering utility rates, resource plans, and new rules
- Advancing climate-aligned performance-based regulation in new states, with multistakeholder input
Supporting equitable community and workforce transitions as current generation assets retire:
- Coordinating policy engagement nationally in developing principles for federal transition policy
- Bringing together key stakeholders, including utilities, government, and investors, to drive implementation of community- and worker-centric economic development projects
What We’ve Accomplished
Since 2014, e-Lab Accelerator has helped over 80 multistakeholder project teams advance their work faster and more creatively than they had thought possible. Recent teams improved resource planning for distributed energy resources (DERs), designed building electrification programs, developed new business models supporting decarbonization, prototyped regulatory reforms, and worked to increase advocates’ influence on the energy transition.
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