RESOURCES

This guide and accompanying online toolkit enable universities and colleges to accelerate the planning and implementation of net zero strategies, and act as living laboratories for testing solutions. These resources equip institutions with both the knowledge (via the guide) and tools (via the toolkit) they need to accelerate their climate action plans across energy, mobility, facilities, waste and recycling, procurement, and more, while creating a new global community of practice among them.

This study uses a cost-benefit analysis and life cycle assessments (LCA) to determine which low carbon mix designs reduce carbon footprints, are profitable to concrete batching plants, and are most advantageous to society. These ready mix, mix designs replace traditional cement with ground granulated blast furnace slag (GGBS), fly ash, biochar, recycled concrete aggregate (RCA), portland-limestone cement, limestone calcined clay cement (LC3), and early stage carbon curing. The report is accompanied by an ArcGIS StoryMap that provides a visual snapshot of key findings.

This Guide provides a step-by-step instruction manual for jurisdictions across the U.S. and globally who wish to create science-based pathways to net zero. The Guide distills the high-level process undertaken by the County of San Diego in the creation of the 2022 San Diego Regional Decarbonization Framework Technical Report, highlights the enabling factors for success, and serves as a toolkit for other communities to follow in their own pursuit of long-term decarbonization planning. The Guide aims to share the process undertaken by San Diego County to help equip researchers, scientists, and political leaders across the U.S. and beyond with the resources they need to localize and advance pathways to regional decarbonization during this decisive Decade of Action.

This white paper examines important global and local parallels between the COVID-19 and climate crises with regard to behavior change, misinformation, and structural inequalities. Developed in partnership with Springer Nature, the white paper also addresses how lessons from the pandemic can be translated to the climate emergency to meet the goals of the Paris Agreement and the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) by using an interdisciplinary, cross-sectoral approach. 

This plan serves as a roadmap for the U.S. based on the latest modeling, research and understanding of decarbonizing six key sectors (power, transport, industry, buildings, food and land use, and materials) supported by technical pathways to zero carbon by 2050, as well as supporting policy recommendations. The ZCAP was designed by a cohort of nearly 100 researchers and 19 Chairs who make up the Zero Carbon Consortium, who are experts in their fields of climate change policy across six key sectors: electricity (power) generation; transportation; industry; buildings; sustainable land-use; and sustainable materials management. The report is anchored in the modeling results from Evolved Energy Research (EER) and makes policy recommendations to support the transition of energy infrastructure throughout the country in line with carbon neutrality by mid-century. 

This report explores unique opportunities and challenges for the Midwest region in the broader context of the transformative changes to the U.S. energy system that are required to reduce carbon dioxide (CO2) emissions to net-zero emissions in 2050. The scale and rate of physical changes to the U.S. energy system will be significant, and the Midwest will play a critical role in enabling a national transition. The implications of these changes to the region will be far-reaching, offering opportunities to grow new industries and jobs, as well as the chance to deploy climate mitigation and adaption policies that focus on ensuring an equitable energy transition.

This report explores unique opportunities and challenges for the Southeast region (Alabama, Georgia, Mississippi, North Carolina, South Carolina, and Tennessee) in the broader context of the transformative changes to the U.S. energy system that are required to reduce carbon dioxide (CO2) emissions to net-zero emissions in 2050. There are two central questions about the Southeast region in this report: how does the physical energy infrastructure in the Southeast region need to evolve to enable a low carbon transition, and what are key decarbonization opportunities and challenges in the Southeast from a societal perspective? Answers to these questions can support regional stakeholders’ efforts to develop a shared vision of pathways to deep decarbonization, and advance discussions in states across the region. 

This report describes the changes in the U.S. energy system required to reduce carbon dioxide (CO2) emissions to a level consistent with returning atmospheric concentrations to 350 parts per million (350 ppm) in 2100, achieving net negative CO2 emissions by mid-century, and limiting end-of-century global warming to 1°C above pre-industrial levels. The main finding is that 350 ppm pathways that meet all current and forecast U.S. energy needs are technically feasible using existing technology, and that multiple alternative pathways can meet these objectives in the case of limits on some key decarbonization strategies. These pathways are economically viable, with a net increase in the cost of supplying and using energy equivalent to about 2% of GDP, up to a maximum of 3% of GDP, relative to the cost of a business-as-usual baseline.

In this white paper, SDSN and its partners show that present policies in New York State and the New England States are insufficient to achieve the region’s declared greenhouse gas emission reduction goals. The study describes a detailed road map for achieving the region’s goal of reducing these climate-altering emissions 80% or more below 1990 levels by 2050 while maintaining high standards of living and economic growth. A key objective of the study was to investigate the potential for cost savings from increased coordination between the Northeastern U.S. and Québec, including development of Québec’s hydro and/or wind resources as well as increases in transmission capacity to complement massive renewable energy buildout and battery storage in Northeastern states.

The renewable energy industry is instrumental to the achievement of the UN Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs), which aim to realize a better and more sustainable future for all. In addition to core contributions to the achievement of SDG 7, which focuses on access to affordable, reliable, sustainable and modern energy for all, and SDG 13, on urgent action to combat climate change, the renewable energy sector can also make critical contributions to the other 15 SDGs, including helping to alleviate poverty, fight hunger, increase access to healthcare, education, and clean water, and protect life on land and in water.