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The World Resources Institute (WRI) has developed a first-of-its-kind dataset to track the adoption of electric school buses (ESBs) in the United States. The dataset monitors 'committed' ESBs—defined as those with awarded funding or formal purchase agreements—and tracks their progress through four phases: 'awarded,' 'ordered,' 'delivered,' and 'operating.' To facilitate equity analysis, the data includes school district characteristics such as poverty rates, racial composition, air pollution, and locale. Information is gathered from public sources, including news articles, school websites, and datasets from the EPA, U.S. Census, and National Center for Education Statistics, with updates occurring biannually.

The document outlines a model designed to aggregate greenhouse gas (GHG) reduction targets from Compact of Mayors cities and estimate reductions for those that have not yet reported targets. The model generates results across various formats and timeframes, including business-as-usual (BAU) scenarios and avoided emissions for different city categories. A noted limitation is the model's reliance on top-down emission-reduction targets, excluding the potential of specific financial, technological, or renewable energy resources, which is identified as a priority for future bottom-up research.

The document outlines a methodology for tracking nature-based solutions (NBS) investments in sub-Saharan Africa by scanning multilateral development bank portfolios. Between 2012 and 2021, the World Bank and African Development Bank led 85 NBS-related projects with combined total budgets of $12.1 billion, of which $4.5 billion was specifically for NBS components. The research identifies Ethiopia, Ghana, Malawi, Tanzania, Uganda, and the Democratic Republic of the Congo as the countries with the highest project counts and notes that NBS are being used to address urban flooding, coastal flooding, and water security while providing co-benefits for biodiversity and carbon sequestration.

The World Resources Institute introduces a framework for planning passive cooling infrastructure in cities using OpenUrban, a 1-meter resolution urban land-use and land-cover dataset. By combining OpenUrban with remotely sensed data on albedo, tree canopy, and temperature, the framework generates three implementation scenarios—technical, achievable, and program—for trees, cool roofs, reflective pavements, and shade structures. The tool is designed to be city-agnostic and low-burden, requiring no local data inputs and providing both area-wide potential indicators and spatial simulation maps to support policy and planning.

The document details the creation of a dataset identifying 11,309 school bus depots in the U.S. using remote sensing and aerial imagery from the National Agriculture Imagery Program (NAIP). The dataset is intended to support environmental justice analysis regarding air pollution hotspots in underserved communities, as well as electricity grid planning for school bus electrification and climate hazard risk assessment. Findings show that 51% of depots are located within 350 meters of a school, with North Carolina having the highest number of depots (841).

The World Resources Institute (WRI) has developed the Climate Finance Calculator to help users determine indicative minimum climate finance contributions for countries based on their historical emissions and economic status. The tool is intended to inform UNFCCC negotiations, including the New Collective Quantified Goal (NCQG), the Green Climate Fund (GCF), and the loss and damage fund. This comes amid a widening global finance gap; Climate Policy Initiative data indicates annual climate finance needs will rise from $8.1 trillion to $9 trillion by 2030, and exceed $10 trillion annually between 2031 and 2050, significantly surpassing the $1.3 trillion annual flows recorded between 2021 and 2022.

The World Resources Institute (WRI) uses a specific methodology to identify 'Cool Food Meals' for the Cool Food global initiative. To qualify, meals must meet a maximum threshold for per-meal greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions, calculated using recipe data submitted to WRI according to Cool Food Pledge methods. Additionally, meals must pass a nutrition safeguard to ensure a minimum threshold of nutritional quality. The goal is to steer consumers toward low-emitting options to accelerate the transition to a sustainable food future.

The document describes a methodology for estimating annual electricity generation of power plants when plant-level data are unavailable. The approach utilizes statistical regression and machine learning, incorporating plant-level characteristics (size and fuel type) and country-level data (average generation per megawatt of installed capacity). The author notes that fuel-specific models increase accuracy for wind, solar, and hydropower plants, while natural gas plant estimations show improvement but maintain high error rates, particularly for smaller facilities.

The document details the methodology for mapping global forest restoration opportunities by comparing current forest coverage with potential forest coverage under current climate conditions. It defines four forest conditions—intact, fragmented/managed, degraded, and deforested—and categorizes restoration opportunities based on human pressure and population density. The analysis identifies over two billion hectares of potential restoration area, with mosaic restoration being the most significant opportunity. The methodology also supports the Bonn Challenge, which aims to restore 150 million hectares of land worldwide by 2020.

The research introduces a random forest model capable of capturing 86 percent of future conflicts, defined as organized violence causing at least 10 fatalities over 12 months. While water-related variables correlate with conflict outcomes, they are not empirically significant for the model's decision-making unless the definition of conflict is adjusted, such as by lowering the fatality threshold. A web-based tool has been developed to allow users to explore these forecasts and indicators to support water-related peace-building interventions.

The Corporate Ecosystem Services Review (ESR) is a strategic tool developed by the World Resources Institute, the Meridian Institute, and the World Business Council for Sustainable Development. It provides a five-step methodology for companies to assess how ecosystem degradation—which has seen 15 of 24 evaluated services decline over the last 50 years—affects their bottom line. The ESR identifies five categories of risks and opportunities: operational, regulatory and legal, reputational, market and product, and financing. By 2012, approximately 300 companies had utilized the ESR to move beyond traditional pollution-focused environmental assessments toward a strategy that accounts for ecosystem dependence.

The document describes the methodology for a database created by WRI and Data for Progress that tracks community benefits frameworks, such as community benefits agreements, used in the United States to provide local benefits during project development following community engagement.

The World Resources Institute (WRI) created a dataset of U.S. school bus fleets by submitting records requests to state governments between March and November 2022. The data includes details such as model year, fuel type, manufacturer, seating capacity, and ownership model, intended for use in estimating greenhouse gas emission reductions, planning grid upgrades for electrification, and identifying highly polluting buses. The dataset is limited by missing data from four states and all U.S. territories, as well as structural differences in how states report data.

The Local Government Renewables Action Tracker is an interactive web tool developed by the American Cities Climate Challenge Renewables Accelerator (a WRI and RMI partnership) to help U.S. local governments procure renewable electricity. It aggregates data from public and crowdsourced sources to track renewable electricity transactions and advocacy efforts by cities, counties, municipal utilities, and community choice aggregations, displaying the total capacity in megawatts of generation supported by these efforts.

The World Resources Institute (WRI) has established a list of 1,508 Priority Outreach Districts across the United States to prioritize free, deep technical assistance for school bus electrification. These districts are selected based on criteria related to income, race, air pollution levels, and tribal status to address systemic inequities in air pollution exposure. WRI provides these districts with tailored support covering road-mapping, procurement, and utility coordination, while offering generalized guidance to other districts.

The document clarifies the distinctions between corporate-level and product-level greenhouse gas (GHG) accounting. It defines Scope 3 emissions as indirect emissions in a company's value chain and explains how the Corporate Value Chain (Scope 3) Standard and Product Standard enable businesses to identify 'hot spots' and reduction opportunities. The standards were developed through a multi-stakeholder process involving WRI, WBCSD, and 60 road-testing companies.

The document identifies the systemic challenges of integrating climate change risks into policy, such as uncertainty, non-linear impacts, and temporal lags. It proposes a research framework for the World Resources 2010 report to identify the conditions and hurdles for creating decision-making processes that are responsive, proactive, flexible, durable, and robust. The methodology includes sectoral case studies, commissioned expert papers, and scenario exercises focusing on developing nations.

The BFA Methodology is a two-tier assessment tool for biobased plastic feedstocks. It begins with an 'Executive Level Screening' for high-level risk identification and viability, followed by a 'Survey Level Screening' that utilizes 13 environmental and social indicator data sheets for in-depth supply chain analysis and the identification of mitigation strategies.

The document details the technical process for calculating risk indicators for Indonesia's forests and peatlands. It focuses on four key areas: primary forests, peatlands, protected areas, and the forest estate. The methodology relies on intersecting datasets from Global Forest Watch, NASA, and the Indonesian government to measure forest cover loss, fire density, and the overlap of oil palm concessions with protected or primary forest areas. The analysis emphasizes the use of a 5-hectare minimum area threshold to reduce errors in small districts and provides specific formulas for calculating annual average rates of loss.

The Sustainable Landscape Finance Coalition utilizes the Finance Solution Approach®, a strategic framework designed to ensure the viability of innovative finance solutions before they are piloted. The process is divided into four stages: Incubation, where specialists investigate a concept's potential; Strategic Development, which involves creating feasibility studies and road maps; Piloting, where solutions are tested in specific landscapes based on prior viability checks; and Scalability, which focuses on mainstreaming successful pilots to other landscapes. A core component of this approach is the identification of 'building blocks'—critical success factors that allow a finance solution to be adapted or replicated across different geographic or sectoral contexts.