Search Climate Insights Directory

This case study examines how the Allston Brighton Community Development Corporation (CDC), a nonprofit affordable housing owner in Boston, is implementing deep energy retrofits (DER) across its portfolio to eliminate fossil fuel combustion and reduce energy consumption.

This report by RMI argues that financial institutions (FIs) can use asset-level emissions modeling and remote detection technologies to identify and fund methane abatement in the oil and gas sector. It highlights that methane emissions from equivalent volumes of oil and gas can vary by a factor of 10 or more, and that a significant portion of these emissions can be reduced through cost-neutral or profitable investments. The document advocates for the use of 20-year Global Warming Potential (GWP) metrics to better reflect near-term climate risks and the impact of new regulations, such as the US Inflation Reduction Act's methane fee.

This report overview outlines the case for low-carbon procurement in China's heavy industry, proposing a five-element framework for implementation and identifying five priority value chains—including steel, cement, aluminum, and plastics—to accelerate the net-zero transition.

This policy brief argues that self-reported methane emissions from US oil and gas operators are significantly underreported, which undermines climate progress and the effectiveness of the Inflation Reduction Act's (IRA) Waste Emissions Charge. The author advocates for the integration of empirical data and remote sensing to capture 'super-emitting' events and ensure accurate financial penalties and mitigation efforts.

This case study examines how Lodha (Macrotech Developers Ltd), a major Indian real estate developer, employs an "emergence strategy" to drive sustainable building practices. By utilizing its Palava project as a smart city learning lab and establishing the Lodha Net Zero Urban Accelerator, the company aims to achieve carbon neutrality by 2035 and set new industry standards for India's rapidly growing urban environment.

RMI has developed a calculator to determine the emissions parity between natural gas and coal, highlighting that methane leakage can make gas as damaging to the climate as coal. The briefing argues that the perception of natural gas as a 'cleaner' fuel is often incorrect because even low leakage rates can negate the greenhouse gas benefits of substituting coal with gas.

This report by RMI argues for the establishment of comprehensive indoor air quality (IAQ) guidelines in the United States to protect public health and inform building decarbonization. It examines the health risks of indoor pollutants, compares indoor and outdoor air regulation, reviews international and domestic examples of IAQ guidelines, and outlines how such guidelines can be applied to product safety, building codes, and certifications.

This RMI fact sheet explains the Environmental Protection Agency's (EPA) proposed April 2023 emission regulations for passenger cars, light- and medium-duty vehicles, and heavy-duty trucks. The rules establish performance-based limits on greenhouse gases and criteria pollutants for vehicles manufactured in model 2027 and beyond, aiming to accelerate the adoption of electric vehicles (EVs) and reduce overall emissions.

This guide by RMI provides recommendations for recipients of the US EPA's Climate Pollution Reduction Grant (CPRG) planning grants to incorporate organic waste and landfill methane strategies into their Priority Climate Action Plans (PCAPs). It emphasizes the use of 20-year global warming potentials to highlight the urgency of methane reduction and suggests a combination of upstream waste prevention and downstream landfill control measures to achieve significant greenhouse gas reductions and community benefits.

This guide by RMI explains the importance of integrating embodied carbon reporting into Scope 3 climate disclosures for the real estate industry. It details the regulatory and investor pressures driving this shift, provides a framework for categorizing and calculating embodied emissions, and outlines a path toward net-zero targets.

This guide explains California's Low Carbon Fuel Standard (LCFS), a market-based regulation designed to reduce greenhouse gas emissions and air pollution in the transportation sector by capping the carbon intensity of fuels.

This guide by RMI explains the role of Environmental Product Declarations (EPDs) as 'nutrition labels' for building materials, detailing how they report life-cycle assessment (LCA) data to track embodied carbon. It outlines the current limitations of EPD standardization and proposes a vision for 'ideal' EPDs based on rigorous Product Category Rules (PCRs) to ensure fair and competitive carbon reduction policies.

This briefing by RMI discusses the launch of the Just Energy Transition Partnership (JETP) in Indonesia and provides lessons on decarbonizing the electricity system through a model that analyzes coal-generating units in the Java-Bali grid.

This case study examines how Gogoro transitioned from a stealth startup to a global leader in light electric vehicle (EV) battery swapping by employing an 'emergence strategy.' The company focused on the two-wheeled urban scooter market, utilizing a combination of technical innovation, open battery standards, and diverse business models to scale rapidly across multiple countries.

This report by RMI outlines a strategic framework—focused on competitiveness, constraints, and coordination—to accelerate energy transition investment in the Great Lakes region. It argues that while the region possesses significant industrial legacies and innovation assets, it faces structural hurdles such as slow population growth, labor shortages, and a lack of cohesive industrial strategies. The document proposes that states move beyond simple investment attraction toward coordinated industrial policies, leveraging federal incentives from the IRA, IIJA, and CHIPS Act to build regional clusters in sectors like EV batteries, low-carbon steel, and sustainable fuels.

This briefing by RMI analyzes the potential for transitioning the Great Lakes region's steel industry to near-zero-emissions production. It identifies a gap between aggressive federal incentives—such as the Inflation Reduction Act (IRA) and Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act (IIJA)—and the lack of coordinated, steel-specific industrial strategies at the state level. The report evaluates three primary decarbonization pathways: Blast furnace–basic oxygen furnace (BF-BOF) with carbon capture and storage (CCS), natural gas direct reduced iron (DRI) with CCS, and renewable hydrogen-based DRI, noting that hydrogen DRI offers the lowest emissions intensity and most competitive levelized costs when subsidies are included. It emphasizes the region's economic importance, as the Great Lakes house all of the US's integrated steel mills and two-thirds of the nation's steelworkers, while warning that failure to modernize could lead to a loss of competitiveness and jobs to other regions or international markets.

This policy brief by RMI examines the potential for the Great Lakes region of the United States to become a globally competitive hub for Sustainable Aviation Fuel (SAF). It analyzes the region's strengths in feedstock availability, existing ethanol infrastructure, and logistics, while identifying a significant gap in coordinated state-level industrial policy to support the SAF value chain.

This briefing by RMI analyzes the potential for the Great Lakes region to lead the electric vehicle (EV) and battery supply chain. While the region possesses historical automotive strengths and significant R&D capacity, it faces competition from the 'Battery Belt' in the Deep South and gaps in state-level industrial policies. The document outlines the four stages of the supply chain—upstream, midstream, downstream, and reuse/recycling—and provides a gap analysis of regional policies compared to federal initiatives, urging Great Lakes states to coordinate on strategic coordination, production incentives, and end-of-life regulations to maintain competitiveness.

This briefing by RMI explains the role of Community Benefits Plans (CBPs) and Community Benefit Agreements (CBAs) in the United States energy transition, specifically focusing on the requirements set by the Department of Energy (DOE) for funding under the Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act (IIJA) and the Inflation Reduction Act (IRA) of 2022.

This executive summary from RMI argues that the voluntary carbon market (VCM) is currently in a state of transition, struggling with structural barriers related to data and process integrity. To fulfill its potential as a mechanism for climate finance and global decarbonization, the VCM must reduce subjectivity in credit-related data and streamline transaction processes through the integration of digital and web3 technologies.