Though federal agencies make high quality data on the U.S. energy system publicly available, the data is often shared in hard-to-use formats that cannot easily be linked with other data or incorporated into the state-of-the-art computational models often used by researchers.  The effort needed to prepare such data for academic analysis is a barrier to use in the energy systems research. The Catalyst Cooperative is a team of data scientists, led by Christina Gosnell, who are dedicated to making unwieldy energy datasets easily accessible for researchers.  Over the next two years, Catalyst Cooperative researchers plan to curate nine new energy-related datasets into their open source data library, including data on electricity generation, natural gas utilities, pipeline safety, electricity market contracts, and greenhouse gas emissions.  Grant funds also support efforts to make needed improvements to their platform to accommodate growth and improve user experience, to help researchers work with this data library, and to perform analysis related to a variety of important energy issues, including planned research on the thermal efficiencies and environmental attributes of power plants. The Boulder Housing Collective acts as the fiscal sponsor for Catalyst Cooperative.

This grant supports training and mentoring efforts by the University of California, Berkeley’s Initiative on Equity in Energy and Environmental Economics. The goal is to attract a more diverse group of students to the study of energy economics by providing education and training centered on questions associated with distributional equity and just transitions. Funded activities include a mentoring program for undergraduate students of color interested in the distributional dimensions of energy economics, a competitive grant program that will fund ten graduate research projects on issues related to energy equity, and an initiative to hire an underrepresented postdoctoral scholar of color working in energy economics.  Additional grant funds will support a series of networking and convening events to build community across all levels of this initiative and connect supported students to one another and with energy economics faculty at Energy Institute at Berkeley’s Haas School of Business—one of the leading energy economics centers in the country—and Berkeley’s Opportunity Lab.

There are more than 150 academic research centers located at universities across the United States exploring different dimensions of the energy system, all with different topic areas of focus, disciplinary emphases, and level of funding.  Funds from this grant support the creation of a collaboration network, the University Energy Institute Collaborative (UEIC), that will facilitate coordination among these academic research institutes, foster the exchange of ideas, and promote collaborative research. Grant funds will cover the costs of running the network’s subcommittees and communication activities, develop a web portal for members, and planning and holding two annual summits that will bring together center representatives in person. Funds will also go toward the design of a small, seed grant program that would support cross-institutional collaborative projects among UEIC members.