As the US electric grid infrastructure ages, becoming more susceptible to damage from extreme weather events, electric utilities are seeking new and innovative talent capable of maintaining energy reliability while also adapting to the challenge of operating a low-carbon energy system.

In this joint effort between The Pennsylvania State University and the University of California, Irvine, researchers will leverage surveys and interviews with utility workers, case studies of power plants, and various workforce and energy modeling approaches to forecast future utility workforce needs for a resilient energy grid. The team will develop a computational model to assess how different electricity demand scenarios, generation mixes, and workforce composition will affect future electric system resilience over the next 5-10 years, with the goal of helping utilities identify the required workforce to reliably meet future electricity demand. The team will also pilot a series of educational and training materials that aim to improve students’ understanding of energy system resiliency, strengthen the pipeline of graduates into the energy workforce, and upskill current workers at electric utilities.

In this project, researchers from the University of Michigan and Michigan State University will use various community-based participatory research methods to understand equitable urban clean energy transitions, comparing six case studies across three cities in the Great Lakes region: Detroit, Michigan; Chicago, Illinois; and Columbus, Ohio. The team will deploy multiple research methods such as policy tracing, document analysis, community surveys, and stakeholder interviews to compare two energy transition efforts in each city — one whose implementation is complete and one where implementation is ongoing. Clean energy technologies to be studied include community-scale solar generation, microgrids, geothermal power, and energy efficiency interventions.

For each of these sites, the team will trace how these projects originated and were or are being deployed. They will also conduct around 70 interviews across the states to understand stakeholder perspectives and implement household level surveys to gauge customer and user perceptions for each completed or ongoing project.

The many uncertainties associated with the provision of clean energy incentives have profound impacts on clean energy workers, employment opportunities, and communities in which clean energy manufacturing facilities have been planned. An interdisciplinary team led by researchers at the University of Pennsylvania will analyze the impacts of policy uncertainty associated with clean energy incentives at the federal level.

The team — which also includes members from the University of Michigan, Stanford University, and Northwestern University — will interview policy staff at companies working across the clean energy supply chain, focusing on representatives of clean energy manufacturing facilities drawing upon such incentives. Most notably, the team will undertake a large-scale panel survey of workers in clean energy industries to assess the impact of the policy shift on individuals, conducted in close collaboration with non-profit organizations representing these employees.

Finally, the researchers will undertake a series of case studies to gain in-depth insight into how different communities have been impacted by federal clean energy policy changes, with a distinct focus on those communities where plans for clean energy investment have been scaled back.

While weather-induced energy system outages have become increasingly common in Puerto Rico, disaster response efforts have been uneven across its communities. A team of researchers from the University of Pittsburgh; University of Puerto Rico, Mayagüez; and University of Maryland, College Park will leverage community-based participatory research methodologies to explore the dynamics of community-led energy resilience efforts on the island.

The team will first use NASA Black Marble Nighttime Lights data to identify communities located at the “last mile” of power infrastructure across Puerto Rico. They will examine the prevalence and duration of power outages during three time periods: after Hurricane María in 2017, after Hurricane Fiona in 2022, and during the rolling power outages on the island from 2021-2025. They will also use data from the Maxar WorldView-3 satellite to identify solar panel installations and generation capacity across Puerto Rico, thereby undertaking one of the first efforts to systematically measure solar panel prevalence on the island.

Lastly, the team will conduct qualitative work in the La Haya community, a rural and mountainous community with frequent power outages to gain insight into the community’s experience with energy inequality, as well as their efforts to achieve resilience. The team will examine the dynamics shaping the decision-making around a new solar installation in the community, which is being supported by separate funding from the University of Pittsburgh.

Led by researchers from Oregon State University and Boise State University, this grant will examine decision-making processes for siting battery electric storage system infrastructure by studying the factors that impact local battery system siting outcomes across three states. Focusing on communities in California, Oregon, and Idaho that have had battery electric storage system facilities approved, denied, or withdrawn in the last 3 years, the team will analyze documents and conduct semi-structured interviews with stakeholders to identify challenges and opportunities for siting new battery storage infrastructure.

The team will then combine these local case studies with a deep policy analysis of each state — including interviewing state officials and policy experts — to better understand specific regulations and mechanisms for battery electric storage system siting, as well as answer high-level questions related to how each state is approaching challenges in energy system reliability and community involvement in energy infrastructure siting decisions.

While workforce transition issues associated with a low-carbon energy system have far-reaching impacts across policy, economic, and social systems, such interdisciplinary issues are significantly underexplored in scholarly literature. Led by researchers at the Georgia Institute of Technology; the University of Massachusetts, Boston; Northwestern University; and Loyola University of Chicago, this project will explore the challenges that workers face when entering renewable energy industries, such as learning about job opportunities, understanding eligibility criteria, accessing training programs, or facing uncertainty about switching careers to an industry with a volatile policy environment.

The researchers will deploy surveys to workers across four US regions (Northeast, Southeast, Midwest, and West) to gain insight into the administrative burdens faced by those looking to enter clean energy industries. They will also analyze renewable energy training programs and job postings to examine the requirements for such opportunities and explore the compliance burdens faced by prospective workers. Finally, the researchers will undertake detailed state-level case studies across each of the regions to understand how the challenges that workers face differ across geographies, paying attention to variations within renewable energy industries and policy incentives.

Unlike degree-granting programs, many clean energy job training programs are often vocationally oriented, time-bound, and usually involve on-the-job instruction modules designed to give workers targeted skills or preparatory knowledge needed for technical or operational jobs in clean energy industries. In this grant, a team of social scientists from multiple institutions will explore how workers are trained and prepared for clean energy jobs through these job training and apprenticeship programs.

This interdisciplinary team led by researchers at the University of Tennessee, Knoxville, will study four different industries where job training programs have become common: utility-scale solar, residential electrification, carbon capture and storage, and programs designed to transition coal workers out of the fossil fuel industry. For each industry, the team — which also comprises scholars from the University of Arizona; University of Notre Dame; and University of California, Santa Cruz — will undertake detailed case studies to examine these programs, compare features across industries, and evaluate the extent to which the job training and apprenticeship programs adequately prepare workers for employment in different clean energy sectors.

Public utility commissions are key actors in the energy policy landscape because they are usually the final arbiter at the state level about how decarbonization policies are to be implemented and funded. In this project, social science and legal scholars at the University of Pittsburgh and Case Western Reserve University will examine state-level energy governance issues by studying how public utility commissions in Ohio and Pennsylvania incorporate stakeholder perspectives into their decision-making processes.

The team will concentrate on three areas related to state-level decision-making related to the clean energy transition: advancing renewable energy generation, adopting energy efficiency measures, and encouraging distributed energy resources. Across these domains, the team will assess how different stakeholder groups — including consumer representative organizations and utility representatives — look to inform state-level policy. Alongside the research, the team will also develop a series of educational modules on utility regulation, electricity markets, and local electricity policy to train energy legal studies students at various environmental law clinics.

Though less well-known than their coastal counterparts, inland ports are a critical component of cargo shipping operations. However, the reliance at these locations on diesel fuel to operate cargo-handling machinery contributes substantially to local carbon emissions and environmental pollution.

This grant, led by researchers at the University of California, Riverside, will support a holistic analysis of the social, technical, and regulatory dimensions of decarbonization efforts underway at the San Bernardino BNSF terminal, an inland dry port in southern California. The researchers will leverage document and policy analysis, stakeholder outreach, interviews, and workshops to map the power dynamics of decarbonization efforts at the San Bernardino BNSF terminal and better understand how industry leaders, technical experts, community members, and local workforces all participate in the process of inland port electrification.

While efforts to reduce carbon emissions from agriculture have generally focused on shrinking direct emissions from farming and other related practices, scientists are increasingly exploring ways to reduce farm-based emissions by lowering energy consumption. While several technologies exist for lowering on-farm emissions, farmers are often reticent to switch to unfamiliar technologies, especially when they are uncertain about the relative costs and benefits of switching away from familiar tools.

This project will survey farmers across the Lower Mississippi Delta region to identify farmer attitudes and behaviors related to the adoption of new clean energy technologies. Developed by researchers at the University of Arkansas at Little Rock, this survey aims to uncover farmers’ attitudes towards risk, their capability to delay benefits from investing in clean energy technologies, and their perceptions of sustainable energy technologies.

In addition, the team will host three workshops to help inform the survey design, validate and ground truth initial results, and disseminate research findings. Each workshop will bring together stakeholders that span agricultural producers, extension professionals, policymakers, and representatives from agricultural agencies and organizations.

Data centers are beginning to drive significant electricity demand growth across the United States, raising questions about grid resiliency, power supply, and who will pay for the necessary energy infrastructure expansion. Moreover, many of these data centers are being developed and sited across states in the Southern United States, a region with a history of uneven economic growth where residents experience some of the highest levels of energy insecurity in the United States.

In this collaborative research project between scholars at Emory University and the University of Tennessee, Knoxville, researchers will conduct three mixed-method case studies examining the energy implications of data center growth in Georgia, Tennessee, and Virginia. This analysis will capture state-level differences in the costs and benefits of data center siting decisions, as well as the impacts of data center expansion on local communities, improving or understanding of the energy-related economic, social, and policy dimension of data center development in these areas. Researchers will compare findings across the three states to generate regional insights and illuminate how different policy, utility, and regulatory contexts can shape data center development and resulting community and energy system impacts. A project Advisory Board will be assembled with representatives from community-based organizations across the three case study states to provide deeper local context and expertise. In addition to producing multiple academic outputs, the team will generate a range of materials aimed at informing community stakeholders.

As the expansion of data centers across the United States raises questions about the adequacy of the country’s existing energy supply and infrastructure, many large data centers have begun to consider nuclear power as a potential source of low-carbon electricity. In particular, one proposed solution to meeting the electricity demand growth from data centers is to co-locate this infrastructure with nuclear power generation, whether that be existing nuclear power plants or next-generation nuclear power sources.

This grant supports an interdisciplinary research team among scholars based at the University of Michigan, Massachusetts Institute of Technology, and Pittsburgh Technical to assess how data centers and nuclear power generation be co-located. Following an initial landscaping overview, the team will conduct five case studies to identify current and future locations for data center buildout and quantify their associated electricity demand, analyzing technical, economic, legal, regulatory, and safety dimensions. They will also study alternative business models to assess the viability of co-locating data centers and nuclear power generation. They will also study public responses to the co-location of nuclear power and data centers alongside various legal and safety implications of data center and nuclear power co-location, and they will draw on the expertise of an Advisory Committee to inform the case study site selection and research process.

The rapid development of large electricity load sources, like data centers and industrial facilities, is increasing demand for electricity across the United States. Few entities in the energy system experience this pressure as acutely as rural electric cooperatives (co-ops), which tend to have less dense service territories with fewer ratepayers than larger investor-owned utilities or municipal utilities. However, there has been little research to date on how electricity demand growth might impact rural co-op operations.

Led by scholars at North Carolina State University and the University of Minnesota, in partnership with the Smart Electric Power Alliance, this project explores the challenges and opportunities for rural co-ops as they respond to rapid electricity demand growth. First, the researchers will investigate how demand growth patterns have varied across co-op service territories over the past few decades. Second, the team will analyze the different strategies that rural co-ops have adopted in response to increased electricity demand, holding focus groups with staff from three generation and transmission co-ops to better understand how they prioritize their electricity growth management strategies. Lastly, they will examine three case studies in more detail to uncover how institutional and governance structures impact rural co-op decision-making and adoption of electricity growth management strategies. The team will produce academic scholarship along with materials designed at informing stakeholder practices and decision-making.

There have been numerous attempts in recent years to spur domestic clean energy manufacturing at both the federal and state level, including the tax incentives, place-based investments, economy-wide tariffs, and other forms of fiscal and policy interventions. A number of states have also provided targeted tax incentives and investment funds to advance clean energy manufacturing. However, researchers and policymakers still need a comprehensive analytic framework to examine how these energy policy interventions, aimed at different scales and industrial sectors, affect clean energy manufacturing dynamics.

This grant will support an interdisciplinary research team with scholars from Baruch College, University of California, San Diego, Indiana University, Stony Brook University, and the Center for Strategic and International Studies to create an integrated dataset that combines information on industry investments in clean energy, state-level energy and economic development data, and trade-related information. The team will also undertake two case studies, focused on domestic solar and battery manufacturing across a broad geographic range, to understand the granular dynamics between federal, state, and local investments in clean energy manufacturing and related supply chains. Lastly, the team aims to upgrade the Global Change Assessment Model (GCAM) to improve how clean energy trade-related factors are represented in the model, allowing researchers to study how different policy interventions might shape future clean energy manufacturing dynamics. A workshop with key stakeholders will ensure that practitioner perspectives are integrated throughout the study.

Rebuilding after extreme weather events is inevitably a complicated, emotionally fraught process, as homeowners decide whether and how to rebuild their properties. Current policies in the United States favor “like for like” rebuilds that merely replace damaged or destroyed property. However, these policies do not account for preexisting inequities that make some communities more vulnerable to extreme weather or energy insecurity in the first place. In many cases, it would be more beneficial if households could instead improve the overall quality and energy characteristics of their homes during reconstruction, especially as climate-related disasters become more frequent and destructive.

Researchers at Stanford University, University of Maryland, College Park, and The Ohio State University will undertake a multi-pronged effort to examine how existing rebuilding efforts have impacted energy resiliency in three cities in different stages of recovery after extreme weather disasters: Houston, Texas after Hurricane Harvey in 2017; Asheville, North Carolina after Hurricane Helene in 2024; and Los Angeles, California after the Palisades Fire in 2025. The researchers will then partner with local chapters of the American Red Cross (ARC) to design and pilot a novel intervention that will provide households who have lost their homes with tailored resources to facilitate energy efficient rebuilding. This intervention is expected to be a combination of providing targeted information resources along with access to an in-person “rebuilding ambassador” who will help households make better sense of the provided information about their rebuilding options, all with the goal of improving post-disaster rebuilding and climate resilience efforts. The expectation is that this piloted intervention could be subsequently scaled and expanded to other geographies facing similar challenges around the country.

Despite advancements in clean energy generation, fossil fuels continue to play an important role in the energy system, especially when it comes to providing back-up power generation and ensuring household-level energy security. However, there is limited understanding of how fossil fuels are utilized at the household level to bolster energy resiliency, as well as how natural gas infrastructure is expanding as new homes are connected to the gas grid.

Researchers from Arizona State University, Temple University, and University of Pennsylvania, in collaboration with experts at M Cubed Consulting, will map the growth and persistence of natural gas, back-up generation, and deliverable fuel networks across the United States, using permitting information, economic data, and remote sensing information to better understand patterns of adoption for these power sources. The team will also conduct qualitative interviews with industry members to examine the structure and organization of back-up power fossil fuel networks. To complement this analysis, they will undertake two detailed case studies in Phoenix, Arizona and Central Pennsylvania to explore in-depth how such back-up power fossil fuel utilization plays out at the household level in different regions of the country.