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Utility Transition HubTM

Charting A Path To Decarbonization

Who Should Use This

RMI’s Utility Transition Hub™ consists of metrics, tools, and publications that look beyond a utility’s current emissions to surface the underlying factors—investments, operations, regulations, policies, and customer and community impacts—that determine alignment with an affordable and equitable 1.5°C trajectory.

Key answers the Hub provides to users

The Hub answers universal questions beneficial to all users regardless of their area of focus:

  • Which utility commitments or resource plans are aligned with a 1.5°C trajectory?
  • How have utilities invested in fossil and clean energy, and how has that impacted customers and investors?
  • How have utilities progressed on emissions reductions, and how is that influenced by investments, state policies, regulations, and asset operation?
  • How does a utility compare with its peers in performance across a variety of metrics like emissions, customer costs, and earnings?

How key stakeholders can use the Hub

  1. Understand utility performance on policy and regulatory goals: As a regulator, you can use the Hub to measure your utility’s performance in the context of state policy goals (e.g., emissions standards) and your own goals as a regulator. For example, you can:
    1. a. Track how your utility’s customer costs and historical emissions have varied over time
    2. b. Track how your utility’s commitments and resource plans align with a 1.5°C trajectory
  2. Identify areas for regulation: Based on your understanding of utility performance, you can identify areas where regulation might be helpful. For example, you can:
    1. a. Compare your utility’s performance on customers costs, emissions, and earnings to peers
    2. b. Identify the drivers for stronger performance in other utilities, including investments, operations, and supporting policies and regulations
  1. Determine sectoral and utility climate alignment: Understand how climate aligned a particular utility or the regulated utility sector is. For example, you can:
    1. a. Track how a utility’s or the sector’s commitments and resource plans align with a 1.5°C trajectory
  2. Understand the underpinnings for transition risk: Use current and historical earnings from fossil fuel plants in the sector and by utility to begin a broader assessment of climate transition risk exposure from continued investment in fossil fuels (including to inform coal exclusion policies)
  3. Identify opportunities for engagement and investment: Use historical and comparative utility investment trends to identify opportunities for investment in the sector. For example, you can:
    1. a. Identify utility leaders with strong financial performance, especially in the context of climate-relevant state policies and historical carbon-free investments by a utility
  1. Where to intervene: Use the Hub to inform your strategy on where to intervene to accelerate decarbonization, bolster equity, and lower costs. For example, you can:
    1. a. Track which utilities have the most fossil fuel assets on their books
    2. b. Track which utility commitments and resource plans are aligned with a 1.5°C trajectory
    3. c. Track how customer costs have varied over time and how they are driven by investments in fossil fuels
  2. How to intervene: Use the Hub to inform your strategy on how to intervene (policies, regulation, campaigning) and what arguments to make. For example, you can:
    1. a. Track how business decisions by utilities (to invest in and operate fossil fuel and clean energy plants) and approvals from regulators have impacted customers, communities, and emissions
    2. b. Track the context in which utilities and their regulators operate including state policies and regulatory frameworks
  1. Understand performance on policy goals: Understand how the state’s (or the country’s) policy goals, with respect to the regulated utility sector, are being met. For example, you can:
    1. a. Track how utility customer costs and emissions in your state have varied over time
    2. b. Track how aligned utility commitments and plans are with a 1.5°C trajectory
  2. Identify areas for policy development: Given the metrics the Hub provides, determine areas and pathways for policy development to accelerate the energy transition. For example, you can:
    1. a. Identify what policy should focus on by tracking various “outcomes”—such as customer costs and emissions—and comparing them with peer utilities and states
    2. b. Identify what barriers exist to the transition by tracking the progress of outcomes in the context of “drivers” such as utility investments, operations, existing policies, and regulations
    3. c. Determine policy solutions that seek to address drivers preventing better outcomes, learning from peer states and utilities that perform well on key metrics
  1. Benchmark performance: You can benchmark your performance on a variety of metrics—financial, emissions, and customer impacts in particular—against peers and the sector at large