Purpose
- Investigates causes tending to destroy or impair the free-market system.
- Explores and develops market-based solutions.
Summary
This application is to support Climate XChange's efforts to put forth market-driven solutions to climate change. Climate XChange achieves these impacts primarily through the State Climate Policy Network (SCPN) and State Climate Policy Dashboard (Dashboard). The SCPN is a platform of 16,500 state climate leaders that have access to programming, research, and direct support from Climate XChange to advance state climate policy. The Dashboard is a public database of 65+ climate policies across all 50 states that helps state actors and researchers better navigate technical policy information. Funding will provide added resources to the direct technical support, research and data analysis, and advocacy efforts that enable our network of state climate leaders to push forward sensible and just policy solutions to climate change.
Description
During the grant period, Climate XChange (CXC) underwent a thorough strategic planning process to develop a new 5-year strategic plan for the organization. That plan was informed by comprehensive policy and conceptual maps of the U.S. energy system and climate needs, major policy bottlenecks and market barriers, and the recommended biggest value-adds across the climate movement. That process has resulted in a strategic plan for CXC's future centered around scaling up our State Climate Policy Dashboard
First launched in 2021, the Dashboard is the only publicly available tool that tracks current and missing climate policies across all major sectors and across all 50 states. It helps policymakers, researchers, advocates, and other stakeholders make smart policy decisions by providing a reliable, up-to-date, comprehensive resource on state climate policy.
During the grant period, the Dashboard reached over 6,000 data points across 65 distinct policies, and now features the work of over 100 organizations, including RMI, the Environmental Defense Fund (EDF), ACEEE, Center for Climate and Energy Solutions, and SPOT for Clean Energy. The Dashboard to date has garnered over 52,000 page views since launch.
In the past year, CXC has dedicated its time and resource to three aspects of the Dashboard: 1) Continuous tracking, updates, and maintenance of the current Dashboard; 2) Creating new analysis materials and services for our audience and partners, using Dashboard data; and 3) Transitioning the Dashboard to a new platform. Each of these three outputs is explained further below:
1) Continued policy tracking, maintenance, and updates to the current Dashboard:
During the grant period, we completed two major Dashboard updates, to ensure that the platform remains up-to-date for all users. We have contracted with Quorum, and advanced policy tracking service that allows us to keep tabs on climate policy developments across the U.S. Twice during the grant period, CXC staff audited and updated the Dashboard to reflect a fully accurate policy landscape and library of model laws, resources, and other useful links.
2) Used Dashboard data to deploy new materials and services:
We have continuously deployed the Dashboard's rich information and findings to our broader audience via the State Climate Policy Network (SCPN). The SCPN is a network of 18,000 policymakers, advocates, researchers, and other climate professionals that offer free, publicly accessible, high-quality information and connections to help advance their state climate policy work. The SCPN is managed by CXC.
During the grant period, we have deployed the Dashboard data to the SCPN audience in the following ways:
-Recurring newsletter segments, updates, and in-depth articles that educate readers on the progression, landscape, and nuances of key climate policies on the Dashboard
-Recurring use of Dashboard policy progress and analysis in SCPN deep dive webinars, monthly national calls, and quarterly legislator calls
-Ongoing direct technical assistance to SCPN members, such as catered policy landscape analysis, state example analysis, bill design, and resource recommendations powered by the Dashboard.
3) Transform the Dashboard into new tools and products:
To accelerate the impact and efficiency of the Dashboard, CXC has begun to transform the Dashboard into a new tool with new functionality, structure, and partnerships in place. This past year has included two categories of work on this front:
First, CXC has contracted with Lullabot, a digital firm, to design a new website for the Dashboard, so that our users can leverage a more intuitive and sophisticated interface to compare, analyze, and visualize our policy data across state lines, identify policy opportunities for their state, and easily navigate the best resources that the climate movement has to offer. We have completed a full Discovery & Strategy exercise with technical documentation, cost estimates, and prototypes and will begin building the new website in early 2024.
Second, we partnered with RMI to create 2023 State Climate Scorecards for 20 individual U.S. states in July 2023. These scorecards measure state progress and identify policies to close remaining gaps in their greenhouse gas emissions to adhere to an NDC-aligned 2030 reduction goal. Using CXC's Dashboard and the Energy Policy Simulator, which was co-developed by RMI and Energy Innovation, we created scorecards for Arizona, Colorado, Florida, Georgia, Illinois, Iowa, Kansas, Louisiana, Maryland, Massachusetts, Michigan, Minnesota, New Jersey, New York, North Carolina, Ohio, Pennsylvania, Texas, Virginia, and Washington.
During the grant period, the Dashboard crossed the milestone of 50,000 page views since launch. These page views come from a mix of organic traffic and direct funnels from the SCPN, which across all public events garnered a total of 5,939 registrants and 2,640 attendees. Our legislator calls garnered 379 policymaker registrants and 244 attendees over the course of four events.
During the grant period, CXC also completed 50 documented technical assistance requests for SCPN members, including:
-Assisting with the bill design of a building performance standard in Massachusetts.
-Strategic consultation and public comment review regarding cap-and-invest design in New York.
-Custom landscape analysis on environmental justice policy to inform engagement with the Public Utility Commission (PUC) in Ohio.
-Dashboard training sessions with the state policy team at Ceres.
Meanwhile, we have tracked a total of 42 additional citations, features, or other use cases for the Dashboard since launch, 17 of which happened in the past year. This includes links to the Dashboard featured by the New York Times, as well as cited research in reports by ACEEE, Lawyers for Good Government, Atlas Public Policy, RMI, and Synapse Energy Economics. Notably, the US EPA Advance Program currently features the Dashboard on its Resources and Technical Assistance Page.
Purpose
State policy is a major driver of economic decisions in key sectors that contribute to climate change and greenhouse gas emissions. It is critical that actors at each level of the climate movement have access to the resources, networks, best practices, and knowledge sharing required to effectively move toward a clean energy economy that protects vulnerable communities, promotes economic growth, and creates jobs.
Energy markets are a complicated web of local, state, and federal policy, as well as many market actors such as generators, utilities, consumers, regional authorities, and financial institutions. CXC allows market actors to more readily access cutting-edge information on state policy that informs their on-the-ground decisions and influences decision makers on the most effective pathways to decarbonization.
Scope
The scope of this project is state-level policy across all 50 states.
Information Dissemination
We have continuously deployed the Dashboard's rich information and findings to our broader audience via the State Climate Policy Network (SCPN). The SCPN is a network of 18,000 policymakers, advocates, researchers, and other climate professionals that offer free, publicly accessible, high-quality information and connections to help advance their state climate policy work. The SCPN is managed by CXC.
During the grant period, we have deployed the Dashboard data to the SCPN audience in the following ways:
-Recurring newsletter segments, updates, and in-depth articles that educate readers on the progression, landscape, and nuances of key climate policies on the Dashboard
-Recurring use of Dashboard policy progress and analysis in SCPN deep dive webinars, monthly national calls, and quarterly legislator calls
-Ongoing direct technical assistance to SCPN members, such as catered policy landscape analysis, state example analysis, bill design, and resource recommendations powered by the Dashboard.
During the grant period, the Dashboard crossed the milestone of 50,000 page views since launch. These page views come from a mix of organic traffic and direct funnels from the SCPN, which across all public events garnered a total of 5,939 registrants and 2,640 attendees. Our legislator calls garnered 379 policymaker registrants and 244 attendees over the course of four events.
Project Link https://climate-xchange.org/dashboard
Amount Approved$10,000.00
on 6/29/2022
(Check sent: 7/19/2022)
