e-Lab Accelerator

Accelerator is e–Lab’s project bootcamp, advancing the work of groundbreaking teams whose projects are critical to realizing the clean energy transition.

Call for Project Teams

Join the more than 80 teams that RMI has worked with since 2014: Applications for Accelerator 2022 are due by March 7. Submit draft applications for review at any time by contacting us or emailing kcl@rmi.org for feedback.

Accelerator 2022 takes place online over the two weeks of May 2–13 during three-hour sessions on Monday, Tuesday, and Thursday of each week. All-participant gatherings take place for one hour on Wednesday and Friday of each week.

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This Year’s Topics

This year, we seek to support project teams working in the following three categories:

Building the missing links needed to accelerate the transition of our energy infrastructure:

Planning a material deployment of distributed energy resources (DERs) including energy efficiency, demand response, and electrification technologies with a multistakeholder team as a virtual power plant test case

Applying open-source tools to a grid planning study to streamline grid modeling approaches, and demonstrating how easier access to definitive tools for stakeholders and policymakers benefits grid analysis

Creating next-generation principles for integrated resource planning and looking for test cases to demonstrate how IRPs can support equitable economy-wide decarbonization with community and stakeholder input

Working with state utilities and departments of transportation to leverage existing highway rights of way in siting key transmission lines to support new wind and solar projects

Strategizing how utilities can reduce emissions in one of the more challenging sectors: building heating

Advocating for community-driven participation and renewable energy in crafting a state target of net-zero carbon by 2030

Aligning utility regulations and incentives to work toward equitable and affordable clean energy:

Defining regulatory best practices for improving equity, minimizing harmful impacts, and prioritizing benefits to communities when considering utility rates, resource plans, and new rules

Advancing climate-aligned performance-based regulation in new states, with multistakeholder input

Supporting equitable community and workforce transitions as current generation assets retire:

Coordinating policy engagement nationally in developing principles for federal transition policy

Bringing together key stakeholders, including utilities, government, and investors, to drive implementation of community- and worker-centric economic development projects

What We’ve Accomplished

Since 2014, e^–Lab Accelerator has helped over 80 multistakeholder project teams advance their work faster and more creatively than they had thought possible. Recent teams improved resource planning for distributed energy resources (DERs), designed building electrification programs, developed new business models supporting decarbonization, prototyped regulatory reforms, and worked to increase advocates’ influence on the energy transition.

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