DOE Welcomes New Round of Innovative Leaders to Peer-Learning Cohorts on Emerging Clean Energy Strategies

The U.S. Department of Energy (DOE) today announced a new round of leaders from 45 entities that will collaborate on common clean energy opportunities and challenges through the Clean Energy to Communities (C2C) program's peer-learning cohorts. These participants—including county and local governments, Tribes, community-based organizations, and utilities—will convene regularly from July to December 2024 to exchange strategies and best practices, learn in a collaborative environment from each other and DOE’s national laboratory experts, and workshop their pathways to agrivoltaics implementation, residential energy efficiency programs, or municipal fleet electrification. 

"C2C's peer-learning cohorts facilitate new networks and collaborations between communities across the country and enable them access to top clean energy experts from DOE’s national laboratories,” said Jeff Marootian, Principal Deputy Assistant Secretary for Energy Efficiency and Renewable Energy. “By collaborating and sharing successful plans with their peers, these new participants will gain ideas, tools, and confidence to accelerate their own clean energy transitions. We are excited for this new group to thrive in this program.” 

"I am especially excited about the geographic diversity of the selected participants in this cycle,” said Lauren Reichelt, C2C peer-learning cohort program manager. “Practitioners from across the United States recognize the value that peer exchange can bring to their clean energy work. Our team looks forward to connecting this diverse set of entities around their common interests and creating opportunities for them to learn from each other’s unique experiences.”

C2C’s peer-learning cohorts convene up to 15 communities dedicated to a single clean energy-related topic and connects them with educational resources, case studies, analysis and modeling tools, templates ad, trainings, and facilitated collaboration to enable accelerated clean energy progress. This is the fourth round of C2C’s peer-learning cohorts. Previous cohorts have covered topics including clean energy financing; municipal building energy efficiency and decarbonization; community engagement for energy projects; solar, storage and microgrids; and electric vehicle infrastructure planning.

Entities joining the three latest cohorts are: 

Implementing an Agrivoltaics Project:

• Appalachian Sustainable Development, Bristol, Virginia
• Black Oaks Center, Kankakee County, Illinois 
• Community Power Collaborative, California
• Equitable Solar Investments, Chicago, Illinois
• Florida Educational Development
• Moline, Illinois
• Nature Conservancy Florida
• Oregon State University/Sheba LLC
• Paragon Cooperative, Fulton County, Georgia
• Phoenix Community Farm, Midland, Michigan
• Piedmont Environmental Council, Warrenton, Virginia
• Spark Northwest, Seattle, Washington
• Strengthen ND
• The Bronx Land Trust, New York
• The Latino Coalition of San Benito County (California) and Costanoan Indian Research.

Designing and Enhancing Energy Efficiency Programs for Residential Buildings:

• Cheyenne River Long-Term Recovery Group, Eagle Butte, South Dakota
• Indiana County Thrives, Indiana County, Pennsylvania
• Kansas City, Missouri
• Kotzebue, Alaska
• Lebanon Energy Advisory Committee, New Hampshire
• Lincoln, Nebraska
• Lowell Light & Power, Michigan
• Missoula, Montana
• New Orleans, Louisiana
• Reading Public Works, Pennsylvania
• Sedona, Arizona
• Somerville, Massachusetts
• Southern Sustainability Institute, Athens, Georgia
• Turlock, California
• West Central Initiative, Fergus Falls, Minnesota.

Charting a Path to Municipal Fleet Electrification:

• Columbus, Ohio Department of Public Utilities
• Cook County, Illinois
• Denver, Colorado Office of Climate Action, Sustainability, and Resiliency
• Falmouth, Maine
• Kansas City, Missouri
• Natick, MA Department of Sustainability
• Oak Park, Illinois
• Orange County, Florida
• Palo Alto, California
• Potawatomi Ventures, Milwaukee, Wisconsin
• Reno, Nevada
• Richmond, Virginia Office of Sustainability
• Santa Cruz, California
• Sedona, Arizona
• Watsonville, California.

Peer-learning cohorts is one of three technical assistance offerings within the C2C program. Applications for C2C’s multiyear in depth partnership are due on June 14, 2024, and applications for three-month Expert Match offering are accepted on a rolling basis. 

C2C is funded by DOE’s Office of Energy Efficiency and Renewable Energy and managed by the National Renewable Energy Laboratory with support from Argonne National Laboratory, Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory, Oak Ridge National Laboratory, and Pacific Northwest National Laboratory. The World Resources Institute also supports C2C's peer-learning cohorts.