For the purposes of this Tracker, “engagement” is defined as one or more local governments interacting with entities outside the local jurisdiction’s control – most prominently utilities, regulators, legislators, and ISOs/RTOs – with the goal of bringing more renewable generation online and/or bringing fossil fuels offline.

“Local government” is in turn defined as any governing body whose geographic reach is contained within a U.S. state, which most commonly includes cities, counties, and tribal governments.

In order to be included in the Tracker, a local government engagement must meet the following criteria:

• The engagement must be done by, or include, local governments.
• The engagement must be with a utility, state or federal regulators, state or federal legislators, or RTOs/ISOs; thus, the engagement must be with an external party outside the local government’s direct control (i.e. not a municipal utility or a local policy passed by the local government).
• The engagement must be directly related to bringing more renewable generation online or bringing fossil fuels offline.

After filtering case studies based on the above criteria, our team also sought feedback (where information was publicly available) as well as permission (where information was not publicly available) from the relevant governments themselves. For more information on our confidentiality principles, please see the Local Government Renewables Action Tracker’s Technical Note.

Data contained in the Engagement Tracker was collected through four major avenues:

• Input from the Renewables Accelerator team and other World Resources Institute and Rocky Mountain Institute staff.
• Information from platforms such as S&P Global Market Intelligence, AEE PowerSuite, and LexisNexis.
• Information on state electric utility regulatory commission websites.
• News publications on S&P Global, LexisNexis, and other news providers.

For further details on the data collection methodology and sources used for the Engagement Tracker, please see the Local Government Renewable Action Tracker’s Technical Note.

You can download the data in Excel format here. You can download the data in Excel format here. The file also includes information on the original sources that provide more details for each engagement, which can be found under the “Source” column.

Utility engagements may include:

• Writing a letter to a utility.
• Creating a formal partnership with the local utility.

Regulatory engagements may include:

• Intervening–or formally participating–in regulatory proceedings in a public or informal capacity.
• Submitting public comments in such proceedings.
• Providing expert testimony as a witness.

Legislative engagements may include:

• Providing support or education to legislators, state energy offices, or committee members.

ISO/RTO engagements may include:

• Organizing into coalitions to advocate for decarbonization through open letters, op-eds, or other means.
• Joining an ISO/RTO as an official stakeholder to drive changes directly.

Some engagements may fall within more than one of the above categories. For example, submitting public comments to regulatory proceedings pertaining to a utility’s Integrated Resource Plan (IRP) often involves interactions with not only local regulators but also the utility itself. Hence, the engagement would be considered as relating to both the regulatory and utility categories. Wherever this and similar cases occur, the Tracker will indicate all the categories that apply.

The Engagement Tracker does not attempt to quantify the impact of its case studies, but rather describes their qualitative outcomes. Some potential impacts of each engagement type include:

• Utility: Increase in the share of renewables in a utility’s Integrated Resource Plan (IRP).
• Regulatory: Approval by the state’s Public Regulatory Commission of a utility’s proposed green tariff.
• Legislative: Passage of renewable-enabling legislation as a result of public support and testimony in its favor.
• ISO/RTO: Adoption of renewable-enabling policies by the local ISO/RTO.

The Tools & Resources section of the Renewables Accelerator website provides links to guides, case studies, templates, and various other materials for stakeholder engagement.

The Renewable Options by State section also provides state-specific details that may help inform your engagement activities.

No, the Engagement Tracker is not intended to be a comprehensive resource. Instead, it features example engagements. These are illustrative of the range of engagement actions that local governments can take to engage key stakeholders in furthering access to renewable electricity.

The Engagement Tracker will continue to be updated with on a quarterly basis.

See K4C (King County-Cities Climate Collaboration), LGSEC (Local Government Sustainable Energy Coalition), CSCNM (Coalition of Sustainable Communities New Mexico), and CC4CA (Colorado Communities for Climate Action) for each featured coalition’s website. The PJM Cities and Communities Coalition, a group of 18 U.S. cities within the PJM RTO committed to solutions to global warming, is the most recent among those listed and does not yet have a website of its own.

You can share this information with our team via the Engagement Form. While we have to ensure that the information you submit meets our inclusion criteria before uploading it to the website, we do greatly appreciate any suggestions that help us improve this resource.

If your question is not included in the above list, you may want to review the Technical Note for this resource or contact our team through this form or by emailing cityrenewablesaccelerator@rmi.org. If you would like to learn more about a specific engagement, and your city is part of the Urban Sustainability Directors Network (USDN), you could begin by inquiring directly with network members or via USDN’s discussion forums. You could also reach out to us via the aforementioned “Contact” form and we will address your question to the best of our ability.