An extended-standing federal effort to decarbonize transportation proves how superior applied sciences could make significant, real-world impacts by intertwining nationwide targets and initiatives with native, community-based actions.

Clear Cities coalitions act regionally in city, suburban, and rural communities all through the nation, protecting 85% of the U.S. inhabitants.

The progressive mannequin constructed over the previous 30 years by the Clear Cities Coalition Community demonstrates how federal applications can efficiently deploy new applied sciences via long-term, multidirectional stakeholder engagement. Clear Cities coalitions implement various gas and superior transportation tasks all through the USA. A brand new Nationwide Renewable Vitality Laboratory (NREL) report, Clear Cities: A Mannequin of Collaborative Expertise Innovation Constructed Over 30 Years, tells the story of Clear Cities, documenting how and why the success of Clear Cities can function a mannequin for different federal efforts.

Clear Cities is a collaboration of greater than 75 coalitions protecting almost each state and 85% of the U.S. inhabitants. Coalitions enhance the nation’s financial vitality, vitality safety, and high quality of life by advancing the deployment of inexpensive, environment friendly, and clear transportation fuels and applied sciences. Because the know-how deployment arm of the U.S. Division of Vitality’s (DOE’s) Automobile Applied sciences Workplace, Clear Cities operates inside a framework of collaborative governance and leverages experience from federal businesses, nationwide laboratories — together with NREL — and coalitions. Coalitions present sources and technical steerage to native choice makers and fleets implementing various and renewable fuels, electrical automobiles, idle-reduction measures, gas economic system enhancements, new mobility decisions, and rising transportation applied sciences.

“Clear Cities has thrived for 30 years partially as a result of it’s so collaborative and leverages relationships amongst public, civic society, and personal sector entities on the native, state, and nationwide degree,” mentioned Patricia Romero-Lankao, a senior analysis scientist and interdisciplinary sociologist at NREL who co-authored the report. “These collaborations are extremely intensive whereas nonetheless preserving the autonomy of the person coalitions.”

Along with rigorous collaboration, the institutional construction of Clear Cities contributes to its long-term success by being steady but nimble, enabling steady adjustment and adaptation. Every coalition receives national-level help however stays semi-autonomous and makes impartial strategic and programmatic choices in response to native wants and market shifts.

“Coalition workers are sometimes employed by and from the group they serve, so that they have information of the native space and expertise with native transportation techniques,” Romero-Lankao mentioned. “This helps foster native belief, permitting coalitions to construct bridges between DOE, nationwide labs, and transportation stakeholders. Coalitions can join with networks and communities the place nationwide entities usually can not immediately interact.”

Constructing belief on the native degree creates a way of shared motivations and might help overcome competing native and nationwide pursuits — a historic problem for national-level environmental efforts, in line with the report. Federal coordination additionally enhances the capability of native stakeholders who in any other case would lack authority or entry to provoke the sorts of large-scale collaborations that generate widespread influence.

Clear Cities engages in broad coordination and leverages inside experience to advance high-level targets and methods. Coalitions share native insights, knowledge, and experiences with nationwide laboratories and DOE to enhance nationwide knowledge units, sources, and technical response capabilities. NREL and different nationwide laboratories proactively developed this group of collaboration over a long time by creating alternatives for ongoing relationship constructing, together with a peer-to-peer mentorship program, in-person workshops for coalition workers, digital working teams, and outreach supplies that help constant messaging amongst all coalitions.

On the Floor
Assist native choice makers and fleets implement various and renewable fuels, idle-reduction measures, gas economic system enhancements, new mobility decisions, and rising transportation applied sciences.

Inform Analysis
Foster multilateral, collaborative relationships with coalitions offering lab workers with community-based insights to assist guarantee their analysis addresses real-world transportation wants and priorities.

Topic Matter Specialists
Join coalitions with consultants and goal problem-solving help to assist stakeholders overcome obstacles to deploying superior transportation applied sciences and various fuels.

Deployment
Stay versatile and adaptive to rising applied sciences, circumstances, and desires. Empower coalitions to customise approaches based mostly on native contexts and priorities for deploying new transportation applied sciences.

Inform Funding Alternative Bulletins
Present DOE with insights into on-the-ground stakeholder and group contexts to assist guarantee analysis and funding align with real-world wants.

Vitality Fairness
Weave vitality and environmental justice concerns all through to develop clear transportation options that meet community-identified wants and improve mobility fairness in traditionally underserved and overburdened communities.

“The extent of cooperation Clear Cities has created amongst nationwide labs and between coalitions is exclusive within the federal authorities,” mentioned Margo Melendez, a transportation know-how deployment group supervisor at NREL. “All of us share the identical targets and have an important function to play, so we’re collaborating as an alternative of competing. This enables Clear Cities to make a a lot larger influence than if we have been all appearing on our personal.”

A challenge that raised consciousness and acceptance of electrical automobiles (EVs) throughout the Midwest exemplifies how this degree of collaboration enhances influence. Leaders from Clear Cities coalitions in seven states (Illinois, Indiana, Michigan, Minnesota, North Dakota, Ohio, and Wisconsin) joined forces to kind Midwest Electrical Automobile Alternatives: Studying, eVents, Expertise (Midwest EVOLVE), which reached greater than 290,000 individuals and helped change the narrative about EVs within the Midwest. Survey knowledge collected by the challenge companions confirmed that 75% of individuals reached by Midwest EVOLVE took the subsequent step of visiting a dealership or speaking to another person to contemplate EVs extra carefully. Twenty-two p.c of respondents mentioned they finally bought or leased an EV.

“Clear Cities is required by federal regulation to be know-how and gas impartial, that means it may possibly’t advocate for a particular know-how or gas,” mentioned Wendy Dafoe, a Clear Cities senior challenge chief at NREL. “This helps coalitions stay related wherever they’re situated, as a result of they create options that make sense for his or her native communities.”

The collaborative framework, nimble construction, and iterative suggestions mechanisms exhibit the ability of Clear Cities’ long-term collaborative governance for initiatives aiming to influence native communities at a nationwide scale. Clear Cities facilities the information, experience, and imaginative and prescient of native communities, making it a mannequin for how one can design community-centered options that align nationwide aims with native targets and visions.

The long-standing success of Clear Cities as a know-how deployment mannequin can also be being leveraged by newer federal efforts, together with Clear Vitality to Communities (C2C), a brand new DOE program that helps native governments, tribes, electrical utilities, and community-based organizations set and meet their clear vitality targets. C2C leverages the newest set of superior capabilities from nationwide laboratories, together with NREL, in addition to group engagement and peer-learning methods. Underneath NREL’s management, Clear Cities coalitions will help communities collaborating in C2C choices by leveraging the transportation know-how deployment and partnership-building experience inside the Clear Cities Coalition Community.

Be taught extra about NREL’s sustainable transportation and mobility analysis. And join NREL’s quarterly transportation and mobility analysis e-newsletter, Sustainable Mobility Issues, to get the newest information.

Courtesy of NREL.