The Climate Innovation Collaboratory (CIC) was launched as a collaborative venture between CU Boulder and Deloitte, with the goal of translating cutting-edge climate research and data into meaningful climate solutions for businesses, organization, government agencies and communities.

This year three RASEI Fellows were recipients of awards to develop long-term engagements with Deloitte and expand access to critical climate data analytics, research and technology. These projects explore how the renewable energy grid can be built out to offer clean solutions for AI data centers and greater adoption of electric vehicles. 

RASEI Fellow Bri-Mathias Hodge is the principal investigator for a project titled “Interconnection Planning for Large Data Centers”. The goal is to develop a system planning tool to automate the initial processes needed for utilities to identify generation expansion, network reinforcement, and asset upgrades to meet the demands of new data centers. This work will help utilities, grid operators, and data center operators to deal with the expansion in the number and energy usage of data centers at the state, regional, and international levels. With the rise of AI, seen as the industrial revolution of the 21^st century, better understanding of how and where to place the data centers that are the engines driving this transformation will be critical.

RASEI Fellow Kyri Baker is the principal investigator for a project titled “Viability of long- and short-duration energy storage for AI Data Centers: Carbon, Cost, and Reliability”. This project combines the benefits of short and long duration energy storage to increase uptime, improve renewable energy utilization, and lower payback periods for AI data centers. By developing an optimization framework for data centers energy storage that leverages price and renewable energy forecasts to co-optimize cost, carbon, and resilience. Creation of a tool that optimizes data energy storage would have significant relevance to commercial and government clients seeking to lower data center consumption. 

RASEI Fellow Stephanie Weber is the principal investigator for a project titled “EV Infrastructure and local economic spillovers”. This project seeks to understand both how the construction of public electric vehicle charging infrastructure affects the surrounding areas as well as the tradeoffs associated with prioritizing equity in public charging locations. This will help inform state and national governments in the deployment of EV charging stations, to help incentivize EV adoption, and better understand the non-monetary impact of building EV chargers. 

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