Have you ever wondered how Massachusetts compares to its neighbors in terms ofgreenhouse gas emissions? Or how many clean energy jobs are being produced in each state in the Northeast? Over the years, our advocates and our grantees have had trouble understanding and comparing climate data since it is notoriously fragmented and hard to track. The Clean Energy strategic focus area of the Climate Program sought to make this information more accessible to nonprofit organizations, policymakers, and the public to stay informed about the region’s energy transition progress. By being able to compare and contextualize data related to jobs, energy, and emissions, we hope that staff at environmental NGOs, community-based organizations, and state and local governments have the data to support their work, studies, and recommendations.
Free and interactive, Green Dash Northeast allows website visitors to compare state-to-state climate information regarding energy and emissions in the Northeast. Using publicly available data, Green Dash Northeast aggregates, standardizes and offers standardized datasets and mapping tools to allow its users to assemble and analyze energy state-level data from a variety of sources.
Users can explore and assemble data across the following categories:
- Greenhouse gas emissions and targets
- Electric energy generation and efficiency
- Heating fuel sales
- Battery storage
- Clean energy jobs
- Energy rates and energy burden
From Download to Dashboard
Green Dash Northeast was originally developed as an Excel tool based on requests from grantees and other colleagues working throughout the region. After releasing the beta Excel tool, our grantees emphasized that we could increase accessibility and collaboration through a web-based tool. Developed through a consulting agreement between Barr and Synapse Energy Economics, Green Dash Northeast offers data aggregation and analysis to climate change-makers and policy advisors at organizations of all sizes. The hope is that with streamlined access and accessible data, our climate advocate community would gain context from neighboring states and make more targeted policy and programmatic recommendations.
Features
One of the updates in the web version that we are most excited about is the addition of mapping features. Green Dash is now able to offer visual insight into how the energy system impacts communities by mapping energy rates, social vulnerability, the percentage of household income spent on electricity and gas, and the locations of power plants and energy infrastructure. These data layers offer a more complete picture of how energy burden is distributed across the Northeast region.
Image from Green Dash Northeast mapping feature showing electric energy burden data and power plant locations.
In addition, the online dashboard offers supplemental resources for each topic area, offering easy access to information on policies and programs active in each state – allowing for compilations and tracking of policy impacts. With this information, users are able to more easily contextualize the data compilations and track both past policy impact and projected trend lines.
Users can also explore state-by-state data on greenhouse gas emissions and energy goals for both states who have created targets and those states who have not. That data can be seen comprehensively or on a per million-resident basis, offering both a full-picture and a resident-to-resident comparable analysis of the positive impact of policies and emission reduction targets.
Image from the Green Dash comparison feature which illustrates the differences in per capita energy storage deployment in Vermont and Massachusetts.
Climate Data Accessibility
Despite an increase in web-friendly data science tools and climate information, the energy sector tends to lack transparency and/or accessibility. We applaud early efforts, like the recent Massachusetts Climate Dashboard, RMI’s beta Energy Policy Simulator for New England and the Open Data Initiative’s Local Environments Challenge to share information dynamically with climate-focused organizations and the public.
Often, climate and energy data remains behind private paywalls, institutional logins, or buried in corners of the internet. We encourage philanthropic organizations beyond ourselves to create free and publicly-available frameworks to help our community leaders, advocates, policymakers, and governments in their implementation of climate and energy programs and future policy development.
Green Dash Northeast is currently available for use with desktop devices. The Barr Foundation and Synapse will continue to work together to keep the data in the Green Dash Northeast tool refreshed and updated. For more on the different metrics and how to use this new tool, we encourage you to visit and explore Green Dash Northeast.
