Policy Overview

What is the RTC Doing?

The RTC supports policies to accelerate deployment of affordable and sustainable renewable thermal technologies. Thermal energy users need access to cost-effective, responsibly sourced, renewable and lower-carbon thermal energy solutions, including biomass, biogas, geothermal, landfill gas, renewable natural gas or biomethane, beneficial electrification, green hydrogen, solar thermal, and more.

Our approach is modeled on the success of renewable electricity policies, which helped lower the costs of these technologies and dramatically scale up their deployment. The RTC supports similar policy tools for renewable thermal, including research, development, demonstration, and deployment (RDD&D), financial incentives, technical assistance, accounting for environmental benefits, and renewable standards.

The RTC’s work currently prioritizes U.S. federal policy needs, but we aim to expand our scope to include targeted U.S. state and international policy opportunities.

Through Congressional briefings, policy roundtables, and publication of research and analysis, the RTC aims to create a widely held bipartisan consensus among federal policymakers on the need for federal policy to cut industrial thermal energy emissions.