Bonneville Environmental Foundation

Renewable energy services: bef develops and promotes both short and long-term strategies for the advancement of renewable energy, the adoption of clean technology, and destruction of greenhouse gas emissions. Bef invests in the research and demonstration of innovative solar, hydrogen, wind, small-hydro, and biomass projects around the country, particularly focusing on low-income and underserved communities. Activities include managing siting, evaluation, installation, and monitoring of new projects on behalf of funding organizations and other project partners. This year bef supported the development of 13 low-income benefitting community solar projects, resulting in an estimated $2 million in new lifetime energy savings for low income households. Bef also awarded more than $800,000 in grants to utilities and tribes to enable deployment of zero emission vehicle infrastructure. By promoting and marketing renewable energy certificates ("recs") and carbon offsets, bef supports the development of large and small-scale renewable energy projects using wind, solar, geothermal, and biogas resources. During the year bef delivered 611,457 recs and 394,055 carbon offsets to its utility, business, government, and nonprofit customers.

Water sustainability services: bef supports the restoration of damaged watershed ecosystems by supporting science-based watershed restoration initiatives that demonstrate strong community engagement and create volumetric benefits for nature and people. Bef quantifies volumetric benefits in reporting to funders and through the sale of water restoration certificates to corporations and other organizations to balance their water usage. During the year, bef deployed $7,673,134 to fund 48 projects resulting in 10.4 billion gallons of water restored to depleted rivers and streams.

Energy education program: the Foundation's clean energy. Bright futures ("ce") program delivers a stem based energy education program throughout the country that is funded by corporations, utilities and other nonprofit partners. Ce provides community-based, interactive energy education professional development opportunities to educators through virtual and in-person training conducted by ce staff and cohorts of fellows accepted into the ce national fellowship program. Ce provides benefits for students through teacher training workshops, curriculum development labs, stem conferences, and student engineering challenges. This year ce provided 1,072 hours of professional development to 286 teachers that will reach 22,119 students. Ce also provided $36,960 worth of science kits to teachers to be used in the classroom.