Revolutionizing Hop Extraction with Yakima Chief Hops

Each year at our Future of Carbon Policy Forum, we award the David & Patricia Giuliani Clean Energy Entrepreneur award in honor of our late founder and his wife. The award recognizes businesses making meaningful advances in clean energy innovation. Previous winners include Edo, Group14, Myno Carbon, and Kenworth Truck Company.

This year, we had three incredible finalists for the award: Helion, Sila, and Yakima Chief Hops.

We were thrilled to present the 2026 David & Patricia Giuliani Clean Energy Entrepreneur award to Yakima Chief Hops! Yakima Chief Hops (YCH) is a vertically integrated hop company owned by family hop farmers. Local farmers deliver hops to YCH, who then processes and delivers the finished hop products around the world. Fun fact: 75 percent of hops grown in the United States come from the Yakima Valley!

*Art Ortega, Senior Director of Corporate Social Responsibility and Karl Vanevenhoven, COO, Yakima Chief Hops*

YCH’s work includes CO₂ extraction, which makes highly concentrated hop products that bring unique aromas and flavors to beer. During the extraction process, CO₂ is lost and vented to the atmosphere. So in 2025, YCH received a Climate Commitment Act-funded grant from the Washington State Department of Commerce to install a CO₂ recovery system to significantly reduce those emissions by capturing the CO₂ for reuse as beverage-grade CO₂ in the extraction process. You can learn more about their CO₂ capture and recycling process here.

“Yakima Chief Hops is honored to be awarded the prestigious David and Patricia Giuliani Clean Energy Entrepreneur Award. This recognition celebrates our commitment to carbon reduction efforts, particularly highlighted by the CO₂ Recovery System set to be installed at our Sunnyside, WA location in 2026. Attending the Future of Carbon Policy Forum and the award ceremony hosted by Clean & Prosperous was an incredible experience. We had the chance to network with climate and clean energy leaders, legislators, regulators, Tribal representatives, and advocates. This platform not only celebrated our achievements but also allowed us to engage in meaningful discussions on the future of carbon policy,” said Karl Vanevenhoven, COO, Yakima Chief Hops.

Helion and Sila are incredibly worthy finalists, and we encourage you to learn more about their work. Helion is building the world’s first fusion power plant in Malaga, targeting 50 megawatts of zero-carbon power by 2028 and the potential to avoid 100,000+ tons of CO₂ each year. Sila is scaling next-gen Titan Silicon battery materials in Moses Lake, creating up to 500 jobs and advancing U.S. leadership in clean-tech manufacturing.

Each year, we’re honored to support and elevate businesses at the cutting edge of the clean energy transition locally – and globally. If Washington is going to continue to lead the way on effective, ambitious climate action, it’s crucial that we support these partners and ensure their technologies, investments, and the jobs they provide remain in our state.

Thank you to our sponsors for making the 2026 Future of Carbon Policy Forum possible!

“Build SHIIT Now” in ProPublica

This week, our Build Sustainable High Impact Infrastructure Together (Build SHIIT) report was featured in a ProPublica article authored by the reporters who broke the original story that inspired our analysis!

That original story found that Washington state was dead last in the country in renewable growth, showing that our pace of clean energy development was not keeping up with our climate ambitions.

Here’s our Research Director, Kevin Tempest, in ProPublica about how they’re reporting changed our thinking: “I don’t think that we were aware of just how stark it was,” said Tempest, whose group advocates for “entrepreneurial approaches” to eliminating fossil fuels and promoting economic growth. “So that really opened our eyes and, I think, accelerated a lot of conversations.”

And here is former Washington State Department of Commerce Director Joe Nguyen: Nguyễn told OPB and ProPublica their reporting made him realize “the people who talk about clean energy are not actually doing it.” But now, he said, “Washington state’s desperately trying.”

Why does this matter? Washington’s glacial rate of clean energy development puts our emissions reduction goals at significant risk of failure and keeps massive economic and employment opportunities out of reach.

Read more in ProPublica and explore our Build SHIIT report and map here.

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