California Heat
The real elephant in the room is the historic poor construction of our built environment.
The heat the state experienced in the month of March was record-breaking and a sign of future heat to come. We were lucky that nights were relatively cool this time around. However, there is no guarantee of such diurnal relief going forward. It is not surprising that there is a push to provide people with air conditioning and to set nighttime standards for indoor temperatures. Sadly, this seems to imply the rampant installation of air-conditioning units, which themselves contribute to higher urban heat, so creating a vicious cycle.
Providing air conditioning is the fastest way to help people experience thermal comfort, but it does not mean the units will be used to the extent needed, as each hour of operation incurs higher energy bills. The real elephant in the room is the historically poor construction of our built environment. With an emphasis on fast and cheap, we built a great deal of housing post-war that is now the bulk of our existing housing stock. These buildings were not constructed with materials or methods that provide people thermal protection, either for heat, or for cold. This is a relevant issue for 70% of units in Los Angeles County—approximately 57% single family and 43% multi-family—and affects the majority of people in both building types. It is well known that lower income residents live in older apartments (ACS 2024). What is to be done?
A program such as LADWP’s Comprehensive Affordable Multifamily Retrofits (CAMR) is one important, but under-resourced, measure for addressing this dilemma. CAMR provides reimbursements for multi-family building owners in LADWP service territory to upgrade and electrify their buildings. This includes improving the performance of the building envelope, as well as installing upgraded appliances. Unfortunately, the Investor Owned Utilities (IOUs) do not have similarly progressive programs, and the city of Los Angeles is constrained in terms of the financial resources it can dedicate to CAMR and similar programs due to the limitations imposed by voter ballot initiatives Propositions 26 and 218. These limit rate increases for our public utilities, whilte the IOUs, as we have seen, can simply go to the Public Utilities Commission to request their rate increases. Current average Edison electrical rates are nearly double those of LADWP, with many times the number of public service safety shutoffs, and a track record of costly fire ignitions such as the recent Eaton fire (Singh et al. 2024).
Heat is a public safety issue. Simply installing AC units is an insufficient response and can actually contribute to the problem. We are creating a feedback loop and have failed to even address the issue of the ozone-depleting refrigerants still in use (although the newer R-32 and R410A are better in this regard). And, while heat pumps may be more efficient in their electricity consumption, they are still dumping hot air into the atmosphere.
In a sense, we have been lucky in Southern California, that our temperate climate has allowed us to build truly inefficient buildings and get away with it. While new building codes improve performance, most of our building stock predates their existence. If we are to keep people safe, not contribute to more urban heat, and, incidentally, improve the quality of the buildings, we need to invest in them, to understand they are our infrastructure, here for the long term. It’s impossibly costly to replace them, so let’s ensure our buildings perform better so our residents can thrive and we don’t add to the urban heat island.
