California Center for Sustainable Communities at UCLA
What cities can learn from Los Angeles’s effort to build a fairer energy system
A closer look at the decisions, data and trade-offs behind LA’s plan to reach 100% renewable energy by 2035 — without leaving vulnerable communities behind
Transforming data into climate action: UCLA’s Stephanie Pincetl honored at LA County GIS Day
What if the key to solving climate change is hidden in the data we already have? Stephanie Pincetl believes the answer lies in connecting the dots.
California’s clean energy leap: Easy electrification for most homes
New UCLA study finds most California homes can easily electrify without costly panel upgrades, thanks to strategic load management.
EVENTS
Special Event
Reparations: A Transatlantic Conversation
Examining histories, debates and futures of repair
Event Overview Join us for a one-hour panel exploring how reparations are debated and practiced across different contexts, from Britain’s legacy of slavery to the United States’ ongoing struggle over…
NEWSROOM
Headline
Stephanie Pincetl for The Economist—How will calamity change Los Angeles?
UCLA IoES Professor Stephanie Pincetl discusses Los Angeles’ rebuilding efforts after the devastating wildfires for The Economist, asserting that the city should use this moment to address its housing crisis…
Blog
CCSC hosts a workshop “Mapping the Conversation on Faith, Flourishing, and the Environment”
CCSC hosted a workshop "Mapping the Conversation on Faith, Flourishing, and the Environment," to discuss the conversation between faith and the environment and chart a direction for where the conversations need to go, including critical theoretical work (part historical, part synthetic), and also the empirical work needed for better understanding.
Headline
Opinion: A summer of extreme heat and wildfire shows the cost of human folly. CCSC’s Stephanie Pincetl in the LA Times.
As Greece attempts to recover from the recent destructive wildfires around Athens, Southern Californians facing our own heat wave should take note of the pattern that enabled them. It should be well-known by now: sprawl into the urban-wildland interface where development collides with nature, the corresponding replacement of grass, shrubs and other plants native to the area with many more trees for shade, then strain on the land thanks to drought, record high heat and wind, intensified by climate change. The conditions that led to the worst wildfires in Greece this year, burning 156 square miles, damaging more than 100 homes and causing at least one death, apply in Los Angeles too.
Announcements
California Public Utilities Commission project on distributed energy resources led by UCLA’s CCSC and LARC
The California Public Utilities Commission has selected the California Center for Sustainable Communities and the Los Angeles Regional Collaborative at UCLA IoES to lead a Data Working Group on Distributed…
Announcements
UCLA to guide the prioritization and evaluation of equity strategies for LADWP’s clean energy transition
Last year, as part of the study, the UCLA Luskin Center for Innovation (LCI) and colleagues provided LADWP with recommendations for robust, long-term solutions to low-income customers’ ability to pay their bills through the clean energy transition. Now, in partnership with the UCLA California Center for Sustainable Communities, our researchers are digging deeper into energy equity issues to guide the agency’s development, implementation, and evaluation of these recommendations. “LADWP has the opportunity to lead the nation in how to achieve a more just energy transition,” said Stephanie Pincetl, director of the UCLA California Center for Sustainable Communities, “and we are honored to help facilitate that possibility.”
Headline
Will changes at San Gabriel Mountains National Monument serve LA’s communities of color?
Stephanie Pincetl, a professor at the UCLA Institute of the Environment and Sustainability and founding director of the university’s California Center for Sustainable Communities, said that LA County needs to provide more public open space close to where people live. That way, city dwellers need not drive to the mountains in such high numbers in order to enjoy nature. Another way of limiting visitation, she said, might lie in initiating the kind of permitting strategy used at other popular parks, such as Yosemite, which caps guest numbers per day. Pincetl believes the importance of the lands to Indigenous people only heightens the need for better stewardship by all visitors and caretakers. “These spaces have historic cultural value and meaning for tribal people, and we’re asking them to share,” she said. “How do we graciously acknowledge their generosity in sharing this land with us by taking good care of it ourselves?”
