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Jan. 20,2024: Deep Impact features a post-screening conversation with Stephanie Pincetl, Professor, Director, California Center for Sustainable Communities Institute of the Environment and Sustainability, UCLA. Moderated by Sammy Roth, Climate Columnist, Los Angeles Times. Buy tickets now.
“What Would Be A Just Energy Transition?" Register now for the Columbia Climate School Signature Speaker Series with Stephanie Pincetl on Jan. 30 in NYC.
This project aims to combat extreme heat through a comprehensive Heat Ambassador initiative, focusing on educating and protecting heat-vulnerable communities. Greater Los Angeles – $2,999,999 Lead: University of California, Los Angeles/Los Angeles Regional Collaborative Partners: Fernandeño Tataviam Band of Mission Indians, Rising Communities, Los Angeles County Department of Public Health
Researchers analyzed an archive of energy consumption data and hosted listening sessions to come up with “LA100 Equity Strategies.” The study is a detailed analysis of L.A.’s clean energy investment inequities. It also outlines more than 50 ways officials can address those inequities, including housing, local solar, and truck electrification. Stephanie Pincetl was one of those researchers. She’s a professor at the UCLA Institute of the Environment and Sustainability and founding director of the California Center for Sustainable Communities. Pincetl told LAist the city needs to really communicate the benefits of going 100% renewable with the residents and ratepayers of Los Angeles. That’s not an easy message to get across, she added, and the LADWP can’t do it alone.
Stephanie Pincetl, a lead author and director of the California Center for Sustainable Communities at UCLA, said the assessment is an exceptional example of national and international leadership, but stressed that there is much work yet to be done. “Clearly, inequities are historic and they’re deeply embedded in the city’s bones,” Pincetl said. And while the report outlines a number of strategies, “the challenge today is to figure out which ones are the most urgent, which ones are the medium term and which ones are the longer term.”
In 2021, after the LA100 analysis laid out pathways for the city of Los Angeles to produce 100% renewable electricity, the City Council and Los Angeles Department of Water and Power committed…
UCLA professor and director of the California Center for Sustainable Communities Stephanie Pincetl discusses the LA 100 Equity Strategies — a report that outlines ways to make LA's transition to 100% renewable energy equitable— for New York Times. "This transition is obviously going to be expensive. Somebody is going to have to pay for all of this.”
Stephanie Pincetl, a co-author of the report and director of the UCLA California Center for Sustainable Communities, welcomed the the initiative, which will kick off with a LADWP project to build, operate and maintain a network of electric vehicle charging stations in underserved communities. “No other utility in the United States has made a commitment to not only 100% renewable but making sure it’s implemented equitably,” Pincetl said. “This is the power of a municipal utility, a utility owned by and for its customers.”
The public utility asked, and more than 20 UCLA faculty and researchers with expertise in engineering, environmental science, law, labor studies, public health, and public policy answer in a new report, LA100 Equity Strategies. Researchers, in partnership with Rachel Sheinberg, wrote Chapter 13: Energy Affordability and Policy Solutions, providing specific recommendations for robust, long-term, structural solutions to LADWP’s customers’ ability to pay their bills.
In the long term, the transition away from fossil fuels should reduce energy costs, many analysts say. But in the coming years, individuals, businesses and governments will have to spend hundreds of billions of dollars on buying new equipment and upgrading old gear. “This transition is obviously going to be expensive,” said Stephanie Pincetl, a professor at the U.C.L.A. Institute of the Environment and Sustainability and founding director of the California Center for Sustainable Communities. “Somebody is going to have to pay for all of this.”
Over the past several centuries, Los Angeles has gone from a small farming community to one of the world’s biggest metropolises. In the early days, farming communities were able to reply on surface water from lakes and rivers. But as the population grew, that changed. We needed more water so we began to tap into groundwater resources, which at times were run dry by a lack of regulation. As we began to pave over much the natural land, these underground basins had no way to replenish from rainwater that would otherwise seep into the earth. Today, LA residents rely on a complex and highly managed system of aqueducts, wells, rivers and basins. Joining us today on AirTalk is Greg Pierce, director of UCLA’s Water Resources Group and Stephanie Pincetl, professor at UCLA’s Institute of the Environment and Sustainability.
Video replay: They discussed the challenge of the structural changes needed in order to make LA more sustainable, and the challenge of measuring progress accurately.