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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.

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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.”

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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.”

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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.

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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.”