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How will Los Angeles County prepare for a warmer future? And what role could clean energy investments play?
A joint project of Environmental Defense Fund (EDF) and UCLA Luskin Center for Innovation—Los Angeles Solar and Efficiency Report (LASER)—provides new data designed to help the public and policymakers prepare for the effects of climate change, from current environmental health risks to estimated temperature increases and climate change vulnerability throughout the region. It can also be used by communities to help identify opportunities to invest in projects that will create renewable energy jobs and cut electricity bills.
Solar Atlas” (2011). UCLA used and modified data from the Los Angeles County Chief Information Office, the
Los Angeles County Solar Map. http://solarmap.lacounty.gov. Disadvantaged communities are outlined in grey lines and identified per California Environmental Protection Agency and the Office of Environmental Health Hazard Assessment, “California Communities Environmental Health Screening Tool Version 2.0” (2014). http://oehha.ca.gov/ej/ces2.html.
“The project is timely because with new state funding sources becoming available, LASER can help inform how the region invests resources to address pressing environmental challenges while providing job opportunities in its most impacted communities,” said Colleen Callahan, lead author of the study and deputy director of the UCLA Luskin Center for Innovation.
The data-driven mapping tool, by parcel-level analysis, illustrates the area’s renewable energy potential through rooftop solar energy generation and energy efficiency measures. L.A. County presently has about 98 percent of its solar capacity untapped. The tool points out that if the county achieved only 10 percent of its rooftop solar potential, it would generate 47,000 jobs and cut almost 2.5 million tons of CO2 emissions each year.
The release today of the newest version of LASER is part of UCLA's "Thriving in a Hotter Los Angeles" project, which sets a goal for the region to use solely renewable energy and local water by 2050, and a response to President Obama’s Climate Data Initiative, which calls for leveraging public data to stimulate collaboration and innovation in support of national climate change preparedness.
LASER was highlighted in a White House announcement emphasizing ongoing efforts to broadly advance the initiative. “Through his Climate Data Initiative, President Obama is calling for all hands on deck to unleash data and technology in ways that will make businesses and communities more resilient to climate change,” said John P. Holdren, President Obama’s science advisor. “The commitments being announced today answer that call.”
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A Los Angeles city councilman is thinking big and long range when it comes to cutting greenhouse gas emissions.
Paul Koretz said the city should target a cut of 80 percent below 1990 levels by 2050, according to the Los Angeles Times.
"The climate crisis is no longer out there in the future," Koretz told reporters at a news conference Friday. "It's here. It's now."
Boston and San Francisco are among the cities with the aggressive target Koretz suggested. He plans on introducing it in a motion during council's next meeting.
The city is already well on its way to achieving the goal it previously set forth of slashing emissions by 35 percent by 2030. Koretz's office told the publication that Los Angeles had cut emissions 30 percent below 1990 levels by 2013.
Koretz's multilayered plan includes installing more solar energy on city rooftops and energy efficiency retrofits across the city. He also wants the Los Angeles Department of Water and Power to meet the same emissions target two decades before the city.
The department's emissions have dropped 22 percent from 1990's levels, with "even more dramatic" cuts in store as coal is eliminated from the mix at the Navajo and Intermountain power plants, spokesman Joe Ramallo the Times.
"The DWP is almost all the way there," Koretz said. "We just want to give them a nudge to get all the way there."
Koretz has displayed a track record of environmental concern since assuming office five years ago. He was one of two members to introduce a motion for a fracking moratorium last year. He also introduced a motion banning the cultivation and sale of genetically engineered seeds and plants.
Natural Resources Defense Council
Pollution produced by the region’s millions of diesel and gasoline powered vehicles cause a heavy health burden for everyone living in Southern California, but evidence shows that it harms families and individuals living within approximately 300 yards of L.A.’s heavily-trafficked roadways even more. Although these families and other advocates have repeatedly asked for monitors to be placed along the roadways to determine exactly how much pollution comes from these roadways, the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) has refused to do so.
“How will the EPA protect us against air pollution if they won’t even measure how much is in the air?” asked Adrian Martinez, staff attorney with NRDC. “On many days, smog blankets our region as a result of the millions of tailpipes on our highways. People living near these freeways are at the greatest risk, yet lack adequate protection and the much needed air monitoring stations in these very obvious places with foul air. Regulators are actively avoiding this problem instead of addressing it, and that needs to stop.”
The federal lawsuit contends EPA violated the law by allowing the South Coast Air Quality Management District to ignore high levels of air pollution breathed by those living near freeways. NRDC and local advocates have sought to ensure air monitors are placed along the region’s highways to better inform the local air district about the hazardous levels of particulate air pollution, and to arm them with the information necessary to take action to protect the region’s residents.
“The science on this is clear,” said Martha Dina Arguello, executive director of Physicians for Social Responsibility-Los Angeles. "People who breathe this polluted air suffer the staggering health impacts of air pollution at every phase of life. We know that women who live near heavy traffic roadways have a greater risk of having a low birth weight child and the child is more likely to develop asthma. Over a lifetime, living with this pollution also increases the likelihood of adult onset asthma, heart attacks, cancer and premature death. The evidence strongly suggests that people—especially children and seniors—who live near these roadways are exposed to much higher levels of pollution and therefore much more vulnerable to the impacts of pollution. It’s unconscionable that the EPA refuses to collect the information necessary to protect people’s health,” Arguello added.
Without monitors, regulators can ignore whether air quality for the more than 1.2 million people who live near high-traffic roadways despite the Clean Air Act’s mandate that all residents breathe healthy air. This litigation seeks to ensure that the EPA follows the letter.
“We’ve provided the EPA the studies that show that the air quality along freeways can be really bad—much worse than almost everywhere else. But they refuse to monitor our air. Why?” asked Mark Lopez of Communities for a Better Environment. “Monitors would allow all of us to know if there is a problem. If not—great! But if there is, we can work together to address it. We just want our children and families to be safe. Why won’t they collect the information needed to make sure that we’re safe?” added Lopez.
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The Natural Resources Defense Council (NRDC) is an international nonprofit environmental organization with more than 1.3 million members and online activists. Since 1970, our lawyers, scientists, and other environmental specialists have worked to protect the world's natural resources, public health, and the environment. NRDC has offices in New York City, Washington, D.C., Los Angeles, San Francisco, Chicago, Livingston, Montana, and Beijing. Visit us at www.nrdc.org