A power grid is a network for delivering electricity to consumers. Because utility structure is widely understudied, a critical component to “greening” the power grid is fully understanding the current system. In the Los Angeles region, two separate entities provide power to residents and are subject to very different regulatory structures:   Los Angeles Department of Water and Power (LADWP) is the country’s largest municipally owned utility that serves the City of Los Angeles.   Southern California Edison (SCE) is an investor-owned utility that serves all of Los Angeles County outside the City of Los Angeles borders.   Having dual models of electricity service and regulation provides researchers with a unique opportunity to evaluate and compare the two. Researchers examined whether these two models under different forms of governance and ownership have necessary structures in place in order to achieve sustainability in the energy sector.

Raptors (e.g. hawks, owls, falcons) are large, charismatic bird species at the top of the food chain. They experienced human-driven population crashes during the 19th and 20th centuries. While a subset of these species has recovered in the Los Angeles region, others have not — and are intolerant of urbanization and other human activities. To help these species survive, it is critical to identify various factors, such as how well they can tolerate urbanization, as well as their historical and current habitats and nesting areas for future conservation practices. Nesting areas of raptors are also important indicators of ecosystem health in urban areas like the Los Angeles region.   Several government agencies, developers and nonprofit organizations collect data on urban-nesting raptors around the Los Angeles Basin, but these efforts are not well-coordinated. If this information can be consolidated, it will be useful to creating management tools like maps and databases that can help guide local policy and land-use decisions. 

Both the City of Los Angeles and Los Angeles County are engaged in various scientific projects to better understand, measure and preserve biodiversity in the region. However, missing from these approaches is any attempt to capture or measure the social, cultural and political perception of these critical resources across neighborhoods and different demographic groups. Biodiversity is both affected and perceived differently by different groups of people in urban environments, and there are many controversies associated with biodiversity management (e.g. coyote culling and pet safety, secondary poisoning from rat control, environmental contamination, flood control, habitat restoration, etc.).    City and County managers have only sparse and anecdotal data on how individuals respond to or engage with these issues and how their values relate to the goals and practices of biodiversity conservation. This project attempts to address this gap by eliciting responses directly from residents and collectives in the Los Angeles region to shape a more complete narrative of public understanding of and engagement on biodiversity issues. 

California’s water infrastructure is set up for flood control, with conveying streamflow to the ocean as efficiently as possible as its primary aim. Capturing and using more stormwater is one key way that Los Angeles County can decrease its dependency on water supplies sourced from hundreds of miles away. In adapting the state’s infrastructure for stormwater capture, storage and use, it is essential to plan carefully for the precipitation extremes of the future, which will become more intense and frequent due to climate change.  Atmospheric rivers—long corridors of water vapor traveling from the Pacific Ocean to California—are responsible for producing heavy precipitation and determining the state’s flood risk. Given this context, it is critical to understand how atmospheric river events will change in a warming world. In this project, researchers quantify projected changes in future precipitation driven by extreme atmospheric rivers in California by combining global climate model (GCM) with regional modeling.  

Battery storage is a new and emerging renewable energy technology with various challenges that must be addressed before it can be deployed at a larger scale. California has begun supporting energy storage with AB 2514 (Legislation passed to create a cleaner electrical grid and increase the use of renewable energy through the use of energy storage technologies) in 2013 but concerns such as whether battery technology can store enough energy to power homes and the lengths of battery lifetimes remain. This project conducted legal research examining the barriers and challenges of widely deploying distributed energy resources, or “behind-the-meter” storage, for customers served by investor-owned utilities in California.  

The shared Community Renewables program is a novel concept being implemented across the country, which enables customers to access clean power by joining a renewable energy project in their community. Thus far, including in California, the program is limited to a handful of solar energy projects and customers have very limited access. Customers who participate in community solar share solar output among themselves, as opposed to homeowners individually implementing the solar system to offset the electricity usage.  Given the potential to significantly expand renewable energy generation and use in the long run, this project explores the current status of the community renewables solar market both in Los Angeles County and the United States. The overall objective is to carry out in-depth research combining policy review, interviews and case studies to develop policy recommendations for expanding renewable energy production projects. 

Transportation emissions are a primary cause of Los Angeles’ notoriously poor air quality. Policymakers and “smart growth” advocates assert that intensifying land use around the public transit rail system will not only help accomplish transportation and environmental goals, but also housing and economic development goals. However, recent studies reveal that rail development is linked to gentrification and displacement of public transit’s core ridership. This project combined literature and policy review, spatial analysis and interviews to investigate underlying causes and develop future policy recommendations that prioritize social equity and minimize displacement. 

Zoning is the primary legislative tool through which land use is locally governed in the United States. In Los Angeles, zoning and land use exert a fundamental influence on the production, consumption and delivery of energy. While recent state and local policy has sought to integrate land use and sustainability practices, these efforts do not acknowledge the full extent of land use policy’s influence on urban energy systems. Thus, this project comprehensively mapped a history of L.A. County zoning and building code ordinances over the past 150 years and evaluated their impact on L.A.’s urban energy systems and public health.  

Assembly Bill 551 (AB 551), California’s Urban Agricultural Incentive Zones (UAIZ) Act, provides tax incentives to landowners to transform vacant lots into small-scale agricultural plots. Major benefits of implementing AB 551 include:  Reduced number of food deserts across the City of Los Angeles.  Reduced transportation pollution from shipping produce.  Creation of new green spaces in previously vacant lots.  Expansion of local farming coupled with sustainable agriculture technologies.  Thus, the implementation of AB 551 is crucial to ensure the City of L.A. meets its 2025 Sustainable City pLAn outcome to increase urban agriculture sites by 25%. The objective of this project is to research the adoption and implementation methods of other California cities and counties that have already adopted AB 551 to relay this information to LAFPC and to share the best implementation strategies for the City of L.A.

Community Choice Aggregation (CCA) is an energy supply model whereby local governments combine their energy loads and make the choice to purchase energy independently instead of from a utility. Therefore, CCA allows local governments to set their own renewable energy targets and potentially deliver a greater range of renewable energy to their customers. As of 2017, CCAs were projected to account for as much as 60% of California’s electricity load by 2020.   The objective of this project is to assess the potential of the CCA model in California to contribute to meeting 100% local, renewable energy by 2050 in Los Angeles County. Through analysis of policy and planning documents, media coverage and interviews, the project explored opportunities and benefits of this innovation in energy governance and service delivery. It also identified future challenges with the CCA model.