For Los Angeles County to achieve 100% local water, increasing local water supply and reducing local demand for water must occur simultaneously. Numerous water conservation efforts exist and have been proposed to serve this purpose, but there is a lack of quantitative data on how each of these water conservation efforts functions in the county. Thus, there is a need to evaluate the full portfolio of potential conservation options to identify practices that would maximize benefits. The UCLA research team carried out this evaluation, taking into consideration Los Angeles-specific conditions such as the local climate and the inability to reduce customers’ water demand (often termed, “demand hardening”) due to previously implemented programs. 

Los Angeles County is the largest county in the nation with a population of approximately 10 million people. By 2050, the county is projected to have a 15% increase in population, adding 1.5 million more residents. With projected urban population growth alongside the effects of climate change, providing Angelenos with reliable energy, water and an environment that will enhance their health will be a challenge. The UCLA Sustainable LA Grand Challenge (SLA GC) was developed to address these problems and ultimately transition Los Angeles County to 100% renewable energy, 100% locally sourced water, and enhanced ecosystem and human health by 2050. In response to SLA GC’s original goals, The NOW Institute research team undertook a first-round assessment of where the county stands today and what can be done to achieve those targets by 2050.

Wastes and biomass residues from agricultural, dairy, forestry and household activities are sustainable energy resources that are widely available and replenishable. They can be used to derive alternative energy products like electricity, heat and bio-jet fuel. However, the transport and storage of waste are costly and processing it requires substantial energy. In order to consider wastes and biomass residues as potential alternative energy sources, there needs to be a holistic assessment of their potential energy production, net energy gain, and greenhouse gas emission reductions. This project aims to undertake this assessment in the contiguous United States.

The Los Angeles region lies within one of only 36 biodiversity hotspots in the world with more than 4,000 unique native plant and animal species recorded by community science efforts to date. However, development, direct exploitation, climate change, pollution and invasive species threaten our native biodiversity. To better manage our native biodiversity and ensure future generations benefit from the ecosystem services such as food production, environmental health and wellbeing, we need to better understand the breadth of the diversity that exists in our region. Realizing that species conservation efforts must incorporate both evolutionary and genetic data, the UCLA research team will apply genomic tools to assess the genetic diversity of species across the Los Angeles Basin and provide recommendations for effective management strategies to preserve and enhance these critical natural resources.

The Sustainable LA Grand Challenge of UCLA has an ambitious goal of helping transition Los Angeles County to 100% renewable energy by 2050 through innovations in science, technology and policy. An important first step is to determine the balance of accessible renewable energy resources and its distribution and storage. To address this data gap, researchers assessed the 2050 renewable energy potential for the Los Angeles region (defined by the City of Los Angeles, Los Angeles County and the greater metropolitan area, including the surrounding counties) and presented feasible pathways for achieving the 100% renewable energy goal. This study is a preliminary assessment of the energy portfolio for the entire L.A. region.

In 2018, the transportation sector represented over 28%, the largest share, of the total U.S. greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions. Automated vehicles, a rapidly evolving technology, have been modeled to reduce GHG emissions up to 94% and bring accident prevention, smoother traffic and better service to people facing driving difficulties other projected benefits of automated vehicles include reduced infrastructure needs but serving the same demand and potentially more efficient public transportation systems that eliminate transit stops. However, as of 2016 there had not been a field experiment study conducted locally to test and verify the impacts of automated vehicles within Los Angeles County. In this project, researchers ran an automated vehicle prototype on various routes in the county to document the effects on GHG emissions and sustainable transportation.

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.

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.  

The City of Los Angeles is undertaking various initiatives to track and reduce energy and water consumption in existing buildings. Currently, there are significant barriers such as unreliable data and non-standardized tracking mechanisms in obtaining consumption data from the City’s building stock. Recognizing this challenge, the objective of Howe’s project is to create energy and water prediction tools that will determine the future needs based on the historical record of municipal buildings using regression models.