Recently, as part of the Energy Cost Adjustment Factor (ECAF) rate action undertaken by the Board of Water and Power Commissioners this week, Los Angeles Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa announced a proposal for a Carbon Reduction Surcharge. This surcharge will change the way Los Angeles achieves its renewable energy goals while spurring job creation in the city.
This action is one of many that the City of Los Angeles is taking to continue sustainability efforts. PMC interviewed the mayor to find out what else the City of Los Angeles, one of the most densely populated cities in the country, is doing to effect change.
Interview with Los Angeles Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa
Antonio Ramón Villaraigosa is the Mayor of Los Angeles, California, the third Mexican American to have ever held the office in the city. He was elected on May 17, 2005, defeating incumbent mayor James Hahn, and then re-elected for a second term in 2009. Prior to his election as mayor, Villaraigosa was the California State Assemblyman for the 45th District, the Speaker of the California State Assembly, and the Los Angeles City Councilman representing the 14th District.
Before being elected to public office, Villaraigosa was a labor organizer. He also served as a national co-chairman of Hillary Rodham Clinton's 2008 presidential campaign and as a member of President Barack Obama's Transition Economic Advisory Board.
Source: en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Antonio_Villaraigosa
You are now successfully into your second term as Mayor of LA. What are some of the environmental trends that have caught your attention for Los Angeles?
When I came into office, my goal was to transform Los Angeles into the greenest, cleanest big city in the country. We have made tremendous strides in all aspects of environmental protection, from cleaning our air and conserving our water to promoting renewable energy and combating climate change.
We are transforming the city into the home of green building by mandating the most far-reaching green building standard in the country; greening the largest municipal utility in the country, as well as the Port of Los Angeles and airports; and becoming the capital of the electric car.
What are some solutions that have been successful for LA and what are some that haven't?
In 2007, I set a highly aggressive goal to reduce greenhouse gas emissions by 35% below 1990 levels by the year 2030.
Our approach to addressing climate change is both bold and comprehensive as we look at all ways to mitigate our emissions and adapt to the impact of global warming. To that end, the City of Los Angeles has embarked on a creative and practical path to reduce carbon emissions, specifically in the areas of renewable energy, energy efficiency, transportation, land use, and growing the green economy.
We are mitigating our emissions from energy generation and promoting energy efficiency throughout the city. We are mitigating emissions from our port and airport and from transportation.
The city owns the largest municipal utility in the country — the Los Angeles Department of Water and Power. There, we have set aggressive goals to obtain 20% of power from renewable sources by 2010 and 40% by 2020. When I entered office, our renewable portfolio was about 3% on an annualized basis. Today, we are at 14% on an annualized basis and on our way to 20% by 2010.
But more profound is our goal to be a “coal-free” utility by 2020. Currently, we are receiving 40% of energy production from coal. When we get off of coal, we will eliminate about 10 million metric tons of carbon.
Following my roll-out of the GreenLA Climate Change Action Plan, the carbon emissions from our municipal operations are now 11% below 1990 levels. The Kyoto Goal is “7% below 1990” by 2012.
We were able to make impacts on climate change with some far-reaching energy and environmental programs, such as:
- Increasing our use of renewable energy – a goal of 20% renewable by 2010.
- Implementing the largest LED streetlight retrofit program in the world where we are replacing more than 140,000 streetlights with LED (which will reduce carbon emissions by more than 40,000 tons a year and save more than $10 million in energy costs).
- Increasing our energy efficiency programs to yield 318 gigawatt hours of energy savings (a 19-fold increase since 2005).
Water is a life source. Los Angeles has about 10 million residents, with projected growth in the next 10 years. What are some of the solutions for Los Angeles to address population growth with limited resources?
(Note: The City of Los Angeles has a population of a little over 4 million people. The Los Angeles County has a population of almost 10 million.)
Water is essential to maintaining life and economy, and we often take its availability for granted. We can no longer do this. Although we have received some rain, statewide water supplies were cut in previous years and we have experienced multiple dry years, so our water supply remains low.
We project that by 2030 demand for water will increase by 15% in LA — about 3 and a half billion gallons to accommodate projected increases in population.
LA's future depends on our willingness to adopt an ethic of sustainability. If we don't commit ourselves to conserving and recycling water, we will tap ourselves out. Our Water Supply Plan, launched in 2007, makes a basic promise to our kids. We are going to recycle and conserve enough water to meet 100% of new demand.
The fact is that Los Angeles residents do a great job of water conservation. Four million Angelenos today are using the same amount of water as three million Angelenos did 25 years ago. That’s why I know we can keep conserving.
We can do this. We can do it by turning off the water when we brush our teeth, taking shorter showers. We can do it by reducing watering of lawns and by landscaping with native plants that thrive on Los Angeles’ weather. We can do it by incorporating sustainability and water conservation into new development, by capturing stormwater runoff and returning it to storage as groundwater through the use of permeable pavements, swales, and creative landscaping. And we need to recycle every drop of water we can.
Since we instituted aggressive water conservation measures, the City of Los Angeles hit a 32-year record low for water usage. The month of July 2009 saw a 17% reduction, and during the month of August 2009 overall water use was 22.6% lower than the base year.
Getting positive messages to the youth of Los Angeles will be key to a more sustainable city. How do you see educating younger kids about the importance of the environment and protecting it? Are there any particular programs that you feel are on the right track with this?
The youth in Los Angeles know the importance of environment. In fact, every year, my office hosts an Environmental Youth Conference in the fall. Every year more and more youth participate, and in fact, this year more than 5,000 youth from all across the city attended. This tells me that the youth are on board. Additionally, the City has supported and initiated a number of youth-based environmental education efforts such as the Los Angeles Conservation Corps and the Infrastructure Academy, which is providing job skills to prepare youth to enter into the emerging green workforce.
There is a lot of rancor about environmental regulations hurting businesses and killing jobs. How do you view this allegation?
There was a time when the majority of thinking was that protecting the environment was at the expense of job creation. But that time has long passed. In fact, I firmly believe that we can and we must see job creation and environmental protection as partners for a sustainable future.
It "takes a village," as they say, to achieve results. Is there something that you can convey to local businesses to encourage involvement in helping with issues with the environment?
Local businesses understand better than any of us of the importance of efficiency. From a business perspective, exercising sustainable practices such as energy efficiency, water conservation, and recycling are in fact cost-saving measures.
What do you see as the key areas to making LA sustainable over the long term?
Perhaps the greatest challenge or barrier for addressing sustainability is history. Local governments operate just like human beings; once certain practices become institutionalized, change is hard to enact.
For example, Los Angeles has a historic love affair with the automobile. The love for the car sits deep in the fabric of our city, so affecting the transportation sector calls for a long-term strategy that involves federal and state engagement in regulating greenhouse gas emissions from automobiles. In 2007, I decided to set a highly aggressive goal to reduce greenhouse gas emissions by 35% below 1990 levels by the year 2030. To that end, Los Angeles is making every effort to reduce greenhouse gases from transportation. We have the largest Automated Traffic Surveillance and Control System (ATSAC) in the country and 99% of MTA buses run on an alternative fuel source — compressed natural gas.
We also have over 50% of our trash trucks and street sweepers running on natural gas. And we are beginning to act on our serious commitment to renewable energy by making Los Angeles plug-in ready for a new electric vehicle industry.
So while history can significantly impede the ease with which local governments attempt to introduce changes to address environmental concerns, history also shows us what we have yet to achieve.
This is where global collaboration best comes into play. World history is much longer than that of a single city or nation. Looking back through the annals of history provides us with a longer view of past problems and ineffective solutions, along with a wider array of strategies to think through and successes to be shared. And most importantly, it provides a clear picture of how we are all actors affecting climate change. Knowing each others’ history is the first step to moving beyond it, and Los Angeles has done exactly this. The collaboration among sister cities has led to the creation of concrete action plans to implement change.
As the second largest municipality in the United States, what has Los Angeles accomplished environmentally that other cities could emulate?
Los Angeles has taken the lead on addressing the issue of climate change and sustainability in many areas.
In renewable energy, we announced the SolarLA plan and we built the largest wind farm on the west coast with Pine Tree.
- Solar LA is a plan to build 1,280 megawatts (MW) of solar power capacity for Los Angeles, meeting 10% of the city’s energy resources by 2020. This amount of solar power would displace about 1.6 million tons of CO2, which equates to taking more than 280,000 cars off the road or planting more than 11,000 trees.
- Pine Tree Wind Farm: Broke ground in 2007 and operational in July 2009. Pine Tree is a 120 MW wind farm and reductions are equivalent to 200,000 metric tons of carbon.
In the area of energy efficiency, we have gains in carbon emission reduction.
Just this last month, the Los Angeles Department of Water and Power (LADWP) set a new record in energy efficiency.
- In 2008–2009, the LADWP saved 318 gigawatt-hours (GWH) of electricity, a 19-fold increase in savings since 2005. This is equivalent to removing 53,000 households from the grid and results in 178,700 metric tons of greenhouse gas emissions avoided.
- LED Streetlight Replacement Program: Launched the largest LED street light replacement program in the world, which will replace 140,000 street lights with LED. This will eliminate more than 40,500 tons of CO2 and produce an energy savings of more than 66.6 million gigawatt hours. If each city in the world were to adopt a LED streetlight program, we could reduce the world’s carbon emissions by 40 million metric tons.
- CFL distribution: Two CFL light bulbs have been distributed to each of the 1.2 million residential households in LA — a total of 2.4 million CFLs. This program is projected to save up to 121 gigawatt-hours of energy and 68,000 thousand metric tons of CO2 each year.
And in the area of water conservation, we set new records, with the City of Los Angeles hitting a 32-year record low for water usage. Through our aggressive water conservation measures, the month of July saw a 17% reduction, and during the month of August overall water use was 22.6% lower than the base year and 16.6% lower than the prior year.
What do you want to be your legacy after you leave office? What good work do you see as being long-lasting or which will be realized in the future?
My biggest hope for Los Angeles is that it continues to push for bold and comprehensive approaches to addressing sustainability and climate change. Since 2007, our city has embarked on a creative and practical path to reduce emissions, specifically in the areas of renewable energy, energy efficiency, transportation, land use, and growing the green economy. In fact, since I rolled out our GreenLA Climate Change Action Plan, we have reduced our carbon emissions by 11% below 1990 levels, exceeding the Kyoto Goal of “7% below 1990.”
But climate change is not a problem that disappears simply because you’re ahead of schedule. We have to continually move beyond adaptation strategies and look for new ways to mitigate our emissions. And here in Los Angeles, there is still work to be done. For example, yes, we have set aggressive goals for our Department of Water and Power — the largest municipal utility in the country — to obtain 20% of power from renewable sources by 2010 and 40% by 2020. But more profound is our goal to be a coal-free utility by 2020. Currently, we receive 40% of energy production from coal. When we get off of coal, we will reduce about 10 million metric tons of carbon. This kind of sweeping, tangible change is what is needed to combat the years of harm we’ve caused to our environment.
The county of Los Angeles provides support services to cities, residents and organizations
Los Angeles County Department of Public Works is supporting its cities by providing two great environmental resources, Clean LA and LACoMAX.
Los Angeles County Department of Public Works is supporting its cities by providing two great environmental resources, Clean LA and LACoMAX.
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CleanLA.com is a resource for Los Angeles County residents, businesses and government providing access to a number of award-winning environmental programs. From the basics of reduce, reuse and recycle, to household hazardous and electronic waste collection events and composting, the Clean LA site offers information and links to answer your environmental questions. Questions such as: Where do I dispose of an old TV? Where is the next e-waste event in my city? Clean LA provides local solutions that contribute to global efforts.
LACoMAX.com is an online materials exchange service sponsored by the County of Los Angeles Department of Public Works. LACoMAX.com benefits businesses, individuals, schools, and communities by offering an exchange of materials that support multiple projects and needs. Businesses are encouraged to list free overruns, overstock items, and reusable materials. People can use this service to find something they need, give away their usable materials, or discover a business opportunity. The added bonus is that LACoMAX.com helps conserve landfill space by reducing waste.
Developing climate change, sustainability, and energy reduction plans and programs is an inherently expensive proposition at the outset. In good years, local governments have a tendency to support feel-good programs that support sustainability and prioritize social benefit programs. However, in years when there are financial challenges, local governments prioritize essential services such as police, fire, water, and wastewater services. Keeping the lights on is more of a priority than figuring out how to reduce the impact of having them on. In these tough financial times for local governments, the most effective strategy for moving energy, climate change, and sustainability programs forward is evolving external sources of funding provided by federal, state, regional, and local sources.
Through the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act (ARRA), more commonly referred to as "the stimulus package," we have found a robust source of funding for energy efficiency and conservation, alternative energy, climate change, and the resulting job creation that these initiatives have created. One major component of ARRA was the Energy Efficiency and Conservation Block Grant (EECBG). The purpose of the EECBG funding was to fund the Energy Independence and Security Act of 2007, which, among other things, is intended to move the U.S. towards greater energy independence and security, increase the production of renewable fuels, and increase energy efficiency.
ARRA is not the only game in town, however. There are numerous organizations and agencies that have money available now for local government's use in developing programs that deal with energy, climate change, and sustainability. The U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD) is also working on a Sustainable Communities Planning Grant program that is anticipated to fund a multitude of plans and programs such as the development of climate action plans and sustainability plans.
The California experience shows one path to funding sustainability and climate change programs. Combining funding streams from the federal government, the state (such as the Strategic Growth Council and the California Energy Commission), metropolitan planning organizations, air pollution control districts, utilities, and nonprofits such as foundations and environmental organizations makes dealing with the cost of instituting policy changes and infrastructure modifications a reality.
The more creative grant coordinators for local governments could feasibly develop a program that is entirely funded through grants and loans. One example of this approach is in the San Francisco Bay Area where the Bay Area Air Quality Management District released grants for projects that reduced greenhouse gas emissions. A number of programs were developed through this initial funding in 2007, and when additional funding through ARRA became available, these agencies were able to start implementing the plans developed through the air district's grants. Utilities such as Pacific Gas and Electric, San Diego Gas and Electric and the Sacramento Municipal Utility District, among others, are supporting greenhouse gas reduction, energy efficiency, and conservation programs that directly or indirectly lead to greenhouse gas emission reductions. Planners should talk to the local utility and get involved in the discussions taking place in the region to become aware of the opportunities available.
Climate change touches almost everything we do as individuals and as citizens in society. As a result, collaborating on the issue of climate change and sustainability is essential to a successful program. Working together allows for a more robust regional approach to the issue, which is an inherently global problem, while all positioning regions nicely for grant opportunities. Such is the case of Joint Venture Silicon Valley, the Joint Policy Committee, and many others. These organizations allow for joint applications for grants and leverage the population size and matching funds of their member jurisdictions to be more competitive when applying for grants to fund regional initiatives.
In the end, there are many ways to fund energy, climate change, and sustainability programs. This often requires coordination with agencies, organizations, or jurisdictions that public decision makers are not familiar with. In the end, the conversations we have to help develop funding for local programs will more effectively allow us to coordinate regionally and have more of an impact at the state, federal, and global level. With the funding available now, there is every reason for local governments to move forward with planning for our next generation.
For additional information on potential funding opportunities available now, please visit www.carbonconsious.us
Adapting to climate change is now becoming institutionalized in planning and policy around the globe. In this timely webinar, experts in the field review current adaptation policy developments. Vermont Law School environmental law professor Teresa Clemmer and American Planning Association International Division member Michael Cote will briefly recap their visit to the COP15 Climate Conference in Copenhagen. Clemmer will then cover important adaptation developments at the U.S. federal level discussed at the COP15, including requirements that certain agencies review projects for climate impacts. Cote will then show that adaptation has now become big business and argue that planners need to take note of these advancements. Adapting to projected climate impacts, for example, is being taken seriously by the military, the insurance industry, and even the oil and gas extraction industries. And as with most environmental planning, adaptation planning requires public, political, and private partnership support. Cote will then present a practical, flexible adaptation planning model with technical resources and thumbnail case studies to help you get started.
- Recycling 1 ton of paper saves the equivalent of 17 trees, saves enough energy to power an average home for six months, saves 7,000 gallons of water, and keeps 60 pounds of pollutants out of the air.
- Making recycled paper instead of new paper uses 64 percent less energy, and uses 58 percent less water.
- Americans throw away enough office and writing paper each year to build a wall 12 feet high stretching from New York City to Los Angeles.
- Recycling one aluminum can saves enough energy to run a television or operate a computer for three hours.
- Every glass bottle recycled saves enough energy to light a 100-watt light bulb for four hours.