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Recent Energy Initiatives in California
The LA Times has several recent stories on the latest Los Angeles green energy initiatives and contention over a proposed cap-and-trade system for California emissions.
Los Angeles Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa announced a new green energy initiative to install solar panels on the city’s buildings, telling the crowd atop a Los Angeles Convention Center parking garage, “Clean energy is not a luxury: its a necessity.” The project, headed up by the city’s Department of Water and Power, hopes to create 400 union jobs over the next three years while moving toward the state’s goal of generating 280 megawatts of solar power (currently the DWP is generating only 10.5 megawatts of solar power). The DWP will have $270 million over the next nine years for installing solar panels, issuing rebates to companies that install panels, and starting public/private partnerships to implement solar technology.
Plan on constructing a building in Los Angeles? Then get out your green building checklist, as two City Council committees voted in favor of creating some of the strictest green building ordinances in the nation. The ordinance, which had broad support from some of the area’s largest developers, the L.A. Business Council, trade unions, and environmental groups, would require any privately built projects over 50,000 square feet to meet the Leadership in Energy and Environment Design (LEED) standard developed by the U.S. Green Building Council, a non-profit group. Brad Cox, Chairman of the L.A. Business Council, told council committees that “building green is good for business, building green is good for developers and building green is good for the city of Los Angeles.” According to studies, the average green building uses 36 percent less energy, 40 percent less water, and reduces greenhouse gas emissions by 40 percent, numbers that can help the city fulfill its pledge to bring its carbon emissions to 35 percent below 1990 levels by 2030.
A proposed cap-and-trade system for California is facing strong opposition from low-income community and environmental justice groups who claim the program would allow big polluters, usually located by poor neighborhoods, to “buy their way out” of reducing emissions. “Cap and trade is a charade to continue business as usual,” Angela Meszaros told the LA Times. Meszaros is co-chair of the Environmental Justice Advisory Committee created by California’s Air Resources Board to advise the state on avoiding disproportionate impacts on low-income communities as it tries to reduced greenhouse gas emissions under a 2006 global warming law. Instead of cap and trade, environmental justice groups suggested a carbon fee on polluters. “This problem is too big and complicated to rule any technique off the table,” said Mary Nichols, chairman of the air board, whose agency will examine all the various systems from cap and trade to fees.
Image: Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa; Credit: flickr.com/ericrichardson
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