UC Berkeley

Climate change mitigation policy in California increasingly centers residential heating electrification: the transition from using gas or other combustible fuels to using electricity to heat homes, heat water, and cook. How does the residential heating transition in Northern California interact with physical and institutional networks of electricity and gas provision, home upgrade provision, and planning imperatives and ideals? The first part of this dissertation uses geospatial and statistical analyses of utility, census, and climate data to explore two spatial distributions that will shape the impacts and meanings of residential electrification in Northern California. Chapter 1 assesses the ability of the electric distribution grid – designed for a population that largely uses non-electric fuels, including gas, for heating – to accommodate increasing electric loads due to residential electrification. Chapter 2 investigates the socio-economic distribution of heating and cooling use in the study area to understand the extent to which the services that residential electrification is meant to deliver – space heating and cooling – is, itself, uneven. The second part of this dissertation uses qualitative data, including semi-structured interviews, participant and event observation, and document analysis, to explore the turn to “equitable electrification” as a local climate planning imperative in the Bay Area in Northern California. Chapter 3 studies how concepts of equity are constructed in cities, focusing particularly on how planning relationships – between cities, community-based organizations, and consultants – shape equitable electrification imperatives. Chapter 4 looks at how local actors, particularly those that adopt framings or pledges of equitable electrification, interact with wider structures on which they have seemingly limited authority, focusing on structures of corporate utility energy provision and home retrofit funding. The dissertation concludes with a discussion of how these four chapters, taken together, point to the importance of a broadened understanding of participation and democratization in (equitable) transition, and to the importance of furthering an understanding of energy as a relational system, interdependent with people and places.