UCLA Luskin Center for Innovation

The LA Urban Forest Equity Collective (UFEC) co-produced a new method of classifying urban space, the Planting Tiers Framework, which allows community members, planners, and decision makers to consider varying levels of tree planting difficulty based on the built environment. This framework accounts for the limitations imposed on canopy expansion in areas that have been highly developed, historically disinvested, and where a preponderance of impervious surfaces limits planting opportunities.

Articulating a common language and enacting a targeted, coordinated prioritization and action plan can facilitate progress toward urban forest equity in areas where physical constraints exist. The tiered model presented here emerged from a necessity for scalability, and it seeks to codify new terminology for measuring levels of investment, trade offs, and opportunities to reach meaningful solutions to the systemic problem of urban forestry inequity. The tiers reflect types of interventions and levels of investments needed to reach a more equitably distributed tree canopy, from individual streets to council districts and larger political jurisdictions throughout Los Angeles.

This guidebook was written by Krystle Yu, a graduate of the Masters in Urban Planning program through the University of California Los Angeles, with guidance from the greater UFEC team.

This report serves as one of five individual documents developed over the course of Phase II of the Urban Forest Equity Collective. This document provides an overview of the Sylmar pilot neighborhood assessment, engagement, and tree planting implementation process. It is intended to provide a transparent view into the decisions, points of analysis and key themes derived over the course of this phase.

This report serves as one of five individual documents developed over the course of Phase II of the Urban Forest Equity Collective. This document provides an overview of the Central Alameda pilot neighborhood assessment, engagement, and tree planting implementation process. It is intended to provide a transparent view into the decisions, points of analysis, and key themes derived over the course of this phase.

The Urban Forest Equity Collective (UFEC) is a consortium of forestry experts, Los Angeles (LA) City staff, community-based organizations, researchers, and consultants aiming to create holistic strategies to advance urban forest equity in the lowest-canopied neighborhoods. By conducting a holistic analysis and creating strategies to advance urban forest equity in LA, UFEC presents methods to address decades of systemic disinvestment and planning decisions that have resulted in poor public health outcomes, limited access to green spaces, and a host of related consequences ranging from heat exposure and poor air quality, to food insecurity and reduced ecosystem services.

In March 2021, the National Renewable Energy Laboratory (NREL) released the Los Angeles 100% Renewable Energy Study (LA100), a milestone analysis laying out pathways for the Los Angeles Department of Water and Power (LADWP, or DWP) to transition to 100% renewable energy by 2045. Among the options presented by the study, the Board of Water and Power Commissioners (the Board) selected the most ambitious: a scenario in which the 100% clean energy goal is met ten years earlier, in 2035, without reliance on biofuels (the Early & No Biofuels scenario). Although a boon for the City of LA’s environmental goals, fulfilling this plan entails significant investments in infrastructure, renewable generating capacity, and cutting-edge technological solutions, all of which have cost and downstream affordability impacts.

Affordability refers to customers’ ability to pay their bills. The costs of the transition to 100% renewable electricity by 2035 are considerable, but necessary to combat climate change. Because home heating and transportation expenditures will be folded into electric bills as these services become electrified, increasing electricity costs are a particular equity concern for LADWP, as well as for LA residents and small businesses. Changing costs will directly influence energy burden and indirectly affect broader affordability for LADWP customers.  

Generally, public utilities, such as LADWP, must directly recover costs through revenue increases — including the cost of transitioning to renewable energy. This primarily means increasing rates and fees assessed on customers. Since many low- and moderate-income LA residents already struggle with the burden of their LADWP bills and general cost of living, cost and revenue increases at the utility scale have equity- and economic justice-related ramifications that must be directly addressed by policy. It is thus a delicate balancing act to complete the transition to 100% clean energy without creating untenable financial burdens on the Angelenos least able to absorb them, while also ensuring that the broader benefits of the transition are equitably distributed. This task is also made more challenging by the considerable uncertainty about the exact level and timing of costs associated with the utility’s 100% renewable investments. 

To that end, LADWP commissioned the UCLA Luskin Center for Innovation (LCI) and School of Law to conduct an Energy Affordability and Policy Solutions analysis as part of the broader LA100 Equity Strategies effort. This work builds on LCI’s past work and ongoing engagement on utility affordability and broader equity issues in both Los Angeles and California. Our work on affordability in LA100 Equity Strategies complements NREL’s affordability-focused rate structure and on-bill financing modeling. Consequently, our research goes beyond rate (re)design to focus on implementable, robust, and long-term structural solutions. Specifically, this entails data, analysis, and strategy architecture that will comprehensively address affordability, building on ongoing efforts.  This work also complements the UCLA Center for Neighborhood Knowledge’s analysis of ethnic small business energy equity issues, including affordability.

This research explores the energy intensities to implement an advanced water treatment process, specifically for direct potable reuse (DPR) and seeks to inform decision makers on important considerations facing water managers, energy managers, and environmental actors. This study uses the County of Los Angeles as a case study to quantitatively examine the water, energy, and greenhouse gas tradeoffs of utilizing different water supply sources. This project particularly models four different treatment trains which are being tested in California, three of which rely on advanced membrane filtration to achieve pathogen removal. Across these trains, the analysis shows various energy intensities ranging from 497 kWh/AF to 1,374 kWh/AF and estimates that their use could increase energy consumption at wastewater treatment facilities by a factor of 2.3 to 3.3. DPR can refer to two distinct management approaches untreated (raw) and treated water augmentation. The former refers to introducing recycled water directly into a drinking water system distribution network, while the latter requires the water to be treated again before reintroduction to the drinking water supply. We calculate the total energy needed for raw (untreated) water and treated water augmentation strategies and compare these results to existing water supply options like imported water and desalination. The first conclusion of the analysis is that despite the high energy intensity of DPR, raw water augmentation can be relatively energy efficient when compared to imports and desalination as it avoids large uphill pumping energy costs. Treated water augmentation, however, is shown to be as energy intensive as imports to Los Angeles County. The secondary analysis of the report details likely power mixes to be utilized by different water supply sources and, thus, quantifies their expected greenhouse gas intensities. Converse to energy intensity findings, imported water has a very low greenhouse gas intensity due to its primary source being hydroelectric. Extending the analysis to the timeline on which DPR may be implemented (est. 2035), findings show that the disparities in greenhouse gas intensities are greatly diminished. This means that carbon impacts in this sector can be a lower priority during future decision-making if energy providers can achieve their promised emissions reductions.

Los Angeles has been rated by the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) as the city facing the highest risk of natural hazards in the near future. In particular, Los Angeles is vulnerable to the adverse health impacts of climate change-induced extreme heat. Communities of color and low-income households face the greatest risk from extreme heat due to unjust policies like redlining, which have today led to the inequitable distribution of the resources necessary for communities to protect themselves against extreme heat. This report uses existing research and municipal climate plans, a geospatial analysis, interviews with subject matter experts, community focus groups, and an online community survey to assess how the City of Los Angeles can better build equitable heat policy and long-term resilience among the most impacted and vulnerable communities. In this report, we assess nine policy options based on their alignment with community preferences, their effectiveness at improving the health outcomes of frontline communities, whether they target an equitable redistribution of heat adaptation resources distribution, and their financial and administrative feasibility for implementation by the City of Los Angeles. Based on this analysis, we recommend that the City of Los Angeles immediately expand access to green space in frontline neighborhoods, increase available at-home heat adaptation resources for frontline communities, equitably distribute pedestrian shade structures and water access in frontline communities, and improve the accessibility of communications about available heat adaptation resources. We also recommend the implementation of community ambassador programs, more accessible heat workplace trainings, and the expansion of the resilience center network after measures are put in place to improve their desirability to frontline community members. In addition, this report provides meaningful steps which the City of Los Angeles can take to implement or improve upon equity within existing policies and programs.

In the face of climate change and ongoing environmental racism,1 the federal government and the State of California are engaged in parallel missions to invest in reducing environmental harms while uplifting pollution-burdened communities. At the federal level, the Biden administration’s Justice40 Initiative mandates that disadvantaged communities receive at least forty percent of the benefits of certain federal investments.2 Executive branch agencies are now working to meet Justice40 goals through their programs and investments. This work comes as the Bipartisan Infrastructure Law of 2021 and the Inflation Reduction Act of 2022 have provided over $500 billion in funding for environment- and climate-related programs, providing an unprecedented opportunity to advance environmental justice.3 As the federal government works to ensure that benefits are more equitably distributed throughout the country, it can learn from many state-level strategies and actions— especially from California, which has made significant progress in focusing investments in disadvantaged communities over the past decade.4 Our client, the California Strategic Growth Council (SGC), administers the Transformative Climate Communities program (TCC), a competitive grant program that invests in climate, economic, and health benefits for communities facing environmental and economic burdens.5 SGC is working to help federal agencies achieve more equitable investment outcomes, in part by incorporating design features of TCC into climate equity investments throughout the country. To inform SGC’s federal engagement efforts, we explore how agencies with Justice40- covered programs can adopt SGC’s equity-focused practices for place-based, community-driven climate programs to achieve more just investment outcomes. We identify opportunities for SGC to support federal agencies’ Justice40 goals, highlighting where there is potential to incorporate TCC features. We use several methods to address our research question, including interviews with federal government officials and SGC staff; a survey of federal employees; and an analysis of department websites, strategic plans, and other materials concerning Justice40 and environmental justice efforts.

ONE WAY TO MAKE SHORTER TRIPS more convenient, like those to and from transit stops, is to use a small, low-speed, human- or electric-powered transportation device – also known as micromobility. Often in the form of shared bicycles and scooters, the use of micromobility systems across the United States has exploded over the last decade. Unfortunately, access to these forms of transportation is not equitable in terms of race and socioeconomic status — which we define as mobility-disadvantaged. To address these inequities, many cities have enacted new requirements, but they are inconsistent and vary across the nation.