Master of Environmental Science and Management: Master's Group Project
(2021)
Local Clean Energy Vision for Southern California
Jordan Isken, Keene Morrow, Audrey Nolan, David Segan, Richard Viebrock
Andrew Plantinga, Kyle C. Meng
The Nature Conservancy, Clean Power Alliance
gp‑solsite@bren.ucsb.edu
Deliverables:
Description
There is a growing urgency to reduce greenhouse gas emissions to mitigate global climate change. The electric sector accounts for approximately 15% of California’s greenhouse gas emissions. Ambitious renewable energy generation targets can help mitigate these effects. Developing clean power locally provides multiple non-market benefits that community choice aggregators (CCAs) are eager to capture but this option costs more than remote utility scale solar and may face barriers to execution. This study aims to define “multiple benefit local clean energy” and “environmentally responsible local clean energy” in order to explore the benefits of distributed energy resources.