By Lauren Dunlap

As Los Angeles transitions to clean electricity, organizers, advocates, researchers, and government agency representatives are working together to bring the benefits of clean energy to each neighborhood and community. 

For years, the UCLA Luskin Center for Innovation (LCI) has helped bring community expertise into local energy decisions through the LA100 Equity Strategies project. Now, UCLA LCI researchers are embarking upon a new, local-yet-global energy transition planning project sponsored by the Canadian New Frontiers in Research Fund called, “Justice First: Community-Embedded Energy Transition Planning for Climate Resilience.” Justice First brings together faculty from universities across the globe in a three-year, $5 million project. Each research team will partner with a local organization to develop a hyperlocal, community-led energy transition plan for sites in Canada, the U.S., Mexico, Norway, India, and Ghana. In addition to the local planning effort, the project will include a comparison across project sites to identify common and disparate opportunities and challenges in locally grounded energy justice transition efforts globally.

UCLA LCI is partnering with Redeemer Community Partnership, a nonprofit community development corporation located in the Exposition Park neighborhood of South Los Angeles. Through a collaboratively designed research process, the team will identify strategies to address the specific climate risks that Exposition Park residents face. They will incorporate justice principles and embed local values in the plan to support the community’s well-being. The project will build on both organizations’ past and present work related to building electrification and the shift away from fossil fuel-based energy.

“We look forward to exchanging insights with our global and local partners, sharing what we’ve learned from L.A.’s community-led energy justice successes, and building upon them with a new collaboration,” says Greg Pierce, UCLA LCI co-director and project PI. 

“We look forward to partnering with UCLA LCI on this vital effort to ensure that South L.A. residents receive the financial and public health benefits of transitioning from methane combustion to clean energy,” says Richard Parks, the project lead from Redeemer Community Partnership.

As UCLA LCI’s partner, Redeemer Community Partnership will co-design the research process to engage community members through workshops and other activities. Since its founding in 1992, Redeemer Community Partnership has worked to improve public health and quality of life in its neighborhood through programming, organizing, and advocacy. As a member of the STAND-LA coalition, the nonprofit has organized against oil drilling located mere feet from its members’ homes, with major recent wins.

Read more about the project here. Click the following links for more information on LCI’s research on community-led climate action and energy equity.