building decarbonization

Making Building Decarbonization Work for LA Renters

The City of Los Angeles at night

A new UCLA report recommends policies to green existing buildings in a way that protects and supports residential tenants.

Los Angeles’ ambitious “Green New Deal” calls for, among other things, eliminating or offsetting building emissions and reducing building energy use by 44%, both by 2050. This is an impressive and ambitious target, and while the city has begun restricting some emissions from new buildings, it is still figuring out how to tackle the far …

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California must move more quickly to decarbonize existing residential buildings

New Report recommends scaling California’s Go Green financing program faster, changing program design and implementation

California has set ambitious climate goals, which include reducing state greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions 40 percent by 2030 and reducing GHGs 85 percent (and achieving statewide carbon neutrality) by 2045. Amongst all the sectors state leaders seek to address, existing buildings (which are responsible for over 10 percent of state emissions), and especially existing residential …

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Three Questions about the Ninth Circuit Panel’s CRA v. Berkeley Decision

The James R. Browning U.S. Court of Appeals Building

This recent decision has important implications for state and local efforts to protect their residents and reduce greenhouse-gas emission, but boy is it hard to wrap your head around.

On Monday, a three-judge panel of the Ninth Circuit issued a ruling in California Restaurant Association v. City of Berkeley, addressing whether the federal Energy Policy and Conservation Act (EPCA) invalidates a Berkeley municipal ordinance specifying when natural-gas infrastructure can be extended into new buildings. Many in the housing-quality and building-decarbonization space have been eagerly …

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Making Heat Pumps Accessible and Affordable to Decarbonize Buildings

New policy report on solutions to improve deployment of heat pump technologies in existing buildings | Webinar July 19

Join us for a webinar to discuss the report findings with leaders on July 19 at 1 pm PT. RSVP here You may have seen heat pumps (or #heatpumpnation) in the news recently and wondered, what really is this device? How do heat pumps relate to building decarbonization goals, national security, and climate mitigation efforts? …

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New Report: Improving Access to Energy Data

Policy solutions to support the data needed for resilient decarbonization

Today, the Center for Law, Energy and the Environment (CLEE) at Berkeley Law and the Emmett Institute on Climate Change and the Environment at UCLA Law are releasing a new report, Data Access for a Decarbonized Grid, which highlights key policy solutions to expand access to the energy data needed to operate a fully decarbonized …

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New Report: Accelerating Building Decarbonization

Solutions to drive the electrification transition / Expert webinar February 23

Today, the Center for Law, Energy and the Environment (CLEE) at Berkeley Law and the Emmett Institute on Climate Change and the Environment at UCLA Law are releasing a new report, Building toward Decarbonization, which highlights the key barriers and policy solutions to accelerate building electrification retrofits in California’s high-priority communities. California’s ambitious commitment to …

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