The North Hills West Neighborhood Council is considering submitting a Community Impact Statement in support of Los Angeles Council File 21-0352 which instructs the DWP to prepare a Long Term Resource Plan to achieve 100% renewable energy by 2035 in a way that is equitable and has minimal adverse impacts on ratepayers.
So far eight Neighborhood Councils have submitted Community Impact Statements in favor of the council file and one calls for a cost/benefit analysis to determine how the plan would impact rates and requests environmental review consistent with CEQA requirements, which should be required and not short-circuited in order to make a 2035 target.
In an LA Times article Los Angeles now has a road map for 100% renewable energy from March 2021, they note that this will not be an easy goal to reach. “Los Angeles will need to add 470 to 730 megawatts of solar, wind and batteries every year for the next 25 years on average, NREL found — three times as much as in recent years, on the high end. Building all those facilities will require navigating land-use disputes…”
Other environmentalists have pointed to concerns about building battery capacity, by scraping metals including lithium, a key component in batteries, from deserts or the sea floor. And then there are those who note the large store of lithium just relinquished in Afghanistan.
There are many elements involved in getting to 100% renewable energy and supporting renewable energy is a key factor in supporting community resiliency.
Learn more about the National Renewable Energy Laboratory, doing much of the research in this arena: