Los Angeles Makes Sustainability Progress with Innovative Plan

Los Angeles Makes Sustainability Progress with Innovative Plan

Only recently have Los Angeles and sustainability been mentioned in the same sentence. With its polluted air, freeways clogged with millions of single-passenger cars, chronic water shortages, and over-lit nighttime cityscape, Los Angeles has been a poster city for poor urban sustainability—until last spring.

That’s when the administration of Mayor Eric Garcetti launched the residential Property Assessed Clean Energy program, or PACE. PACE is part of LA’s Sustainable City pLAn, an ambitious project to expand clean energy use, conserve water, and create green jobs. PACE helps Angelenos finance sustainable home upgrades, such as solar panels and energy-efficient heating and cooling systems, through an assessment on their annual property tax bills.

Since the program’s launch last year, LA residents have financed more than seventy million dollars in home efficiency upgrades, resulting in a projected savings of two hundred million gallons of water and two hundred eighty million kilowatt hours of power. And the demand for these upgrades has created six hundred green jobs. It’s a big step toward urban sustainability by the City of Angels.

I’m John Howell for 3Bl Media.