When compared to the city in which it resides, UCLA is a heaven for environmentally friendly construction. But with a little bit of collaboration we can use the knowledge from one of the best research universities in the world to help improve its community as well.
Researchers from the California Center for Sustainable Communities at UCLA released their Los Angeles County Energy Atlas last week, an online platform that maps where energy is being used and in what types of structures. The project condenses public information from the county assessor, energy companies and census data that previously existed, but in a disjointed and unorganized fashion.
This comes at a time when Los Angeles desperately needs to improve its environmental standards. Despite being in a drought and in need of greater efficiency, the county – which the city is a large part of – received a B- in UCLA’s 2015 environmental scorecard for energy usage.
The city should take advantage of UCLA’s resources and research to make targeted changes in improving its sustainability, starting with different buildings’ energy usage. Ideally, the county would use the energy atlas and the UCLA experts who compiled it to guide impending policy changes for greener urban planning.
Within the energy atlas, researchers put forth strategies for improving energy use in the city. While Mayer Eric Garcetti unveiled a sustainable city plan in April that outlined different benchmarks to create a more sustainable Los Angeles by 2050, the plan offered neither analysis or specifics. Interesting takeaways, such as the fact that poorer inland neighborhoods use more energy per square foot while coastal wealthier neighborhoods use much more per capita, reveal demographic-specific inefficiencies that should drive policies not just to improve city-wide sustainability, but equity.
These details matter, especially as regulations evolve. Title 24, which dictates the minimum standards of new and retrofitted buildings, is updated every three years to reflect the capability of new green technologies. Using the energy atlas, the city can both create higher expectations in the code’s 2016 iteration and become more efficient in adapting to updated regulations. Creating higher benchmarks and more efficient ways to approach them allows the city to progress at a more rapid rate.
The gap between available technology and our insight on the best way to use it prevents public policy from integrating the wealth of information necessary and available to solve Los Angeles’ environmental problems. However, collaboration between the researchers and city officials is necessary to make sure that environmental standards are put forth in the the best possible implementation. By consulting researchers throughout their process, legislators can ensure new policies adhere to the most advanced version in the near future.
UCLA itself has done a good job implementing changes based on its research that are projected to create energy savings and conserve water. Twenty-three buildings at UCLA are Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design-certified buildings, and UCLA requires that all new buildings meet LEED silver standards and exceed Title 24 requirements by 20 percent. The university’s lead in sustainability makes its researchers and their work most qualified to influence public policy in Los Angeles.
All of the information in the atlas has been available to the public, but until now, has been left unanalyzed, which speaks to the severity of the city’s lack of insight into buildings’ energy usage. By comparing factors like geography, building age, building code, zip code and income, researchers were able to identify Los Angeles’s biggest problems and, as consultants, could continue their work by contributing to the city’s best solutions.
The detailed comparisons in the atlas between different neighborhoods and technologies makes it possible for more targeted efficient changes to be made in the future, but only if those changes are guided by people who understand the significance of that information.
Energy companies give subsidies to people for installing a myriad of green technologies, but there is no criteria for these and no record of their effectiveness. This atlas can give a clear look into the past about what has worked and what hasn’t, as well as forecasting for the future. Before the atlas, subsidies given for technologies that are believed to reduce energy consumption were our only indication of how we could approach energy reduction, but those guidelines offered no comprehensive data to prove their effectiveness or compare the different technologies.
Now, every building in the city does not necessarily need to meet the same standards as UCLA, as that can be overly burdensome for some private institutions. As a public research and educational institution, it’s normal for UCLA to reach for a higher standard than the average building contractor. But that doesn’t mean that building codes can’t evolve to be more environmentally friendly in an economically sound way.
Such a collaboration could easily fall within the parameters of Garcetti’s plan, and could help the city to reduce the energy usage per square foot of all buildings in the city. UCLA could be a key figure in developing the new policies that hit the 2017 benchmark set by the mayor.
The atlas provides a platform that assesses these technologies’ impact on energy consumption. With insight into which green technologies are or aren’t working, the city can accomplish its maximum potential.