The Potential Price To Electrify Buildings (And Other Headlines)

I bet there’s not a single person in this city who doesn’t want to save money on their monthly energy bill. I’m sure a lot of folks want healthier, more energy efficient appliances in their homes, too, especially as the effects of climate change worsen.

The City of L.A.'s challenge with electrifying buildings

L.A. city officials took a step towards this reality last year when they moved to require all new buildings be completely electric. It’s one way the city hopes to achieve a more sustainable climate future. But what about retrofitting existing buildings to be all electric? Turns out that process is quite complex.

Why? Well, for one thing, it’s more expensive to update existing buildings than build new ones. But there’s also the issue of the people who currently lives in these buildings. What happens with renters during this process?

“To a certain extent, this is new ground,” said Daniel Carpenter-Gold, a researcher who studies building electrification at UCLA School of Law’s Emmett Institute on Climate Change and the Environment.

My colleague Erin Stone spoke to Carpenter-Gold who recently compiled a report on recommendations for how the city to could pursue these change in a way that would be equitable for renters. He recommends that policies focus on lower-income Angelenos and help address health concerns and lower costs.

“Any program that the city adopts for building decarbonization, it's going to lead to a large-scale program of building owners doing substantial work on their buildings,” Carpenter-Gold told Erin. “And we know from being in the housing space that when landlords do work on buildings, it can lead to evictions and it can lead to rent increases.”

As L.A. — and the whole state — moves toward a zero-carbon future, there is a lot to consider. Read more about Carpenter-Gold's recommendations and what’s next for L.A.’s decarbonization policy in Erin’s article.

There’s more news below — just keep reading.

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More news

(After you stop hitting snooze)

• Los Angeles City Councilmember Marqueece Harris-Dawson replaces Councilmember Curren Price as president pro tem. This comes after Price was charged with embezzlement of government funds, conflict of interest and perjury last Tuesday.
• The L.A. City Council continues to go through major shifts, the latest controversy being the criminal charges against Councilmember Price. My colleague Caitlin Hernández has the latest on what's been going on.
• To help fight fires helicopters can suck up 1,000 gallons of water in less than a minute to dump on flames, but sometimes the water source just isn’t there. My colleague Jacob Margolis reported on why water availability is an issue and L.A. County's solutions for putting out wildfires in remote areas with limited or no water supply. 
• The news that the Mark Taper Forum will pause programming, citing low ticket sales, highlights the deeper struggles the industry has been going through since the pandemic. My colleagues Robert Garrova and Divya Prakash have more.
• A recent study led by UC San Francisco found that offering affordable housing is “essential” to solving the homelessness crisis. Read my colleague Nick Gerda’s story to learn about the researchers' other key findings. 
• Childhood obesity is rising in California, according to the annual Kids Count Report. Latino children and teens ranked the highest when it comes to overweight and obesity rates. My colleague Jackie Fortiér has more, including tips on how to prevent childhood obesity. 
• By the time you’ve finished reading this sentence, Max Park of Cerritos, would have solved a Rubik’s cube. This month, he set a new world record for solving the popular puzzle in just 3.13 seconds. NPR’s Emma Bowman wrote about the challenges he’s faced in life with autism and how speedcubing is therapy. 

Wait! One more thing...

Taking it low and slow with a lowrider car show

The Politics of Low and Slow on display at Cal State Northridge's University Library

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Courtesy Ca State Northridge

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Today, we’re going to chill and take a little trip in a lowrider to Cal State Northridge, which will be hosting its first car show dedicated to these custom-made automobiles. The show is a part of the nearly year-long exhibit The Politics of Low & Slow, which is all about the politics of Chicano lowrider culture and history.

The curator of the exhibit, Denise Sandoval, is a professor at Cal State Northridge. She has been studying the culture for the past 20 years and told my colleague Gillian Morán Pérez that it’s been part of the L.A. fabric since World War II.

Even though this is the first official car show that the university is doing, she said it’s not the first time this sort of thing has happened at CSUN.

“When you look at the history of lowrider culture in L.A. like back in the day in the '70s, lowrider car clubs would have car shows on university campuses, like MECHA would have car shows here at CSUN," Sandoval told LAist, referring to the student organization El Movimiento Estudiantil Chicano de Aztlan.

Read my colleague Gillian’s latest story to learn more about this history and how its currently being showcased on the University’s campus.