What would the state need to do to achieve the new greenhouse gas emissions numbers Governor Jerry Brown signed into law this week? Airbnb tackles discrimination in the shared housing era, what the Adult Use of Marijuana Act could mean for the state.
California's sustainable future begins with renewable energy
Governor Jerry Brown was in Los Angeles on Thursday, signing two climate change bills into law. California now has the most aggressive target for climate reduction in the United States.
Deepa Fernandes spoke to Mark Gold, UCLA associate vice chancellor for Environment and Sustainability. Gold has overseen a project called Grand Challenge: Sustainable LA, which brought researchers from several fields together to study how LA County could become sustainable by 2050. A Martinez also spoke to Richard Wirz, who studies wind power at UCLA and was also part of the project. Wirz talked about how shifting to renewable energy is a critical part of meeting the new greenhouse gas emissions criteria that became law yesterday.
Interview highlights
What is the Grand Challenge: Sustainable LA?
Mark Gold: "...We have a really large group of academics working on environment and sustainability, and we came up with this idea of let's use the university to work with the local community and state to try to make LA truly sustainable by 2050 with these audacious goals of 100 percent renewable energy, 100 percent local water, and enhanced ecosystem health, and human health and well-being. We put together a research plan that came out the beginning of this year on the information we need to... put this road map together and how do we get to sustainability. We'll finish this roadmap by 2020, and the good news is, we're really seeing local gov and the state of CA moving in this direction already, which is really wonderful to see."
What does 100 percent sustainable actually mean?
Mark Gold: "100 percent renewable energy would mean that all of our energy is coming from renewable sources, so it's solar, it's wind, it can also be new bio gas, like landfill gas, so it's getting our energy from nonpolluting resources, which would be a big change. Imagine LA, where we've had some of the worst smog in the country, if not the world, over the last four or five decades, even with the improvements we've had, where all transportation would be electrified and running on renewable rather than running on petroleum."
What can California do to move the needle the most toward sustainability?
Mark Gold: "...Renewable energy is going to make the big difference. As an example—people don't even know this—the largest solar facility in the world just opened not too long ago in our Antelope Valley. Not too far from where we all live. This facility is over 600 megawatts of solar and it was built in a few short years and has really been providing energy for Southern California Edison. This has happened quickly. Between now and 2030, we have time to get to 50% renewable energy, which was a requirement from last year's law, SB 350...and so really that move to renewable is going to make a big difference. ...We're going to need to transform how we deal with transportation. Those are the big, big changes that aren't really going to have a huge impact on us on our day-to-day lives [but] it's getting to 100 percent that's going to be a lot more challenging and difficult.
Who bears the burden of this? Individuals? Government? Industry?
Mark Gold: This transformation from a petroleum-based economy isn't going to occur overnight and it isn't going to be free, but as we've already seen in the state of California in comparison with other states...it has not hurt our economy. In fact, it has created brand new industries for us to excel at. There was no Tesla ten years ago, and now we're one of the leaders in electric cars. What this transformation has done is create a new green economy for California that, frankly, is leading the entire country and I think is only going to continue to make California thrive.
What role could wind energy play in California's energy future?
Richard Wirz: "Wind is a part of it and actually, we have a lot of wind energy resources on land and those are the easier resources to get to because we can easily build wind turbines on land and it turns out that modern wind turbines provide some of the lowest cost energy available, sometimes even lower than the cost of coal, which is our lowest-cost energy, without the deficit of dealing with the pollution. The problem is that we need more of it and we have the prospect of building off-shore wind turbines, which provide us with a lot more predictable and consistent wind energy. ...The wind is not always blowing when you need the energy. We could do considerably more energy from off-shore [wind farms]. ...The challenge with California, unfortunately the ocean is deeper and where we would try to get those wind resources, it's going to be quite a bit more, so we would have to commit to building giant oil rig-like platforms where we would put wind turbines on those platforms."
What obstacles are in the way of California shifting to more renewable energy?
Richard Wirz: "We need to store that energy, because unlike a fossil fuel facility where we actually can change the output based on the needs of the consumers, we don't have that luxury with that wind or with the sun. Wind has that inherent challenge of variability, that's why we need to work on storage technologies. That kind of transitions us to how do we get to the levels of penetration of renewable energy that Governor Brown wants to see, and the way to do that is we need to look at wind and solar [because] it's actually more predictable—we pretty much can tell you when the sun is going to shine... The bill doesn't get bigger because we actually have copious solar resources here in California and those are very cost-effective. We really just need to implement these technologies...it's not so much we need to develop new technologies.
Click the blue audio player to hear the full interview.
In Airbnb's discrimination stumbles, start-ups see an opportunity
This summer, hundreds shared their stories of discrimination at the hands of AirBnB hosts using the hashtag #AirBnBWhileBlack.
Users claimed they were denied listings based on the color of their skin and after initially remaining silent, Airbnb sprung into action.
The company began a review process. Midway through the company's anti-discrimination overhaul, we spoke with Laura Murphy, former head of the American Civil Liberties Union's Washington DC legislative office, who was retained by AirBnB to lead the effort:
Three months later, and Airbnb has released a 32-page report detailing how they are working to "Fight Discrimination and Build Inclusion." But can a discrimination problem like this really be tackled in just a few months?
Deepa Fernandes spoke to Rohan Gilkes, CEO and founder of Innclusive, an Airbnb-like platform that is about four weeks away from launching. It was created at the height of the #AirbnbWhileBlack controversy.
Interview Highlights
You founded Innclusive just this summer, what was the incident that led to its creation?
"What led to its creation was me just trying to take a trip to Idaho and looking for a property on Airbnb and I was told that the dates that were shown as available were not in fact available and I chose other dates and I did not get those dates either and I felt something was weird. So, I had one of my white friends go and select one of those dates that I was told were unavailable and my friend was approved right away. That kind of started me down the path of building a competing business."
How are you going to do it differently from Airbnb?
"The biggest thing for us is: how do we remove bias from the platform, and the source of bias when people are deciding to allow someone to rent their property. The source of that bias has pointed to really two things: One, the photograph of the person on their profile and two, the name of that person. So, if you're a person of color or if you have a name that denotes that you may be a person of color, bias is going to be introduced in the platform. So, what we're doing, is removing the photo and the name until after the booking is made and then connecting the host and the traveler at that point."
Now, Airbnb has released a lengthy report, addressing bad experiences like you had. Do you feel like they're addressing with their new guidelines some of these issues and are they going to be doing similar things like you are?
"There's one piece that they're doing that's exactly like we've been talking about for a few months now. If you say that your property is unavailable, it then becomes unavailable for anybody else. So, you can't say 'Oh you know, we're not available for September 3rd.' and then somebody else comes along and you say 'Okay, now we're available.' So, that part they are fixing, that's something we have already built into our platform as well. I don't think they're going far enough because if there are photos there, people are going to use photos and they're going to use names as a way to inject bias."
To hear the full interview, click the blue play button above.
The battle over what it really means to be ready for kindergarten
Karma comes back to life with 2017 Revero plug-in hybrid
It’s baa-aack — just like you’d expect for a car with a name like Karma. The bankrupt car company formerly known as Fisker is back in business. And last night in Orange County it pulled the wraps off its very first car: The Revero.
Every bit as sexy as the original Fisker Karma, the new Karma Revero is also a very expensive, very luxurious plug-in hybrid electric sports sedan. In fact, the two cars look identical except for new badging. But pop the hood, and there have been multiple upgrades.
Gone are the batteries that were recalled in 2012 for poor performance. The lithium-ion cells in the new Revero are made by the same company -- A123 Systems -- but they're upgraded to be more durable. Operating on battery power alone, the Revero has a range of up to 50 miles; a gas-powered generator enables a range of about 300 miles. It takes 24 minutes to recharge the battery to 80 percent.
As the Revero, the car is now faster, accelerating from 0 to 60 mph in 5.4 seconds compared with 7.9 seconds for the original. And it also costs more. The Revero starts at $130,000 and can be purchased at 11 retail locations across the country, including one in L.A.
Like Fisker Automotive, which was based in Anaheim before going bankrupt, Karma Automotive is also based in Orange County. Its current headquarters are located in Costa Mesa but will soon move to a larger facility in Irvine to accommodate an expected staff of 1,000 by the end of the year. When Fisker was purchased out of bankruptcy in 2014, it had just 22 employees.
Now owned by the Chinese conglomerate Wanxiang, Karma Automotive, as it's been renamed, is building the cars locally at a manufacturing facility in Moreno Valley. Karma representatives declined to give a specific delivery date for the new car, saying only that it will be available "when it's ready," according to Karma Automotive Chief Marketing Officer, Jim Taylor. Production began in April.
Click the blue audio player to hear the full interview.