This Week’s News for LA’s Best Buildings
To Survive Drought, Parts of SoCal Must Cut Water Use by 35%. The New Limit: 80 Gallons a Day
When the Metropolitan Water District of Southern California this week unveiled its strictest-ever water restrictions for about 6 million residents, it did so with an urgent goal in mind: a 35% reduction in water consumption, equating to an allocation of about 80 gallons per person per day.
Retrofitting for Resilience: How to Protect Existing Buildings from Floods, Fires, and More While Preserving Embodied Carbon
How can existing buildings be retrofitted to withstand increasing climate risks? It is no secret that most buildings in use today are not prepared to handle stronger storms, higher sea levels, and longer wildfire seasons. In the United States alone, nearly 15 million properties face substantial flood risk, and roughly $1.3 trillion of property value lies in areas at high risk of wildfire.
California Releases Extreme Heat Action Plan to Protect Communities from Rising Temperatures
Amid intensifying climate impacts, Governor Gavin Newsom today announced that the state has released an Extreme Heat Action Plan outlining a strategic and comprehensive set of state actions to adapt and strengthen resilience to extreme heat. The announcement comes on the heels of a heat wave earlier this month in Long Beach that reached a high of 101°F, nine degrees hotter than the record high in April 2014.
Did California Actually Hit 97% Renewables in April? Yes and No
With several countries, 15 states and many U.S. utilities pledging to get to a 100% clean electricity system, a lot is riding on the engineers who run the power grid. They have a complex challenge, akin to rebuilding a plane while it’s flying. But real-world examples increasingly point to how it can be done, from South Australia’s rooftop-solar-heavy grid, to Europe’s wind power vanguards, to, most recently, sun-soaked California.
Lower Cost, Slower gains: California Prepares Controversial New Climate Strategy
California air-quality officials have endorsed an updated blueprint for battling climate change, choosing a plan that aims to minimize job losses and costs while slashing greenhouse gases and achieving carbon neutrality by 2045.
California has long been a global leader in addressing the climate crisis, enacting aggressive laws and policies to reduce its carbon footprint. But the state has recently come under fire from activists and some legislators for failing to act quickly enough and relying too much on carbon-trading programs.
Image by Mel Melcon via the Los Angeles Times