Synapse: This Week's News for LA’s Best Buildings
Los Angeles Ranks #1 On EPA's List of Top-Ranking Cities
This week the EPA unveiled their annual ENERGY STAR Top Cities list, showing which U.S. metro areas were home to the most ENERGY STAR certified buildings last year. We ranked the Top 25 Cities overall, the Top 10 Mid-Size Cities, and the Top 10 Small Cities.
Once again, Los Angeles leads the pack, with more than 580 ENERGY STAR certified buildings. Close behind is Washington, D.C., with nearly 550 buildings, followed by San Francisco in third place. Atlanta and New York round out the top five.
How Will You Recognize Juneteenth?
Opal Lee’s first march to make Juneteenth a federal holiday was around her church in Fort Worth, Texas. As she described it to NPR, "I got together some people here. We had a rally, and so after the rally, the people walked with me, and we've been going ever since."
This essay originally appeared on the WeSpire blog and is republished by Greenbiz with permission.
LADWP Ranked as One of the Most Transformational Utilities in the US by SEPA, the Smart Electric Power Alliance
Electric utilities are among the highest-profile and highest-impact organizations setting carbon-reduction targets, with the earliest commitments dating back over 15 years. Over 70 U.S. utilities have carbon-reduction or emissions goals, with more commitments being announced each month. The Smart Electric Power Alliance's Utility Carbon Reduction Tracker maintains a list and analysis of these commitments. Tracking these commitments is important, to be sure. But it's even more important to monitor how these organizations are progressing and determine what actions they should take to accelerate their progress.
Putting Equity Front and Center of Climate Change Solutions
As organizations around the world work toward keeping temperature rise to 1.5°C, we are faced with the challenge of ensuring that clean energy strategies benefit all. Just as certain communities are disproportionally affected by climate change, communities can also benefit and be harmed disproportionally by climate change solutions. That is why it is crucial that any work to combat climate change and move the energy transition forward keep equity front and center.
U.S. Department of Energy Awards $9.5 Million to Support Clean Energy Innovation and Commercialization Across America
The U.S. Department of Energy (DOE) today awarded Energy Program for Innovation Clusters (EPIC) funding to ten incubators and accelerators that will harness regional ingenuity and resources, develop pipelines for energy technology to reach the market, and stimulate the formation of new businesses to reach the Biden-Harris Administration’s goal of a net-zero carbon economy by 2050.
What You Need to Do During California's Flex Alert
The Flex Alert runs from 5 to 10 p.m. Thursday, then again during the same hours Friday. A Flex Alert is a call to consumers to voluntarily cut back on electricity and shift electricity use to off-peak hours (normally after 9 p.m.).
