Special Edition: A Green New Deal for California Cities
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Welcome to our first special edition climate newsletter! We’re so happy you’re here. The Data for Progress climate team released a report last week as a culmination of a yearlong, mixed-methods research project examining attitudes toward climate infrastructure in California. Catch Politico California Climate’s coverage of it here.
We wanted to give the report the daylight it deserves. Now please, sit back, relax, and enjoy this special edition of Data for Climate Progress.
5 Workshops, 5 Cities: Empowering Communities Through Climate Infrastructure in California
In an era defined by an escalating climate crisis and the urgent need for sustainable solutions, the Inflation Reduction Act, Bipartisan Infrastructure Law, and CHIPS and Science Act present opportunities to reshape the way communities approach energy, sustainability, and economic development. These and other funding opportunities could be instrumental in providing for just transitions in communities historically reliant on or crippled by pollutive industries — that is, economic transitions that support workers and communities to ensure they are not left behind as the U.S. moves away from extractive and high-emissions industries.
But if just transitions are to be successful, they must be determined through democratic participation, guaranteeing that new industries are culturally, economically, and environmentally suited to their host communities. This means asking communities what they envision for their futures.
To that end, Data for Progress conducted five workshops focused on climate infrastructure across California — in Palo Alto, Eureka, Visalia, Palmdale, and San Diego — from June to November 2023. The aim was not to convince communities to accept climate infrastructure, but rather to understand from community members themselves what key factors drive openness or opposition to energy sources and climate technologies — which we refer to broadly as climate infrastructure — after learning more about them.
These workshops focused on six utility-scale clean energy sources and technologies — solar, wind, nuclear, geothermal, battery storage, and transmission — as well as four carbon removal technologies — direct air capture (DAC), biomass with carbon sequestration and storage (BiCRS), enhanced rock weathering (ERW), and ocean alkalinity enhancement (OAE).
In addition, Data for Progress conducted a statewide survey to assess Californians’ attitudes toward climate infrastructure developments. This research aims to understand whether and how community members might support these various pathways to climate infrastructure development.
In our workshops, we found that:
Trusted actors are key to promoting communication and preempting misunderstanding in successful infrastructure projects;
Californians saw the potential social, economic, health, and environmental risks and opportunities of large-scale climate infrastructure; and
Climate infrastructure must align with communities’ sense of place to earn social license and steward the local environment.
In our statewide survey of Californians, we find that:
A majority of Californians support clean infrastructure being built in their community;
A majority of Californians want clean infrastructure projects to be publicly owned;
Californians say it is most important that a new project produces clean energy (51%) and lowers their bills in some way (38%);
Californians most want community leaders (73%) and environmental groups (69%) involved in negotiating local community benefits with developers of proposed new infrastructure; and
Californians most want project developers to guarantee community benefits (84%) and consult communities when selecting a site for projects (83%).
Based on the workshops and survey, we offer several recommendations for climate infrastructure development in California, including:
Building trust by embedding community co-creation, oversight, and potential for co-ownership;
Addressing high costs, regulatory failures, and mismanagement of California’s utilities;
Establishing a role for public, Tribal, and community leadership in climate infrastructure;
Ensuring climate infrastructure projects are sensitive to place-based concerns and needs;
Establishing guardrails for fossil fuel-led climate infrastructure;
Alleviating cumulative impacts in overburdened communities;
Building the unionized, local, and diverse workforce of the future; and
Prioritizing equity- and consent-based siting practices.
In conclusion…
Our workshops in five California communities and a statewide survey demonstrate diverse perspectives on climate infrastructure, highlighting the complex interplay between environmental action and community values — and the need to link the two. Our findings underscore the critical importance of embedding community voices in the planning and implementation phases of climate projects.
Trust, transparency, and genuine participatory processes emerge as nonnegotiable pillars for aligning projects with the unique cultural, historical, and environmental fabrics of communities. This approach not only can help secure community buy-in but also leverage local knowledge to mitigate risks and amplify benefits, ensuring that infrastructure developments address the needs of those they are intended to serve.
Ultimately, this work points toward a future where climate infrastructure acts as a bridge to a more sustainable and equitable world — the dual focus of the Green New Deal. By emphasizing community ownership, leadership, and empowerment, we pave the way for projects that are not only environmentally sound but also socially just.
This means moving beyond traditional, top-down approaches to development, and instead championing initiatives that are conceived of and led by communities themselves. Such an inclusive model promises not only to address the pressing challenges of climate change, but to do so in a way that heals, unites, and uplifts communities across California and beyond.