Los Angeles will offer more energy incentives to low-income residents

Los Angeles said Thursday it would build electric vehicle chargers and offer bigger discounts on the purchase of battery-powered cars, in response to a new report that concluded low-income people were falling behind in the clean energy transition.

City officials said they would offer qualified residents up to $4,000 to buy used electric vehicles, up from $2,500, and build a network of fast chargers in underserved neighborhoods where few private companies have built such stations.

Los Angeles’ efforts come as state officials struggle to make electric vehicles and clean energy more affordable. Sales of new battery-powered cars have slowed in recent months, partly because many of the models are too expensive for most car buyers.

Some of these challenges were highlighted in the report released Thursday by the Los Angeles Department of Water and Power, a city-owned utility; the National Laboratory for Renewable Energy; and the University of California, Los Angeles.

“Working families in our city must be confident that our city’s clean energy future won’t leave them stuck in the past,” said Mayor Karen Bass. “Many working families – some of whom work two to three jobs to make ends meet – will not buy or lease electric cars if they do not have access to convenient, time-saving and cost-effective places to charge them.”

The city’s energy provider — the nation’s largest municipal utility — has been studying how Los Angeles can achieve 100 percent clean energy for several years and estimates it will cost as much as $87 billion. Thursday’s report is the second comprehensive assessment by the city and federal lab, this time focusing on those who can least afford to participate in the energy transition.

President Biden has made it a key goal to transition away from fossil fuels, the leading source of emissions that are dangerously warming the planet. His government wants to accelerate the transition to battery-powered vehicles, electric heating and cooling systems and zero-emission electricity sources such as wind and solar power.

But making the transition to cleaner forms of energy is proving difficult, especially for lower-income people who can’t afford the large upfront costs of purchasing new cars, solar panels, heat pumps and other green appliances.

At the same time, low-wealth communities are also more likely to be exposed to the harms of fossil fuel use because they are more likely to live near power plants or busy roads than wealthier neighborhoods.

California is leading the United States in the shift to clean energy – it has more rooftop solar panel systems and electric school buses than any other state – and Los Angeles is a leader within the state.

But the study showed that wealthier city residents received the most incentives for clean energy programs, such as rebates for electric vehicles and offsets for energy sent from rooftop solar to the grid. Of the $5.4 million the city spent on electric vehicle rebates between 2013 and 2021, only 23 percent went to underserved communities, the report found.

“To achieve a transition to 100 percent clean energy, you really have to bring everyone along,” said Kate Anderson, strategy lead at the National Renewable Energy Laboratory and the agency’s principal investigator for the study. “The transition will not only depend on the utility or the city making changes. It will depend on whether everyone makes changes in their households. The affordability aspect is a huge challenge.”

Los Angeles County has the largest concentration of low-income residents of any county in California. Many of the more densely populated areas are within the city and include places that are overdue for power grid upgrades and other equipment.

Those who receive their electricity from the city utility also lack the kind of bill assistance given to their neighbors who receive their electricity from the state’s investor-owned utilities such as Southern California Edison, San Diego Gas & Electric and Pacific Gas & Electric.

The Los Angeles Department of Water and Power offered a rebate of about $8 per month to disadvantaged customers as of 2019. The state’s investor-owned utilities offer discounts of up to 35 percent on total bills.

“That’s definitely a pretty big gap and disparity,” said Cynthia McClain-Hill, chair of the city board that oversees the utility. “Without a local referendum that allows us to establish and expand our low-income programs, we won’t be able to do that.”

In the long term, the transition away from fossil fuels should lower energy costs, many analysts say. But in the coming years, individuals, companies and governments will have to spend hundreds of billions of dollars purchasing new equipment and upgrading old equipment.

“This transition is obviously going to be expensive,” said Stephanie Tweecetl, professor at the UCLA Institute of the Environment and Sustainability and founding director of the California Center for Sustainable Communities. “Someone will have to pay for all of this.”