Full Title: Building Community Resilience Across California
Author(s): Elena Krieger, Shina Robinson, Laura Gracia-Santiago, Patrick Murphy, Yunus Kinkhabwala, Bethany Kwoka, Yanelli Nunez, Audrey Amezcua-Smith, Annelise Dillon, and Claire Morton
Publisher(s): PSE Healthy Energy
Publication Date: April 16, 2024
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Description (excerpt):
Between 2020 and 2024, PSE Healthy Energy partnered with the Asian Pacific Environmental Network (APEN) and Communities for a Better Environment (CBE) to identify opportunities to build solar+energy storage resilience hubs at schools, community centers, and places of worship across California. APEN defines resilience hubs as “physical institutions that offer space for community members to gather, organize, and access resilience-building social services on a daily basis, and provide response and recovery services in disaster situations.” Our analysis focuses on solar+storage resilience hubs, which can deliver distinct advantages for community resilience by keeping essential services online during power outages and providing clean energy year-round.
Under the project, PSE provides a top-down view of climate resilience needs and resilience hubs potential across California. Our analysis includes a statewide population vulnerability assessment that identifies climate-vulnerable communities based on a range of climate, environmental, and socioeconomic stressors. In addition, we develop solar+storage designs for nearly 20,000 potential resilience hub sites and identify regional trends that make building resilience easier or harder across the state.
APEN and CBE provide a bottom-up view of building resilience in California communities, including insights on what it takes to actually design a resilience hub that reflects local needs and priorities. Their work includes case studies and the challenges and successes of on-the-ground deployment efforts in Richmond and Oakland in the Bay Area and in the Wilmington neighborhood in Los Angeles.