A Green New Deal for California Cities: Empowering Communities Through Climate Infrastructure

By Catherine Fraser, Celina Scott-Buechler, Grace Adcox, and Charlotte Scott

In an era defined by an escalating climate crisis and the urgent need for sustainable solutions, the Inflation Reduction Act (IRA), Bipartisan Infrastructure Law (BIL), and CHIPS and Science Act present opportunities to reshape the way communities approach energy, sustainability, and economic development. The success of these unprecedented investments in climate infrastructure depends on community leaders proactively seeking out funds and receiving the necessary financial and logistical resources to do so. Already, communities have applied for grants ranging from the Environmental and Climate Justice (ECJ) program to the Climate Pollution Reduction Grant (CPRG) program. Many of these programs are subject to requirements under the Justice40 Initiative, which aims to invest 40% of all climate and energy benefits in communities that have traditionally been underserved. 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 away from extractive and high-emissions industries that support workers and communities to ensure they are not left behind. 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).