LA plans to offer energy incentives for low-income people

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

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' effort comes as government officials are struggling to make electric vehicles and clean energy more affordable. Sales of new batterypowered 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 Renewable Energy Laboratory; and the University of California, Los Angeles.

“Working families in our city need to be assured that our city's clean energy future won't leave them trapped in the past,” Mayor Karen Bass said. “Many working families some working two to three jobs to make ends meet won't buy or lease EVs if they don't have access to convenient, timesaving, cost-saving places to charge them.”

The city's power provider the largest municipal utility in the country has been studying how Los Angeles can reach 100% clean energy for several years and estimates that doing so will cost as much as $87 billion. Thursday's report is the second comprehensive review by the city and the federal laboratory, this time with a focus on those who can least afford to participate in the energy transition.

President Joe Biden has made it a major goal to move away from fossil fuels, the leading source of the emissions dangerously warming the planet. His administration wants to hasten the move to battery-powered vehicles, electric heating and cooling systems, and emissionsfree electricity sources like wind and solar energy.

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

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

California leads 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 residents in the city received most of the incentives for clean energy programs, like electric vehicle rebates and compensation for energy sent from rooftop solar to the electric grid.