2019 was a watershed year for California’s local jurisdictions taking action on achieving strategic climate action and greenhouse gas emissions reductions goals. More than 25 jurisdictions developed and adopted local energy ordinances. In January 2020, the Energy Commission approved its 100th reach ordinance, noting the milestone by observing “… generally we are heading, as a state per the Executive Order, towards carbon neutrality by 2045. And we need local partners to get there.” Since January, 16 more reach code packages have been approved.

Statewide, regional and local organizations offer tremendous potential for maintaining this momentum through collaborative partnerships in sharing resources, best practices for outreach, stakeholder engagement and consensus building, model language and cost analyses assets, and more.

This webinar gathers experts from local jurisdictions, statewide programs and Energy Commission staff to explore some of the most effective ways to collaborate as well as understand the needs attendees present from their own jurisdictions. The two panelists from the cities of Palo Alto and Chula Vista will be able to share actual and valuable lessons learned from their own experiences. Each of these cities is at a different point on the reach code development timeline and have quite different local variables; the insights they offer will be extremely valuable to participants from all regions of the state.

The session will begin with a short series of introductory comments from each panelist (approximately 5 minutes/panelist), followed by an open discussion using the Zoom chat capability to propose questions and managed by the session moderator. Panelists will use slides for presenting resources, posting prompt questions or sharing dense information sets. For instance, city representatives may share specific reach code resources their teams have used successfully, while the Energy Commission representative and the Statewide Reach Codes team may provide insight into specific statewide resources available at no cost.