Energy Resilience - California Climate and Energy Collaborative

Barrier 1: Energy Resilience

Barrier Statement

Outdated, centralized energy infrastructure, increasing capacity demands, and limited local authority, funding, and coordination – leave communities increasingly vulnerable to outages, heat, wildfire, and flooding, undermining resilience, safety, and affordability.

Filterable Database

How communities are experiencing this barrier

View the details on what communities have shared with SLECC from across the state.

Key challenge discussed in - San Francisco Bay Area, Central Coast, Los Angeles, Inland Deserts

Climate-driven hazards such as extreme heat, wildfire, flooding, and severe storms increasingly disrupt California’s power system, triggering prolonged outages and PSPS events that endanger vulnerable residents and strain local response capacity. These disruptions are escalating—with documented week-long blackouts, wildfire-exposed transmission corridors, and projected 20% grid-capacity losses from heat and flooding—highlighting the urgent need for greater local resilience and system redundancy.

Key challenge discussed in - San Francisco Bay Area, Los Angeles, Statewide

Critical Facilities and Community Infrastructure Lack Resilient Power and Sustained Funding. Many cooling centers, shelters, community centers, and water facilities lack reliable backup power, undermining emergency response during heat waves and wildfires. Fragmented, short-term funding; complex permitting; limited technical assistance; and lack of operational dollars prevent communities from developing and sustaining resilience hubs, microgrids, and clean backup power at scale.

Key challenge discussed in - San Francisco Bay Area, Statewide

Energy Resilience Planning Is Reactive and Fragmented. Energy resilience efforts are often driven by recent disasters rather than long-term, system-wide planning and are fragmented across jurisdictions, utilities, state agencies, and CBOs. This lack of coordination creates unclear roles, duplicated efforts, and uneven protection across communities.

Key challenge discussed in - San Francisco Bay Area, Statewide

Utility Control and Lack of Transparency Undermine Local Preparedness. Local governments, CBOs, and Tribes lack timely access to utility data on outages, shutoffs, grid conditions, and infrastructure plans. Utility-controlled emergency decisions limit local emergency planning, resident communication, and equitable preparedness.

Key challenge discussed in - San Francisco Bay Area, San Diego

High energy burdens and inequitable access to cooling, clean air, and backup power expose low-income, renter, rural, Tribal, and immigrant households to severe health and safety risks during heat waves, outages, and wildfire smoke. Families experiencing high energy bills face impossible trade-offs—such as choosing between cooling, food, or rent—leaving many without the resources needed to stay safe during climate-driven emergencies.

Local Solution Opportunities

SLECC stakeholders have brainstormed the following solution opportunities that can be taken by local leaders. Existing examples of progress or pathways to make further progress are highlighted if known.

Local Solution

Deploy microgrids, solar-plus-storage systems, and backup power capacity at trusted community facilities so they can function as permanent resilience hubs; providing reliable power, cooling, and emergency support during outages and extreme heat events, and serving as staging infrastructure when centralized systems fail.

Existing Examples of Progress:

1. The Cuyama Valley Initiative is deploying solar-plus-battery systems across 50% of the valley's housing stock and planning at least three community microgrids — including a full school district retrofit — in a community that has experienced repeated multi-day outages during wildfires and flooding. 2.Clean Coalition “value of resilience” tool to holistically evaluate energy projects (including intangible benefits like emergency assurance and community safety).

Further Progress Pathways

Region(s): San Francisco Bay Area, Central Coast, Los Angeles, San Diego, Statewide

Local Solution

Target resilience solutions (including community solar, battery storage, and distributed energy) toward smaller rural, unincorporated, and tribal communities that are most exposed to grid failures and have the least capacity to absorb extended outages, enabling them to generate and store their own power rather than depending on centralized IOU transmission infrastructure.

Existing Examples of Progress:

The Tribal Energy and Climate Collaborative (T6)—representing 25 Southern California tribes—is pooling grant resources to conduct feasibility studies for microgrids and clean energy systems to protect tribal housing and community facilities from outage-related risks

Further Progress Pathways

Region(s): Central Coast, Inland Deserts, San Diego

Local Solution

Integrate Energy Resilience into Emergency and Long-Term Planning. Jurisdictions can incorporate outage risk, PSPS scenarios, cooling access, microgrids, and clean-air strategies into emergency preparedness, General Plans, safety elements, and climate adaptation plans, aligning land use and climate policy with increasing grid stress and energy disruptions.

Existing Examples of Progress:

Further Progress Pathways

Region(s): San Francisco Bay Area, Statewide

State Solution Opportunities

SLECC stakeholders have brainstormed the following solution opportunities that can be taken by state leaders. Existing examples of progress or pathways to make further progress are highlighted if known.

State Solution

State-Led Coordination, Technical Assistance, and Investment for Energy Resilience. The state can strengthen local energy resilience by pairing coordinated technical assistance with targeted investments to address outages and PSPS impacts. Alignment across agencies such as the CPUC, CEC, and GO-Biz to fund microgrids, community-scale solar and storage, substation upgrades, and undergrounding in wildfire-prone areas can help communities maintain essential services during grid disruptions.

Existing Examples of Progress:

Further Progress Pathways

Region(s): Inland Deserts, San Diego, Statewide

State Solution

Support funding for community resilience centers that function both during emergencies and year-round, particularly for low-income and underserved areas.

Existing Examples of Progress:

1. Orange County is developing a solar task force to seek funding for resiliency hubs and stakeholder engagement. This project supports community energy projects and aims to support community-identified energy and resilience initiatives. 2. SGC recently completed first funding round of Community Resilience Centers Program with two implementation grants in San Diego region (approximately $10 million each) to funds solar PV infrastructure for emergency resilience. This grant program is named in the $10 billion climate bond passed in November with future funding anticipated.

Further Progress Pathways

Region(s): Los Angeles, San Diego, Statewide

State Solution

Clarify and Strengthen State Requirements for Utility–Local Coordination. The state can improve outage preparedness by clarifying roles and strengthening requirements for utility coordination with local governments, including earlier notification, clearer communication, and greater transparency around outages, interconnection timelines, vegetation management, and planned grid investments.

Existing Examples of Progress:

Further Progress Pathways

Region(s): San Francisco Bay Area, Statewide

Solution Spotlight

Blue Sky Center, a local nonprofit in the Cuyama Valley, has long served as an informal emergency staging ground for wildfire response — providing space for emergency vehicles, helicopter operations, and overnight accommodations for emergency responders. Recognizing this de facto role, the Resilient Cuyama Valley Initiative is formalizing and expanding it by rezoning Blue Sky Center’s parcel to accommodate resilience-heavy uses including backup power systems and cold food storage. The decision was driven directly by the community’s documented experience of multi-day power and Wi-Fi outages during wildfires and flooding — a recurring reality in a valley connected to surrounding areas by only two state highways, where physical isolation during climate events has repeatedly cut residents off from outside assistance. The Blue Sky Center model demonstrates how an existing trusted community facility can be intentionally upgraded into a permanent resilience hub, converting informal emergency use into durable infrastructure that serves the community before, during, and after climate-driven disruptions.

SGC recently completed first funding round of Community Resilience Centers Program with two implementation grants in San Diego region (approximately $10 million each) to funds solar PV infrastructure for emergency resilience. This grant program is named in the $10 billion climate bond passed in November with future funding anticipated.

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