California is a national leader in renewable energy development.
California is a national leader in renewable energy development. But energy systems development is driven more by financial considerations than environmental ones, leaving customers more vulnerable to the effects of climate change, a University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign researcher determined.
Sean Kennedy is a professor in urban and regional planning whose research interests include energy systems. He examined private investments in solar energy infrastructure in northern Los Angeles County, including the financial beneficiaries and the development’s environmental benefits and costs. Kennedy and co-author Ryan Stock, of the University of Northern Michigan, reported their findings in the online journal Environment and Planning E: Nature and Space.
California is one of the most climate-challenged regions in the country, with threats from wildfires, heat waves and drought. The area Kennedy and Stock studied bills itself as the “alternative energy capital of the world.” But more than progressive climate policies, Kennedy said, what has driven the private development of energy systems in the state are environmental and economic crises – including the climate crisis, the state’s uneven economic development and income polarization, an energy crisis that included rolling blackouts, the global financial crisis of 2007-09 and the difficulty of the energy industry to generate profits.
Read more at University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, News Bureau
Image: Solar energy development in California depends on large-scale infrastructure to attract private investment, but that makes it more vulnerable to climate extremes, said urban and regional planning professor Sean Kennedy. (Credit: Photo by L. Brian Stauffer)
