Glumac, part of the Tetra Tech High Performance Buildings Group, is working with the City of Los Angeles, California, to create a leading-edge, 12-year building decarbonization work plan for city-owned municipal facilities.
Challenge
As part of LA’s Green New Deal and based on findings from the LA 100 Study, in 2022 the Los Angeles City Council directed City departments to develop a plan to retrofit municipally owned buildings to achieve carbon-neutral operations by 2035. The challenge was to assess the City’s portfolio of buildings and identify opportunities to reduce carbon emissions. Tetra Tech developed the Building Decarbonization Work Plan to provide a plan for transitioning existing municipal facilities to be carbon neutral by 2035.
Solution
This project will help the City better understand regulatory requirements, industry best practices, and successful policies and strategies from other municipalities. Through this process, our team collaborated with various stakeholders from across departments within the city and allowed for input on the decarbonization work plan’s direction. The plan also considered the environmental intersectionality of building decarbonization with the City’s broader equity and climate justice efforts.
Benefits
Tetra Tech identified key building decarbonization opportunities that will reduce greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions, while also improving the overall resiliency of City operations. The assessment will identify energy efficiency, electrification, and solar storage projects. Tetra Tech worked with the Los Angeles Department of Water and Power (LADWP) to establish a strategy for on and offsite solar to provide city facilities with access to 100 percent clean electricity.
Our team established a project prioritization criteria that was fully integrated into a work plan to allow the City’s plant to evolve and adapt as various external conditions change over time. The result of this project needed a living plan and a robust tracking tool to support the City in their effort to decarbonize municipal facilities. Tetra Tech developed a custom building decarbonization tracking tool that integrates with the City’s Asset Management System and enables engineering staff and leadership to accurately track progress towards the City’s goals. This tool includes critical project data attributes, custom reporting, project milestone and status tracking, and dashboards summarizing the program status and ongoing activities.
At a glance
Size
1200+ buildings
Client
City of Los Angeles Bureau of Engineering Department of Public Works
Services
Energy Consulting
Project by
Glumac