San Diego’s Quest to Achieve 100% Renewable Energy Through Community Choice

On this week’s Political Climate: how San Diego’s Republican mayor pushed through a bold climate action plan.

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Are cities the world’s best hope for combating climate change? Many cities have committed to meeting the Paris Agreement goals. But are those targets translating to action on the ground?

In this episode of Political Climate, we look at San Diego’s quest to achieve 100 percent carbon-free electricity by 2035 and what other cities can learn from this experience. 

We recorded this episode at the UCSD School of Global Policy and Strategy, where we were joined by Cody Hooven, the first chief sustainability officer for the municipal government of San Diego.

We covered everything from how the city’s Republican mayor pushed through a bold climate action plan, to the community-choice aggregation program San Diego is pursuing, to how cities are coping with the intersection of climate and equity issues. 

Before delving into the role that cities play in the fight against climate change, we touched on a few federal climate-related news items. Here’s that conversation. We hope you enjoy it.

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Political Climate is produced in partnership with the USC Schwarzenegger Institute, and thanks to invaluable support from producer Victoria Simon.

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