Enabling Neighborhood-Scale Electrification in a Disadvantaged Community through Energy System Decarbonization

As California leads the country in a shift towards more sustainable energy generation sources with electrification playing a massive role, what are the technological, social, policy, and economic barriers to electrification on a community scale? How can electrification impact and benefit disadvantaged communities? Previous studies on full neighborhood electrification and decarbonization have attempted to answer these questions but have never fully characterized the effects and interactions between gas and electric systems.

The result of this project will be a localized model for community-scale decarbonization that can be used to inform future policy, legislation, and electrification projects. This model will be created for the neighborhood of Roseland, an SB 535 disadvantaged community in Santa Rosa, CA. This project will take steps to ensure that the distribution of electrification resources is balanced, equitable, economically beneficial and serves all communities. This result will be achieved through evaluating potential alternatives for the current gas system demand, an economic or socioeconomic model of the social and financial costs of electrification, a geospatial model of GHG mitigation, transition costs, and economic and social outcomes, and a California electrification policy analysis.