Aris Hovasapian, the district utilities program manager, presented a report to the Board on October 23rd on efforts to reduce energy consumption. In particular, he reported on the Measurement and Demand Response Project (MDR), which charts the energy consumption of new buildings. We will report further on this in our next issue.
Cal EPA’s Office of Environmental Health Hazard Assessment (OEHHA) is charged with implementing AB 685, the 2012 legislation that declared a right to safe, clean, and affordable water for every Californian, a right that has generally not been secured for people elsewhere on the planet, or even in the United States. Their recent report shows how daunting it will be to meet that challenge in this state. We will return to this topic also in a future issue.
CalTech received a pledge of $750 million in late September to fund research into environmental sustainability. Donors Stewart and Lynda Resnick cited the climate crisis as a key motivation for their gift. It is the largest gift ever given for sustainability research, and the second-largest of any sort ever given to an American university.
