This 5-year pilot project established an “advanced energy community” in an unincorporated area of Los Angeles County, empowering low-income households and renters to adopt local clean energy and reduce their dependence on fossil fuels. Insights from this demonstration project will help TEC and other organizations accelerate similar work statewide.

The Bassett-Avocado Heights Advanced Energy Community (BAAEC) demonstration project reduced utility bills and made homes healthier and more comfortable for low-income households. The project focused on low-income and disadvantaged communities¹ in eastern Los Angeles County.

Community benefits included:

The project team also tested reducing electricity bills through a community-level energy trading marketplace and using air quality monitoring to inform local energy decisions.

BAAEC by the Numbers

• Funded by a $9M grant from the California Energy Commission
• Leveraged $7.4M in matching investment\
• 20+ partners working together to support the community
• 12+ technical and community advisors to support deploying best practices and reflect community values
• Conducted more than 150 outreach activities
• Secured $400K from two additional complementary grants
• Directed $1.8M in incentives to the community

THE CHALLENGE

We spent two years planning the BAAEC project (2016-2018). We chose to work in unincorporated areas of the San Gabriel Valley in Los Angeles County to figure out how to reach a community that’s traditionally considered “hard to serve.” The area is home to a substantial non-English speaking population, many of whom live in older homes with deferred maintenance, making it harder to adopt new technologies. BAAEC prioritized working with lower-income families that are usually priced out of clean energy technologies.

The BAAEC community is impacted by significant pollution from a former battery recycling facility, an industrial corridor, and multiple freeways. It ranks among the state’s highest on CalEnviroScreen, a rating tool that combines environmental, health, and socioeconomic data to identify communities that are most burdened by pollution and vulnerable to its health effects.

Most programs in California that try to address these inequities rely on reimbursable rebates and incentive programs that are not designed for underserved communities. Our goal was to develop and test an alternative approach that meets underserved communities’ needs by incorporating trust-building, educational outreach, and wraparound support.   

OUR STRATEGY

Adapting Based on Community Input

BAAEC was designed and delivered in partnership with trusted community-based organizations. Their deep relationships and knowledge of the community were essential to establishing our credibility and successfully reaching program participants. We acted as a “concierge,” giving homeowners one point of contact for determining eligibility, selecting project offerings, managing paperwork, and coordinating across contractors.

We adjusted our approach many times throughout the six-year (2020-2026) project, incorporating input from homeowners, and from technical and community advisors to ensure we were meeting community needs. For example, we heard early in the project that many residents had bad experiences with solar companies using predatory sales practices. To ensure residents knew we were trustworthy, we leaned on our two CBO partners and also worked with trusted entities such as the local school district and the County Supervisor Hilda Solis.

Committing to No Costs for Program Participants

RESULTS AND LOOKING AHEAD: AN ADVANCED ENERGY COMMUNITY FRAMEWORK

Together, TEC and our team of partners learned what it takes to create transformational change. The demonstration project achieved the following:

We created a replication toolkit with insights, lessons learned, and recommendations to support BAAEC-style projects across other communities statewide. We’re sharing it far and wide, so others can start creating their own advanced energy communities. You can access the full replication toolkit here.

Our Framework for Creating Advanced Energy Communities

Empowering communities to create their clean energy future requires that we look beyond individual projects and programs to the bigger picture.  As we look ahead and begin designing more advanced energy community projects, here are the principles we’re taking with us from BAAEC:

1. Strengthen community capacity to lead in the clean energy transition
2. Address systemic barriers through a long-term framework rather than short-term transactions
3. Prioritize trust-building by partnering with mission-aligned organizations working with community interests in mind
4. Go beyond clean energy to also include community resilience, well-being, and economic development
5. Streamline customer adoption by moving from individual to collective decision-making
6. Create the opportunity for local community-centered investment.

Our Work Continues

We’re building on the momentum of lessons learned from our BAAEC project to reach other communities across California. Thanks in part to the BAAEC experience, TEC and our partners successfully secured a Transformative Climate Communities implementation grant for a community project in Pomona, CA. (Pomona ACTS). We’re also supporting similar community-first initiatives in Santa Monica and beyond. 

1. Based on census tracts designated as Priority Communities by EPA: disadvantaged communities, low-income communities and low-income households, collectively referred to as priority populations.