Learn How We Can Get LA Off Coal!

Every day, Los Angeles gets 39% of its energy from dirty, polluting coal plants. The Sierra Club is on a mission to change that!

Visit the MVCC Green Booth at the Mar Vista Farmers Market on Sunday October 17th to learn about LA Beyond Coal. Find out why the MVCC submitted a letter of support for the Sierra Club's LA Beyond Coal Campaign to the LA City Council and encouraged them to support a plan to eliminate coal from the electricity supply of Los Angeles.


Los Angeles City Council President Eric Garcetti declared that Los Angeles “can and will” move beyond the use of coal-fired power as he joined organizers for the Sierra Club’s Los Angeles Beyond Coal campaign at a “Rally to Kick Coal and Oil Out of LA” on Sunday afternoon.  

LADWP stands for Los Angeles Department of Water and Power, and it is the largest city-owned utility in the United States with 1.45 million electricity customers. Currently, the city of Los Angeles owns shares in two coal plants: Navajo and Intermountain Power Project. In 2006, Navajo Generating Station and Intermountain Power Project released a combined total of 36,107,111 tons of CO2 into the atmosphere.


The Navajo generating station alone uses 8 million tons of coal a year which translates into 25,000 tons of coal per day when all units are fully running. Additionally, each year the plant uses nearly 8 billion gallons of water from Lake Powell for cooling – a shocking number in water starved Los Angeles. Our dependence on coal is responsible for significant pollution and human health impacts at every phase of its life cycle.


The department has already been taking strides towards a cleaner energy usage during Villaraigosa’s first term. While renewable energy made up only three percent of LA’s power supply in 2005, as of July last year the figure was 8.5% and the city is on track to have 20% by 2010.


“We applaud Mayor Villaraigosa’s bold decision to move Los Angeles beyond coal,” said Bruce Nilles, director of the Sierra Club’s efforts to end coal-fired power plants. “The decision to replace coal with cleaner energy alternatives is key to boosting job creation and economic growth.” “Solar LA serves as more than a blueprint to a greener LADWP,” Mayor Villaraigosa said. “By sparking a broad movement to solar energy across a city of 4 million residents, we are priming the pump for Los Angeles to become a world leader in the solar industry and delivering on the vision of re-making Los Angeles into the cleanest, greenest big city in America.”


If this plan is completed by 2020 then LA will generate a tenth of Los Angeles’ power through solar energy by 2020. LADWP will put in 400 MW of roof-top solar systems on city-owned properties by 2014. It will also obtain 500 MW of utility-scale solar power from projects developed under agreement by third-party solar developers.


“L.A. has everything it takes to make this [solar plan] work,” said Villaraigosa, standing alongside environmentalists, union leaders and City Council members. “We have the sun in abundance. We have the space. We have the largest municipal utility in the country.”