AILSA CHANG, HOST:
The power supply for the city of Los Angeles, where I live, is now a hundred percent coal-free. Officials here in LA say this is a huge step towards the city's goal of fully transitioning to clean energy by 2035. For more on this milestone, we're joined now by Evan Gillespie, who's been working for more than 10 years towards making this city coal-free. He is the chief strategy officer at Industrious Labs, a nonprofit that advocates for emissions reductions in heavy industry. Welcome.
EVAN GILLESPIE: Thanks for having me.
CHANG: So just put this into perspective for us, Evan. How significant is it that LA, of all cities, is no longer using coal as an energy source?
GILLESPIE: Any day a coal plant retires is cause for celebration. Coal's one of the leading causes of climate change, and the faster we can move beyond coal, the better. But I think the more meaningful aspect of the announcement is how LA got here.
CHANG: Yeah, because you have said, I think around 20 years ago, that the very idea of LA getting off of coal to some people would have been laughable. So how did this transformation happen?
GILLESPIE: Yeah. Well, let's go back in time to 2009. We were in the depths of the Great Recession. Clean energy was just starting to be deployed at scale, but it was still more expensive than coal. And at the time, Los Angeles' power mix really mirrored the country's energy mix. It was about half coal, more than 80% of our power came from fossil fuels and we had just a sliver of electricity that came from clean energy. And so when Mayor Villaraigosa announced in 2009 - set a vision for moving beyond coal, the idea of doing this in such a short time frame - 10 to 15 years - seemed naive at best. I was working at the Sierra Club, and I was quite literally laughed out of rooms - chased in one instance...
CHANG: (Laughter) Oh, I'm sorry.
GILLESPIE: ...For trying to build public support for this vision. So when the city set this goal, it got to work, rolled up its sleeves, and they replaced windows and doors and made their lighting and electricity more efficient. It partnered with the business community to build the largest rooftop solar program in the country. It even built the largest solar installation on Indigenous lands in U.S. history.
CHANG: Wow.
GILLESPIE: And if you fast-forward to today, now more than 60% of our electricity comes from clean electricity, and the city is moving with urgency to get to a hundred percent by 2035.
CHANG: I have to ask, though, 'cause LA is - what? - the second most populous city in the U.S., right?
GILLESPIE: Yes.
CHANG: So it, of course, consumes a ton of energy. And without coal now, what types of energy sources is this city still using? Is it all clean sources?
GILLESPIE: So more than 60% of our power comes from zero-emission sources. That means a little bit of nuclear power and hydro. But in the last 15 years, the city has really accelerated its use of clean electricity. So almost half of the city's power comes from wind and solar today, and then the remaining about third of the power comes from natural gas.
CHANG: OK, so we talked about the story of how LA came to be coal-free. Do you think that can translate to other municipalities or states?
GILLESPIE: The good news is that there are stories like LA's unfolding all over this country right now. In 2009, half the country's power came from coal. In 2025, that number is less than 20%. So there are cities, states and utilities all over the country that are working to move beyond coal.
I think it is important to note that Los Angeles isn't just walking away from the community that built its coal plant. It is replacing it with a power plant that will ultimately run on green hydrogen. And so the economic benefits of the transition move well beyond the city of Los Angeles but all the way up to Utah, which has powered the city for decades.
CHANG: Evan Gillespie is the chief strategy officer at Industrious Labs, a nonprofit that advocates for emissions reductions in heavy industry. Thank you so much for joining us today, Evan.
GILLESPIE: Thank you for having me. Transcript provided by NPR, Copyright NPR.
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