Other Research Information
California Climate Change Research Center
California has been researching the impacts of climate change on California since 1998 under the programs of the California Energy Commission. Funding in 2007 totalled nearly $2.4 million.
The Energy Commission supports energy research and development projects that will help improve the quality of life in California by bringing environmentally safe, affordable and reliable energy services and products to the marketplace. One area of special interest to California is energy-related environmental research focusing on climate change and greenhouse gases.
One of the Commission's programs is the Public Interest Energy Research Program (called PIER for short). PIER's Environmental Area (or PIER-EA) was developed with a broad mandate to research the environmental effects of energy technology and energy production, delivery, and use in California. The ultimate goal of this program area is to enhance California's overall environmental quality. Based on the inextricable link between energy and greenhouse gas emissions, research into climate change is vital to PIER-EA's mission.
PIER-EA has funded climate change research that is categorized into the four research areas listed below. These research areas are linked to PIER-EA research projects and publications that cover topics ranging from climate change scenarios to the cost of climate change impacts on California. This research informs decision makers of the potential impacts of climate change in the following ways:
Climate Monitoring, Analysis, and Modeling: This area of work is designed to understand how climate is changing in California and why. It involves developing the modeling capabilities to estimate how climate will change in the future, as well as developing climate projections for the state for both research and long-term planning.
Improving greenhouse gas Inventory Methods: Some of the methods used to estimate greenhouse gas emissions, especially for methane, nitrous oxide, and other non-CO2 greenhouse gases, are highly unreliable. Work in this area entails improving key methodologies to improve emission estimates in California, which is needed to more accurately track emissions trends.
Options to Reduce GHG Emissions: Research in this area identifies promising options to reduce net greenhouse gas emissions, and weighs the relative costs and benefits of each option.
Impact and Adaptation: This area of work focuses on studying the potential impacts of climate change on different sectors of the economy, such as energy, water, and human health, and investigating options to ameliorate these impacts.
PIER works directly with the Scripps Institution of Oceanography at U.C. San Diego. Their website is: http://meteora.ucsd.edu/cap/
The Energy Commission is also a partner in WESTCARB, the West Coast Regional Carbon Sequestration Partnership. Please visit the WESTCARB website at: www.westcarb.org
For information about the Research and Development Climate Action Team Subgroup (R&D CAT), please see the Subgroup Page.
| CONTRACT NUMBER | COMPANY / ORGANIZATION | PROJECT TITLE | AMOUNT | CONTRACT START DATE |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 500-07-001 | Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory | Estimating the Global Climate Impact of Urban Albedo | $150,000 | 9/17/2007 |
| 500-07-004 | UC Davis | Dynamics of Sierra Nevada Conifer Loss Under Climate Change | $114,996 | 10/9/2007 |
| 500-07-013 | Hydrologic Research Center (HRC) | Performance of the Northern California Water System Under Climate Change: INFORM as an adaptation tool | $199,600 | 12/4/2007 |
| BOA-99-186-P | The Regents of the University of California, Office of the President - CIEE | 2008 Scenarios Project Supplementation | $50,000 | 12/17/2007 |
| ICF-06-012 | ICF Resources, LLC | Technical and Outreach Support for the PIER Climate Change Research Program | $138,238 | 4/9/2007 |
| SAIC-06-013 | Science Applications International Corporation (SAIC) | 2007 California Global Climate Change Conference Expenses | $94,998 | 2/16/2007 |
| UC MR-063 | UC Berkeley | Water, Energy, and Climate Change | $456,644 | 3/16/2007 |
| UC MR-069 | The Regents of the University of California, Office of the President - CIEE | Point of Compliance Regulation and Point of Allocation in a CO2 Cap and Trade Program for the Electricity Sector in California | $75,000 | 9/1/2007 |
| UC MR-069 | The Regents of the University of California, Office of the President - CIEE | Quantifying Greenhouse Gas Emissions Generated by the Consumption Patterns of California Residents | $75,000 | 8/1/2007 |
| UC MR-069 | The Regents of the University of California, Office of the President - CIEE | Ozone Reductions Using Building Envelopes | $75,000 | 7/5/2007 |
| UC MR-069 | The Regents of the University of California, Office of the President - CIEE | Effects of Global Climate Change on Building Energy Consumption and its Implications on Building Energy Codes and Policy in California | $75,000 | 6/11/2007 |
| UC MR-069 | The Regents of the University of California, Office of the President - CIEE | Rapid Global Warming & Breeding in Migratory Birds: Utilizing an Undervalued Historic Database | $75,000 | 12/1/2007 |
| UC MR-069 | The Regents of the University of California, Office of the President - CIEE | Ecosystem Feedbacks to Climate Change in California: Integrated Climate Forcing from Vegetation Redistribution | $74,992 | 6/11/2007 |
| UC MR-071 | National Center for Atmospheric Research | Validation of Lateral Boundary Conditions for Regional Climate Models Applied to the California Region | $150,000 | 7/20/2007 |
| UC MR-074 | PRBO Conservation Science | Biological Impacts of Climate Change in California (BICCCA) | $500,000 | 10/12/2007 |
| 500-06-042 | California Air Resources Board | Haagen-Smit Symposium 2007 | $50,000 | 5/1/2007 |
| Total Funded in 2007: $2,354,467 | ||||
Source: 2007 PIER Annual Report, publication # CEC-500-2008-026-D.
For more information, please contact:
Climate Change Research
California Energy Commission's
Public Interest Energy Research (PIER) Program
Phone: 916-654-4703
lspiegel@energy.state.ca.us
Members of the news media, please contact the Energy Commission's Media & Public Communications Office at 916-654-4989.