Municipal Bank of LA: Clean Energy Portfolio Options

This publication is the fifth in the collaborative public banking series of JFI and the Berggruen Institute. The briefing addresses the public bank’s mandate to enable a just green energy transition, with lending options to catalyze community solar, utility-scale solar, as well as on- and off-shore wind power. These investments are projected to substantially reduce costs for the Los Angeles Department of Water and Power—and therefore also consumers—while helping the city meet its net-zero goals by 2035.

The briefing’s authors modeled likely “levelized cost of energy” projections for utility-scale green deployments, or the net present value of the cost of energy over the lifetime of the new generation project. Per this analysis, the following are reductions in LCOE for renewable deployment relative to current policy, likely amounting to tens of thousands of dollars worth of savings over the lifetime of each project:

– Community solar: $1.63/MWh

– Utility-scale solar with storage: $1.08/MWh

– Onshore wind: $0.92/MWh

– Offshore wind: $2.30/MWh

Read the full press release here