Strategic Growth Council

The Sacramento Integrated Multimodal Place-Based Living Project is a Transformative Climate Communities initiative aimed at strengthening community engagement, increasing affordable housing, and expanding public transit in the River District neighborhood of Sacramento. One of the key features of the project, the Dos Rios Light Rail Station, will significantly increase residents’ accessibility to Downtown Sacramento and the greater Sacramento Area. The Mirasol Village Community Garden represents another success of the initiative, giving residents the opportunity to cultivate fresh produce and forge community bonds.

California Workforce Development Board

The High Road Training Partnerships Program granted nearly half a million dollars through the Equitable Food Initiative (EFI) to engage farmworkers and produce industry employers in the documentation and categorization of foundational, crop-specific, and technical skills. This work will support improved job quality for workers, a more professionalized workforce for employers, and the recognition of skills needed in environmentally sound agricultural production.

California Natural Resources Agency

Amigos de Los Rios, a Southern California-based nonprofit, is using California Climate Investments funding received through the Urban Greening Program, administered by the California Natural Resources Agency, to create an Emerald Necklace, a 17-mile loop of parks and greenways connecting disadvantaged communities to urban green spaces. The nonprofit recently transformed the exterior of Mary Jackson Elementary School in Altadena and revitalized a section of the Rio Honda Bike Path, integrating native plants and natural infrastructure to capture carbon and filter groundwater.

California Department of Forestry and Fire Protection

In August of 2024, the Canyon Fire ignited in the Tuolumne River Canyon, quickly becoming a threat to nearby subdivisions. Fortunately, the Tuolumne Fire Safe Council had received California Climate Investments funding through the Wildfire Prevention Grants program and completed the Ponderosa-Mira Monte Shaded Fuel Break just two years prior. The fuel break gave wildland firefighters leverage in slowing and ultimately extinguishing the blaze, saving area homes and lives.

California Department of Forestry and Fire Protection

Giant sequoias, the world’s largest trees and an iconic California species, face increasing risk due to severe wildfires brought on by unnaturally high fuel loads and climate change. To avoid further losses and promote new growth, a group of partners, with funding from California Climate Investments, is restoring and protecting southern Sierra sequoia forests.

Wildfires have burned over 40% of Butte County in the past decade, destroying homes, communities, and vital forestland. Since 2021, the Butte County Fire Safe Council has been restoring nearly 10,000 acres of forest with over $22 million in California Climate Investments funding, granted by CAL FIRE’s Forest Health Program. When the Park Fire raged across northern Butte County, efforts to reduce fuels aided firefighters in diverting the blaze from residences and saving mature trees. Using techniques like thinning, mastication, reforestation, and prescribed burns, these efforts are reducing hazardous fuels and strengthening wildfire resilience. Through continued investment in wildfire mitigation, the Butte County Fire Safe Council is helping to protect communities and ensure forest health for the future. 

California Department of Resources Recycling and Recovery’s (CalRecycle) Community Composting for Green Spaces Grant Program is funding community composting at hundreds of sites across California. In the first cycle of funding, the grant program awarded $1.5 million to the People, Food, and Land Foundation, which supported community composting at 117 sites throughout California, planted 488 trees, created 4,418 cubic yards of compost, and reduced emissions by 2,508 MTCO2e of GHG emissions. An additional $4.2 million was awarded to the California Alliance for Community Composting and LA Compost in the second cycle of the program. Through the establishment or expansion of community composting sites, communities receive benefits such as part time jobs and training on composting practices, fresh produce from adjacent gardens, training on farming practices, an increase in shade from tree planting, and the development of green spaces.  

In October 2023, the City of San Francisco’s Balboa Park Neighborhood held a ribbon cutting for 131 new affordable homes adjacent to the Balboa Park Bay Area Rapid Transit (BART) Station, known as Kapuso at the Upper Yard. These homes were built thanks to
$29.9 million from SGC’s Affordable Housing and Sustainable Communities (AHSC), in its fifth round of funding. The AHSC program funds the construction of affordable housing near transit as a key strategy to reduce GHG emissions by reducing vehicle miles traveled, and Kapuso at the Upper Yard is a key example of the need for this work.

In 2020, Sarah Light, agronomy advisor at the University of California Cooperative Extension, partnered with the Colusa County Resource Conservation District, Davis Ranch, Richter Ag, and the United States Department of Agriculture Natural Resource Conservation Service to apply for a CDFA Healthy Soils Program Demonstration Grant. The team received $99,832 of grant funding to conduct a demonstration project on cover crops on two fields in the Sacramento Valley from fall 2020 to spring 2024.

Old‑growth redwood forests store more above‑ground carbon than any other forest type on Earth. Unfortunately, only 5% of old‑growth redwood forests survived extensive colonial logging in the 19th and 20th Centuries. Now, thanks in part to California Climate Investments funding awarded through CAL FIRE’s Forest Health Program, a partnership is working to establish the old‑growth forests of the future on California’s northern coast. 

The 40 Prado Road Homeless Services Center, a shelter located in San Luis Obispo, serves up to 100 occupants at a time. While it was built in 2018 under the 2013 Energy Code and met energy efficiency standards of the time, it was under the Low‑Income Weatherization Program (LIWP) that the shelter was able to become even more energy efficient, adding a 120‑kilowatt solar system and other energy efficiency measures thanks to California Climate Investments funding. The success at this property—the first homeless shelter to receive funding under LIWP—has paved the way for many similar properties across the state to also receive funding.

CalRecycle’s Food Waste Prevention and Rescue Grant Program funds projects that lower overall greenhouse gas emissions in California through food waste prevention and rescue projects, which reduce the amount of food disposed in landfills. Receiving multiple grants from the program since fiscal year 2016-17, White Pony Express: Food Recovery for All is a food waste rescue project operating out of Pleasant Hill, California. It has received a total of $701,530 from California Climate Investments, as well as additional funding from CalRecycle’s Edible Food Recovery Grant Program.  

California Strategic Growth Council

With funding from the Climate Change Research Program, PSE Healthy Energy is working with the Asian Pacific Environmental Network and Communities for a Better Environment to identify opportunities to build solar+storage resilience hubs at schools and community centers across California.

California Air Resources Board

With funding from the Community Air Grants Program, community-led project SJVAir is providing accurate air quality data and real time alerts to residents in disadvantaged communities located up to 30 miles away from the nearest regulatory PM 2.5 monitor.

California Natural Resources Agency

The Cesar Chavez Living Schoolyard project transformed an unshaded asphalt-covered schoolyard into a vibrant, tree-covered, park-like setting in a critically an underserved neighborhood in East Oakland. The site hosts two elementary schools, and their more than 600 students now enjoy a real grass play field, an expanded learning garden featuring an outdoor classroom and fruit orchard, a dry creek, a nature-play zone, as well as pollinator-attracting landscape areas, expanded seating and gathering options, and 65 new trees

California Air Resources Board

Omnitrans is working with several partners to develop a community-driven transportation plan for the public transportation system in the San Bernardino Valley. Omnitrans is the public transportation provider for the San Bernardino Valley region. The ConnecTransit Plan will identify and prioritize clean transportation improvements that address hurdles to equity and access within the Omnitrans service area and that will reduce greenhouse gas emissions. The ConnecTransit Plan will provide a blueprint for future implementation projects for which Omnitrans will seek grant funds.

California Air Resources Board

Thanks to over $3 million from the Sustainable Transportation Equity Project, the City of Commerce has partnered with Climate Resolve and TreePeople to provide more clean transportation options to the city’s residents. Situated in southeast Los Angeles County in an area known for its commercial and industrial operations, Commerce has a history of providing free and reliable public transit service to its residents. 

California Workforce Development Board

The High Road to Tribal Forest Restoration and Stewardship project provides foundational training and skill building tied directly to work experience in forest health and landscape restoration. Through a partnership between Tribes, nonprofits, and regional employers, the project is working to increase employment opportunities and build capacity for Tribal Forest restoration crews. The project has formally engaged with fourteen Tribes, with training participants from over twenty Tribes.  

California Department of Forestry and Fire Protection

A collaborative of landowners led by the San Diego Fire Safe Council and the Resource Conservation District of Greater San Diego County is implementing a landscape-scale restoration project aimed at improving forest health on Palomar Mountain. Forests in San Diego county have experienced heavy losses from catastrophic fires and invasive pest infestations. Now at the home of one of San Diego county’s last mixed conifer forests, project partners are working to ensure Palomar Mountain’s forests are resilient to future wildfires. 

California Natural Resources Agency

TreePeople is transforming Pacoima Middle School’s asphalt schoolyard into a more green, vibrant and healthy learning space. The Pacoima Living Schoolyards Project will bring native shade trees, shrubs, pollinator gardens, and outdoor nature-based education and play areas.  

California Strategic Growth Council

72 affordable homes for families and veterans are now available in downtown Riverside. The Mission Heritage Plaza project is a partnership between Wakeland Housing and Development Corporation, the City of Riverside, and Riverside Transit Agency, working to reduce greenhouse gas emissions through transportation mode-shift and construction of affordable housing within the urban core of Riverside. 

The California Department of Resources Recycling and Recovery (CalRecycle) awarded $488,635 of California Climate Investment funds to Habitat for Humanity East Bay/Silicon Valley, Inc. as part of the first cycle of the Reuse Grant Program. This project is diverting wood products from landfills to their ReStore retail stores for reuse by the community. Habitat for Humanity East Bay/Silicon Valley, Inc. is a nonprofit, donation-based collection, and resale operation with three sites in Oakland, Concord, and San Jose, serving the San Francisco Bay Area.

Thanks to funding from California Climate Investments through the Low-Income Weatherization Program (LIWP), Rocio Hernandez and her family reduced their home energy costs by installing a new rooftop solar system and energy efficiency upgrades. At first, Mrs. Hernandez thought the referral flyer her husband brought home after work as a seasonal farmworker during the grape harvest in Delano was too good to be true. A local farmworker agency provided information about the LIWP Farmworker Housing Component, a California Climate Investment program focusing exclusively on the installation of energy efficiency measures and solar photovoltaics (PV) to reduce greenhouse gas emissions for farmworker households at no cost.

California Air Resources Board

Thanks to $12 million from the Advanced Technology Demonstration and Pilot Projects and $29 million in match funding from multiple project partners, the NorCAL Zero-Emission Regional and Drayage Operations with Fuel Cell Electric Trucks (NorCAL Zero) Project will support the largest commercial deployment of Class 8 hydrogen-powered fuel cell trucks in the country. These zero-emission trucks will improve the air quality of communities between Oakland and Bakersfield by displacing diesel-fueled trucks that emit harmful air pollutants.