California Innovating for the Future: Even More Critical Today

What: Planning and Conservation League’s 2025 California Environmental Assembly

When: Saturday, January 25th, 2025, 8:30 am to 5 pm, with a social gathering from 5 to 8 pm

Where: UC Davis School of Law – King Hall (Directions link)

PCL is excited to announce the 2025 California Environmental Assembly will be held in person on January 25th, 2025, at UC Davis School of Law’s King Hall. The California Environmental Law & Policy Center’s generous offer to host the gathering makes our return to King Hall possible!

The Assembly features insightful panels on the critical issues we must tackle to face climate change head-on. Recent Assemblies have led to countless advances in environmental policy; in the last few years, almost a dozen bills have emerged from the Assembly’s panels and conversations.

Join us in 2025 as we explore the intersection of emerging technologies and environmental policy for livable communities in the face of climate change. PCL strongly believes we are falling short of enacting measures that will curb the climate crisis fast enough to avoid catastrophic impacts. We design our panels to focus on immediate short-term solutions and strategies for the future.

To learn how you, your firm, or your organization can become sponsors of the Assembly, please download our 2025 Assembly Sponsor Packet. If you have any questions, don’t hesitate to get in touch with us.

If you are a student, a recent graduate, have a limited income, are a member of an environmental justice group or environmental organization, or are in public service and are interested in attending the Assembly at no cost, please get in touch with events@pcl.org.

REGISTER NOW

2025 Assembly Schedule

Assembly Session & Panels

Lunch Keynote Speakers
Kim Stanley Robinson (bio)
&
California Attorney General Rob Bonta (bio) (invited)

Morning Plenary

California Coastal Protection: Challenges and Triumphs

The coast is California’s Commons and the envy of the nation and the world. For 50 years, the California Coastal Act and the Coastal Commission have been safeguarding coastal resources against poorly planned development and privatization. We will examine how and why the Coastal Act has been such an effective environmental law and what challenges the next 50 years may bring. Our focus will be on how California’s coast has been protected – and sometimes not – for future generations.

Climate Change Track

Insurance and the Environment: The Canary in the Coalmine

The panel will explore how California’s property insurance crisis and proposed solutions may impact the environment and how insurance pricing and underwriting can incentivize investments in ecological forestry and other nature-based investments that reduce the risk of loss. The impact of climate change on insurance pricing and availability in California and elsewhere in the United States, policy and regulatory and market responses, the proposal for a public wildfire risk model, the impact on insurers and the Department of Insurance of proposals to eliminate mapping of high wildfire risk, and the role that insurance and insurers can play in supporting mitigation and adaptation will also be discussed.

Planning for Targeted WUI Development over the Next 25 Years.

Description pending.

Planning Track

Planning for a Regenerative Future: From Despair to Hope

Description pending.

Climate Resilient Infrastructure Streamlining: How do we build the things we need to build faster?

Streamlining the next generation of infrastructure California needs to meet our GHG reduction mandates is a growing conversation in the Capitol. The growing focus is particularly on energy infrastructure and electrification but it also implicates where and what kind of housing and transportation infrastructure we build. How do we incent what we need to build faster? How do we make sure we’re incentivizing the right things? How do we go faster without limiting important environmental review and public access to the process? How do we do this in a way that lifts up communities rather than sidelining them? This cross-interest panel will ponder these questions and potential solutions.

Water Track

Groundwater in the Coastal Zone: Catch It Where and When You Can!

Join us to explore the latest science and on-the-ground projects that are helping to address this critical need for groundwater replenishment for California’s coastal communities. Inadequate water supplies and floods are already major concerns in California. While many groups and individuals are working hard to address the problem, scientists tell us that climate change will pose even greater challenges in the future. In the hilly and mountainous areas along the coast, underground storage capacity is limited to multiple smaller pockets under the surface. If overdrawn, these shallow aquifers are susceptible to saltwater intrusion. This presents a severe challenge on the central coast, where groundwater meets almost all freshwater demands.

Sustainable Framework for Flood Flow Recharge: Better, Faster, Smarter.

Accelerating climate change is generating more and more extreme oscillations in California’s weather patterns. Droughts are drier and rainy years now incite devastating floods. Flood flow recharge can provide a conservation-friendly, cogent, and sustainable answer to our water system and community needs, but only if done right. Recent legislation claiming to fix this issue would have walked back previously negotiated environmental protections for Delta ecosystems and communities and increased reliance on the unsustainable draining of fragile, low-flow water systems. A Sustainable Framework for Flood Flow Recharge: Better, Faster, Smarter will bring together key stakeholders to discuss the nuances of this critical issue and a crucial path forward.

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A Special Thank You to our 2025 Co-Hosts

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