Stephanie Pincetl Honored with 2025 Public Impact Research Award
From Claire Griffiths, Institute of the Environment and Sustaianability
Stephanie Pincetl, professor at the UCLA Institute of the Environment and Sustainability, director of the California Center for Sustainable Communities (CCSC), and chair of IoES’s Ph.D. program, has been awarded UCLA’s 2025 Public Impact Research (PIR) Award. The honor recognizes faculty whose scholarship delivers tangible benefits to communities on local, national, and global scales.
Through consistent work on an equitable future for California’s clean energy policy, Pincetl and her team petitioned the California Public Utilities Commission to anonymized energy use data. The subsequent breakthrough was UCLA Energy Atlas, a tool integrating utility data with building characteristics, demographics, and geography. This tool has since been used by several local governments for actionable climate change initiatives and create futher equitable energy policies.
In addition to its data-driven research, CCSC works closely with community partners and state agencies such as the California Air Resources Board, Public Utilities Commission, Energy Commission, and the Los Angeles Department of Water and Power. Together, they focus on ensuring a just transition to 100% renewable energy while examining the deeper social and structural factors that shape energy use and urban development.
Established in 2019, the PIR (Public Impact Research) Awards highlight faculty whose research delivers real-world benefits at every scale. Each award provides $15,000 to further their public impact work — helping scholars like Pincetl continue turning research into action.
