Optimized Strategic Plan

Pasadena as seen from a tall hill with the words Optimized Strategic Plan: Pasadena's Path to 100% Carbon Free Electricity overlayed on top

On Monday, December 15, 2025, the Pasadena City Council unanimously approved the Optimized Strategic Plan (OSP), a comprehensive action plan to achieve the carbon-free goals established by City of Pasadena Resolution 9977. The OSP serves as Pasadena’s roadmap to achieve the goals of City Resolution 9977, which declares climate change an emergency and sets a visionary goal of sourcing 100% of Pasadena’s electricity from carbon-free resources by 2030. This innovative plan demonstrates Pasadena’s commitment to climate leadership while carefully balancing affordability, rate equity, reliability, and long-term energy stability for the community.

Pasadena’s pathway to carbon-free electricity will be charted through a comprehensive Optimized Strategic Plan (OSP), which PWP is developing in collaboration with Energy and Environmental Economics, Inc. (E3), a recognized leader in clean energy policy implementation.

The OSP is a roadmap that defines the key actions and future decision points that will best position PWP to achieve the City’s goal to source all electricity from carbon-free sources by the end of 2030 while maintaining reliability and minimizing cost impacts to customers. The OSP will consider how new generation resources, infrastructure investments, and customer programs can facilitate the transition to Pasadena’s carbon-free goal.

Stakeholder and community input are instrumental considerations in the development of the OSP. An essential part of this process includes extensive outreach, coordination, and collaboration between PWP, policymakers, stakeholder groups, and the Pasadena community.  This is in addition to regular informational updates provided to the Pasadena City Council, Municipal Services Committee (MSC), and Environmental Advisory Commission (EAC). Broader participation is invited through periodic community outreach meetings.  In addition, a Technical Advisory Panel (TAP) comprised of a cross-section of the Pasadena community was formed to provide valuable input to the OSP development process.

Resolution 9977

City of Pasadena Resolution 9977, adopted by the Pasadena City Council on January 30, 2023, declares that climate change is an emergency that threatens the health and welfare of the city, region, state, nation, and the environment, and sets forth a goal to source 100% of Pasadena’s electricity from carbon-free sources on an hourly basis by the end of 2030, while optimizing for affordability, rate equity, stability, and reliability of electricity.

Pasadena has long been a clean energy leader, consistently exceeding California’s renewable energy mandates and advancing more proactive decarbonization pathways than required by the state. Building on this leadership, the City Council unanimously approved Pasadena Water and Power’s (PWP) 2023 Power Integrated Resource Plan (IRP) in December 2023, reinforcing the City’s commitment to non-emitting energy resources. As part of that approval, the City Council directed the development of the Optimized Strategic Plan to translate policy goals into clear, actionable steps, a directive that has now been fulfilled with the adoption of the OSP.

OSP Progress Report Update

The City of Pasadena’s OSP continues to guide the City’s transition toward a carbon‑free power supply by the end of 2030. The Progress Report Updates provide an overview of accomplishments made and outlines key priorities. Highlighting the five core strategic pillars and two foundational elements of the OSP and provides progress updates on each initiative.

Pasadena has made significant strides through the expansion of utility‑scale renewable resources, growth in local solar and energy storage, adoption of emerging technologies and innovative projects, and strong collaboration with our customers. Together, these efforts are driving measurable progress toward achieving the City’s landmark clean energy goal.

Follow Along With Our Progress on the Clean Energy Tracker Page

Optimized Strategic Plan

Draft Preparatory Study Technical Reports

The OSP development process involved a series analytical efforts or studies. The OSP Preparatory Studies—Local Solar + Storage, Demand Response and Flexible Loads, Transmission Options, and New and Emerging Technology—identify the broadest possible set of options that could contribute to meeting Resolution 9977 objectives. E3 drew upon a range of data sources and methods to characterize the cost and potential of all resource options that will serve as the building blocks of different case studies in the OSP. This includes emphasizing demand-side solutions, characterizing local and external supply-side resources, and exploring transmission solutions that can support the affordability, reliability, and decarbonization goals of Resolution 9977.

Portfolio Study Technical Reports

In the second phase of the OSP, the “Portfolio Development” studies, a range of electric sector planning models (e.g., loss-of-load-probability modeling, long-term capacity expansion) were used to design multiple portfolios that could meet Resolution 9977 objectives. These studies provide analysis of options to convert the Glenarm Power Plant to hydrogen or replace it with a portfolio of local carbon-free resources while maintaining an adequate supply of local resources and imports to maintain system reliability across all credible conditions including peak loads, extreme weather, and transmission contingencies. This phase also included long-term capacity expansion analysis to develop multiple case studies of new resource investments, both local and external to Pasadena, optimized to minimize costs while meeting clean energy targets and reliability requirements. This phase of work analyzed the impact of each of these case studies to PWP’s system cost and their performance on multiple clean energy metrics.

City Council Updates

March 25, 2024

October 28, 2024

May 5, 2025

December 15, 2025

MSC Updates

February 27, 2024

August 27, 2024

September 10, 2024

March 11, 2025

April 8, 2025

June 24, 2025

November 5, 2025

EAC Updates

September 10, 2024

November 12, 2024

March 11, 2025

August 12, 2025

TAP Meetings

June 5, 2024 - TAP Meeting #1

June 27, 2024 - TAP Meeting #2

July 17, 2024 - TAP Meeting #3

August 22, 2024 - TAP Meeting #4

September 18, 2024 - TAP Meeting #5

October 16, 2024 - TAP Meeting #6

December 16, 2024 - TAP Meeting #7

February 10, 2025 - TAP Meeting #8

February 26, 2025 - TAP Meeting #9

March 27, 2025 - TAP Meeting #10

May 22, 2025 - Tap Meeting #11

June 18, 2025 - Tap Meeting #12

August 5, 2025 - Tap Meeting #13

October 20, 2025 - Tap Meeting #14

Announcements about further community meetings in 2025 are forthcoming. Watch a recording of the previous meeting below.

Community Meeting Recordings

September 26, 2024

March 26, 2025 - Shaping PWP's Energy Future

June 26, 2025 - Pasadena Water and Power Open House

  • An event hosted on Thursday, June 26, 6-7:30 p.m. at Victory Park Recreation Center, 2575 Paloma Street. Event was hands-on event is designed to encourage face-to-face dialog, receive customer insight on water and electric services and to gather community input on the future of PWP programs.