2025

The University of California, Santa Barbara, in partnership with the cities of Goleta, Santa Barbara, Carpinteria, Ventura, the County of Santa Barbara and San Luis Obispo, Ventura County Regional Energy Alliance, and the Community Environmental Council, will be hosting the 13th Annual Central Coast Sustainability Summit on Wednesday, October 15th, 2025. The event will bring together representatives from local governments and organizations to discuss common sustainability issues, share best practices, and seek partners in collaboratively addressing complex environmental and economic issues in our region. We hope that the summit will allow attendees to network and build relationships with counterparts and learn from our collective sustainability programs. 

As part of the planning process, the Steering Committee for the 13th Annual Central Coast Sustainability Summit is officially requesting proposals for presentations or discussion panels that highlight successful sustainability programs that have broad impacts on the Central Coast community. 

If you would like to propose a presentation for a workshop, please see the instructions and application questions in the attached form. The deadline for proposal submissions is June 20th, 2025, at 5:00 pm.  Submissions will be reviewed by the Steering Committee.  

If you have any questions about the Central Coast Sustainability Summit, or would like additional information about proposing a workshop presentation, please contact UCSB Sustainability Manager, Jewel Persad, at Jewel.persad@ucsb.edu or (805) 893-8367.

Call for Proposals

The deadline for proposal submissions is June 20th, 2025, at 5:00 pm

2025 Summit Schedule (coming soon)

The 2024 event was Sponsored by:

Silver Sponsors

Blue Sponsors

Green Sponsor

History

The event brings together representatives from local governments and organizations to discuss common sustainability issues, share best practices, and seek partners in collaboratively addressing complex environmental and economic issues in our region.

Conference Goals

1. Promote Best Practices seeking partnerships or collaborations with other local agencies
2. Encourage dialogue between sustainability focus areas (i.e. bridge discussion between energy, transportation, waste, water management……
3. Support the university to fulfill its role as a resource to the community through sharing research, student engagement, and institutional action.
4. Network and build relationships with counterparts to learn from local programs, collaboratively address complex environmental issues in our region and consider pool resources resulting in cost savings.

Our audience includes representatives of government and regulatory agencies, nonprofit organizations, private companies, campuses, and schools in San Luis Obispo, Santa Barbara, and Ventura County. Attendees include practitioners who are directly implementing sustainability projects on a day-to-day basis, or could potentially do so, as well as the political leaders guiding their organizations. Representatives from private industry who would be critical partners on the core topics will also be invited.

Since the summit began in fall 2011 it has been the launching point for new county and region- wide initiative. Examples include the Multi-jurisdictional Renewable Energy Task Force, where we are currently exploring the feasibility of becoming our own utility to allow us to better secure renewable energy for our community through a community choice aggregation option. We also launched the cross-agency Volunteer Management Program, which enabled local non-profits to shift from a model of recruitment per organization to a collective model of joint recruitment to the environmental movement as a whole.