Bringing green energy to San Francisco

It's often been said that waves break first in California. As we make clean, renewable energy a reality for San Francisco and other cities in the Bay Area, the phrase once again applies.

The San Francisco Bay Chapter's clean-energy campaign is pursuing a plan called Community Choice Aggregation. This plan will create over 360 megawatts of renewable-energy and conservation applications right here in San Francisco including - the largest urban network of solar panels in the entire world, putting us at the forefront of clean-energy advocacy. The model we are creating in San Francisco is setting a precedent for the rest of the country and the rest of the world to reduce greenhouse-gas emissions and curb global warming. "The whole world can move to renewable energy. The only thing holding it back is America's bad example of insisting on using early-20th-century energy programs instead of moving into the 21st century," said Tyrone Cashman, architect of California's Wind Credit Law. "Once we take leadership in renewables it will flood the world."

The heart of Community Choice Aggregation is local control over energy supplies. Instead of being forced into contracts with PG&E, cities have the opportunity to choose among energy suppliers. In San Francisco, our plan is to use that flexibility to aggressively harness renewable energy sources, conservation, and efficiency measures to satisfy 51% of the city's energy needs by the year 2019. Not only will we be building the world's largest distributed-generation solar network, but we will do it without tax or utility-rate increases. In fact, under Community Choice our rates will start at or below current PG&E rates. Under this plan, consumers and businesses will have greater long-term certainty in their electricity rates than with PG&E.

The project has drawn the attention of thinkers and decision-makers across the country. Global-warming expert and Pulitzer Prize winner Ross Gelbspan, author of Boiling Point, said, "The fact that the city will achieve this without a major tax expenditure or even a rate increase makes it truly a model for replication everywhere. I could not be more enthusiastic about this globally important event."

The Sierra Club began work on this campaign after the 2001 "energy crisis", when San Francisco voters overwhelmingly passed Propositions B and H, bond measures to fund energy efficiency, solar power, and other clean-energy projects. We formed the Community Choice Energy Alliance with Greenpeace, Local Power, Our City, the San Francisco People's Organization, the League of Young Voters, Greenaction for Health and Environmental Justice, Ovonic Solar, Greenwood Earth Alliance, the San Francisco Democratic and Green parties, Pacific Environment, Bay Area Clean Air Task Force, and others.

Now we have a solid plan, and strong support from nearly all of our local political leaders. We thank Mayor Newsom for signing on to our Cool Cities campaign, and Supervisors Tom Ammiano and Ross Mirkirimi are among several supervisors who have worked hard on this issue and earned our thanks. But unfortunately, almost six years after San Francisco voters went to the ballot box, we have yet to see implementation of their mandate.

Now is the time for Supervisor Ammiano, Mayor Newsom, and the rest of the Board of Supervisors to work together to make Community Choice solar a reality.

Never has there been a more important time to act on global warming. Time recently called global warming the most pressing environmental issue we face today, and even the Bush administration has admitted that global warming is real, and that we need to act now. Rising sea levels, increased intensity of storms, and agricultural failures are very real results of global climate change.

Bureaucratic delays and political squabbles have held up this world-changing plan for over five years now. The Bay Chapter and the Community Choice Energy Alliance are gearing up to finally make this plan a reality in San Francisco as soon as possible.

WhatYouCanDo

Help make this plan a reality by volunteering a little of your time. There are many ways to help. On Monday and Wednesday evenings from 6 - 9 pm we are meeting at Sierra Club Headquarters, 85 Second St. in San Francisco, to call Sierra Club members to get more people involved. If weekends work better for you, we'll be at the Noe Valley farmers' market on Saturday mornings from 9 - 12 to collect hand-written letters from market-goers.

To help out with these events, or for other ways to help, contact or call (415) 200-8975 or visit Community Choice.

Brad Johnson, Chapter conservation organizer