The Newspaper of the San Francisco Bay Chapter
July - August 2007
TABLE OF CONTENTS
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Help make plug-ins the next big step in energy efficiency
Sierra Club's San Francisco Bay Chapter is now a Plug-in Partner, and wants you to become one, too!
What's a Plug-in Partner? It's an individual, organization, government, or business that makes a public statement calling for the major auto companies to produce plug-in hybrid electric vehicles. We want the car makers to give consumers the choice to use cleaner, cheaper domestic electricity to power our cars. Plug-in hybrids drive more miles on electricity than conventional hybrids, boosting the gas mileage to 100 miles per gallon in local driving. Plug-in hybrids also have a fuel tank, allowing easy long-distance driving.
Austin, TX, which uses more renewable power than any other U.S. city, started the national Plug-in Partners campaign to demonstrate the demand for ultra-efficient plug-in hybrids. Car owners would plug in to a standard electrical socket to recharge the vehicle's batteries at night during off-peak hours. Night-time charging would allow Austin to use even more of its west Texas wind (which blows mainly at night) and less fossil fuel. Austin's motto: "We want to replace Middle East oil with west Texas wind." How about Northern California wind?
Plug-In Bay Area's municipal partners already include San Francisco, Berkeley, Oakland, Alameda, Los Altos Hills, Hayward, and Sunnyvale, as well as Marin County. The Silicon Valley Leadership Group also recently announced its plan to collect soft orders from member businesses.
Driving on electricity already is significantly cleaner than driving on gasoline, even on today's national electrical supply, 52% of which comes from coal. And the electrical grid will keep getting cleaner, if Sierra Club's efforts succeed.
A U.S. Department of Energy study this year estimated that existing night-time electrical capacity could power the daily commutes of 73% of all cars, trucks, SUVs, and vans in this country without building a single new power plant. That's around 175 million vehicles. It will take many years to get that many new plug-in hybrids on the market all the more reason for the car companies to get started soon!
Approximately 1/3 of U.S. greenhouse gas emissions come from vehicle tailpipes, and another third out of power-plant smokestacks. Plug-in cars will help clean up both of these polluting sources simultaneously. Preliminary studies suggest that with vehicle-to-grid technology, we can store intermittent renewables like wind power in the plug-in cars, and then pull some of that energy out of the cars later on for use by the grid, or your home, or to reduce the need for power plants. The U.S. Department of Energy estimates that this could triple our access to wind power.
WhatYouCanDo
For more information, check out the resources at Plug-in Bay Area, the local chapter of the national Plug-in Partners program, or call Jodie Van Horn at (415) 659-0509.
- Sign the Community Petition Form, and get other others to sign it. The petition asks the car companies to produce plug-in hybrids.
- Give the separate Commitment Form to any group or organization you're part of. Ask them to sign it and join the hundreds of other cities, counties, businesses, colleges, environmental organizations, national-security groups, utilities, and others who have become Plug-in Partners.
- If your company or organization has a vehicle fleet (even if it's just one car), ask them to place a "soft" purchase order for plug-in hybrids by filling out the Fleet Order Form. "Soft" orders are advance statements of intent to buy plug-in hybrids for the fleet once they're available. (Firm orders aren't possible until automakers commit to manufacture them). So far, the Plug-in Partners Campaign has collected more than 8,000 soft purchase orders to show that there is a market for plug-in hybrids.
To see a national list of Plug-In Partners, visitsee the national Plug-In Partners web site.
© 2007 San Francisco Sierra Club Yodeler