With Al Gore's soaring speech last month calling for an America powered with electricity from 100% renewable sources, a stirring vision comes to mind of a Can Do America, an America that looks at the seemingly impossible and says "why not?"
"We choose to go...not because [it is] easy, but because [it is] hard, because that goal will serve to measure and organize the best of our energies and skills, because that challenge is one that we are willing to accept, one we are unwilling to postpone, and one which we intend to win."
-John Kennedy in his bid for an American moon landing before the end of 1969
With Al Gore's soaring speech last month calling for an America powered with electricity from 100% renewable sources, a stirring vision comes to mind of a Can Do America, an America that looks at the seemingly impossible and says "why not?"
But as David McClellan wrote the other day in SolveClimate, We need a plan. If why not, then how?
In his post, David laid out in clear, nuts n' bolts terms the daunting task we face transforming America's energy economy. By contrast, the moon-shot of the sixties was easy. A few (thousand) rocket scientists, seven dare-devil pilots with the "right stuff" to ride those rockets, and some smart guys with slide rules to point the rockets in the right direction. Before you know it you're on the moon.
Not to make light of that incredible achievement of 40 years ago, but Gore's call to "repower America" requires not just the best and the brightest, but all Americans, to make it happen.
We'll first need to find a way to break through intractable political grid-lock (starting with a long-term extension of the renewable energy tax credit by Congress) and create a policy framework that addresses in minute detail the technical and economic aspects of Gore's Grand Vision.
Has anyone even proposed creating such a plan?
Take a deep breath.
"So goes San Francisco, so goes California and so goes the nation"
A Journey of a Thousand Miles.
In 1961 the immediate goal was simply to get a rocket off the pad without it blowing up or killing anyone. Upon those first steps was built the entire success of Apollo and footprints on the moon.
So it must be with the goal of creating a new energy economy. It must start small, even local, and build on those successes, making course correction when necessary, while scaling out to communities and urban centers across the country. San Francisco voters will be given an opportunity to take one of those first, small steps that could prove a model for others to follow.
The Clean Energy City Charter, authored by Supervisors Ross Mirkarimi and Aaron Peskin, calls for 51% percent of the City's electricity from renewable sources by 2017, 75% by 2030, and 100% by 2040.
Much less ambitious than Gore's proposal, the goals are nonetheless predicated upon a feasibility study as the primary vehicle toward achieving eventual conversion to 100% renewable power in the City of San Francisco. Nothing happens until a plan is in place that addresses the social, economic, and technical feasibility of the Charter's stated goals.
The Charter provides the City a clear mandate to achieve 100% renewable power and a framework upon which to base achieving that goal.
It's getting that first small rocket off the pad without it blowing up.
Alas, the local private utility in San Francisco, Pacific Gas & Electric, has mounted a concerted, and one would assume, expensive effort to scare voters into defeating the measure. The direct mail pieces (that I am now pulling out of my mailbox weekly) bandy about the idea of a $4 billion dollar boondoggle administered by "politicians who can’t fill potholes".
Mayor Gavin Newsom, who signed the US Mayors Climate Protection Agreement and stands ready to install wave generators underneath the Golden Gate, is somewhat mysteriously opposed to the Charter, too. When asked why, Newsom told reporters "We have other things we should be focusing on," adding that we should "...call it what it is. It’s a power takeover of PG&E."
It appears a perceived threat to PG&E’s monopoly is at issue, but as Supervisor Mirkarimi points out "All we are asking is a feasibility study... It’s our figures against their figures, so why won’t they at least commit to a feasibility study?"
This is the key point. All options for creating a renewable energy infrastructure must be considered and weighed. PG&E and the mayor, who has close ties with the utility, are unwilling, if they are to have their way, to even allow a feasibility study be conducted.
How, then, are we to determine what is feasible?
A study will add to the national discussion and is what Al Gore needs, too. Generalities and broad-stroked vision are needed to inspire us to strive for the out-of-reach goal. It's throwing the hat over the wall. But once that toss is made, specific steps are required to retrieve it.
We'd all like to see Gore's vision of a new energy economy come to fruition. Perhaps the Charter I'll be voting on this November is one small step toward making that happen.
Text of the Clean Energy Charter:
080648 [San Francisco Clean Energy Act] Supervisor Mirkarimi
Charter Amendment (Fourth Draft) to amend the Charter of the City and County by amending Sections 8B.120, 8B.123, and 9.107, and adding Sections 8B.128 through 8B.131, to: (i) address the crisis of global climate change by moving San Francisco from fossil fuels to clean, sustainable energy production, (ii) ensure environmentally sustainable and affordable electric supplies for residents, businesses, and City departments, (iii) require the Public Utilities Commission to determine the most effective means of providing clean, sustainable, reliable and reasonably-priced electric service to San Francisco residents, businesses and City departments, and (iv) establish an Independent Ratepayer Advocate to represent the interests of San Franciscans that purchase utility services from the City by evaluating and making recommendations on utility rate proposals prepared by the San Francisco Public Utilities Commission under Charter section 8B.125.
(Photo-Illustration by Teresa Herrmann)