You can make a difference to the hurt being caused by climate chaos and the great extinction event in your town or your city! How? Reuse, repurpose, and recycle this information. You can push your local politicians to act. It will make a difference!
This is the letter for week 151 of a weekly climate strike that went on for 4 years in front of San Francisco City Hall, beginning early March 2019. For more context, see this story. For an annotated table of contents of the topics for all the strike letters, see this story. Meanwhile…
STRIKE FOR THE PLANET
In which we continue with specifics for getting the bare necessities
This week’s topic: How To Ensure SF Has Energy
Nothing much to add here
We’re at the survival or non-survival point right now. Specifically, San Francisco’s survival depends on securing local, green, and renewable sources of both water and energy, yet SF has secured neither to date. Maybe you don’t know who to contact or what works? Below are contacts and information to take steps for green, local energy for SF (much easier to do than water, by the way; see last week’s strike letter for details on that.) The time for fighting for our survival is almost up. Maybe you should get started.
Energy for SF
Unlike with water, San Francisco has a plethora of options with regards to energy. So let’s dive in.
Wind
Lots of places in SF are perfect for small wind energy systems. In order below are the most common current design, integrated wind turbine systems (also good at pigeon deterrence), small rooftop turbines, vertical axis turbines (seen in situ), bladeless wind turbines, and a few funnel/tunnel designs.
Solar
Rooftop solar, solar on the sides of buildings, solar to provide shade beneath it… there are a lot of options. From pergolas, gazebos, and patio roofs to ground mounted arrays, from incentives and tax credits to getting control of our grid, solar is a big part of any clean energy system and getting better all the time.
Heat Pump / Heat Differential
Heat differentials, especially when using “waste” heat (such as due to urban heat island effect), are good sources of energy. Below are information on geothermal heat pumps, geothermal energy at a municipal scale, ground and air heat pumps, and water source heat pump (with a local example).
Tidal and Wave
Tidal energy generation has been studied and used for centuries. We start with tidal barrages, turbines and fences, some recent advances, a variety of generator designs, and yet another example of how we spend money and start doing the work only to abandon it later on.
Chemical
A few of these produce CO2 but do so in a way that reduces total greenhouse gases, usually by reacting methane (a strongly potent GHG) to derive energy and CO2. In order, they are landfill-gas-to-energy, hydrogen, alcohols, and biogas.
Storage
In order, green hydrogen, Li ion large scale battery, gravity batteries (in pumped hydro and stacked weights), liquid air energy storage, underground compressed air energy storage, and Flow batteries.
Energy Saving Strategies
Turns out taking care of the water problem by dealing with things like blackwater recycling also saves energy. Then there’s retro-commissioning, auditing, incentives, legislation and penalties, and a continual cycle of determination and implementation of best practices, in addition to rebates.
Dear Editor
San Francisco is uniquely situated in regards to green power generation. Our geography means we have a wealth of options available to us, capable of producing a huge amount of energy if we just tap into them. You know the massive rate hike PG&E dumped on us (while the company rakes in record profits)? If the money going towards our bigger bills was instead used for just one year to fund renewable energy projects in SF, the resulting generators and turbines and panels and batteries and efficiencies would produce enough energy through municipal solar, wind, tidal, heat pump, chemical, storage, and savings to fuel SF for free for every year thereafter. We need to get our grid back from PG&E and start investing in our city, and not in some CEO’s yacht, second home, or private jet.
San Bruno, CA, after PG&E’s gas pipeline exploded, killing 8.
The Camp Fire, also courtesy of PG&E, which killed 85 people.
FOOTNOTES
1. Alexandria Herr, Shannon Osaka, and Maddie Stone. “Points of No Return”. Grist. Accessed 15 March 2022. https://grist.org/climate-tipping-points-amazon-greenland-boreal-forest/.
2. Sarah Kaplan. “Satellite images show the Amazon rainforest is hurtling toward a ‘tipping point’”. The Washington Post. 7 March 2022. https://www.washingtonpost.com/climate-environment/2022/03/07/amazon-rainforest-tipping-point-climate/.
