The only thing standing between my city and a renewable power system is a corrupt mayor in the pay of Pacific Gas and Electric. Marin and Sonoma counties are already there. S.F. clean energy program could generate 8,100 jobs, report says Marisa Lagos | on November 16, 2014 A renewable energy program in San Francisco could create more that 8,100 construction jobs by building $2.4 billion worth of proposed solar, wind and geothermal projects, a new report says. That refutes many criticisms made by Mayor Ed Lee when the city killed a previous version of CleanPowerSF, supporters of the plan say. The proposal, which has wide support among the city’s supervisors, would allow San Francisco to generate or purchase its own clean energy and deliver it to consumers through Pacific Gas and Electric Co.’s existing transmission network. The idea is to offer a cleaner alternative to PG&E. Because CleanPowerSF could shake the company’s decades-long monopoly over delivering energy to San Francisco, it has met stiff opposition — including from Lee and his allies. But the program is overwhelmingly supported by the Board of Supervisors and the city’s left, which has long sought an alternative to PG&E. The study by energy consultants EnerNex was commissioned by the city’s Local Agency Formation Commission and states the city doesn’t need to contract with an outside company and could easily administer CleanPowerSF through the San Francisco Public Utilities Commission. The often-fractured Board of Supervisors has coalesced around the program, known as community choice aggregation, or CCA, and continued to push for some iteration of it even after the PUC commission last year refused to set rates and bring in Shell Energy North America to be the city’s power broker for at least five years. The PUC commission is appointed by the mayor. Supporters said the EnerNex report sketches out a plan that avoids many aspects of the earlier proposal criticized by the mayor and others — that it wouldn’t create local jobs, that the power wouldn’t be renewable or cheap enough, and that it would be run by an out-of-state corporation best known for its oil division. Report affirms job creation Supervisor London Breed said the report affirms what she and other supervisors “have been saying all along, and what Marin and Sonoma have already demonstrated: that a robust clean power program will not only provide cleaner air and competitive rates — it will create jobs and benefit the local economy.” Marin and Sonoma counties already have CCAs. Supervisor Scott Wiener said the study “demonstrates a clear path for CleanPowerSF, in terms of clean and renewable energy generation, and that it could happen with or without the Shell contract,” and “does a great job talking about all the different opportunities to increase the generation of clean and renewable energy — solar, wind, geothermal, hydro power.” A spokesman for Lee, who has always insisted he does not oppose the CleanPowerSF program itself, seized on the report’s findings that a Shell contract was unnecessary.
Posted on: Mon, 17 Nov 2014 04:47:55 +0000
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