Alert for July 30th SF LAFCO hearing

[Dave Room]

Dear Allies

It is crucial that as many of you turn out on Friday, July 30, 2pm, at San Francisco City Hall Room 250, to help set a -strong- precedent for local clean energy and clean energy jobs, both in the Bay Area, and throughout the world. San Francisco's imminent community choice program, CleanPowerSF, is planned to run the City on 50% local clean energy by 2020! But there is a big problem.

New bids for CleanPowerSF are going out soon, and it is crucial that we demand that the request for bids not be weakened by having its mandates for actual installed local renewables and efficiency removed (which would also gut the local hiring opportunities from the program completely).

The San Francisco Public Utilities Commission (SFPUC) intends to release a bid document at the end of this month which will:

1. Possibly weaken the emphasis on efficiency and local generation from the program and instead rely on purchasing imported renewable energy and on renewable energy credits; with construction of actual local renewables and efficiency only -promised- to be pursued separately as multiple, small, individually bid projects, with no guarantees such projects will be built into the CleanPowerSF program.
2. Reduces the contract to five years, potentially harming the ability to successfully finance a local renewables and efficiency portfolio in the capital-intensive first years. (Assuming there will even -be- such a portfolio at all! - See point 1.) Renewables and efficiency need a 15-20 year project period to pay themselves off in order to remain competitive with fossil fuel energy prices.

TO HELP ENSURE THE STRONGEST POSSIBLE CLEAN POWER SF PROGRAM:
SHOW UP TO THE JULY 30TH HEARING TO SPEAK AND RAISE TWO OR THREE OF THE FOLLOWING TALKING POINTS

• Both the worsening global climate crisis, and the continuing deep economic crisis, have made essential the widespread installation of localized solar, wind power, distributed generation and efficiency projects which will both help save the planet, and create thousands of local job opportunities.
• It is essential that the City negotiate a CleanPowerSF contract that builds 360 megawatts of renewable generation and efficiency, emphasizes distributed generation, minimizes the use of REC's and that San Francisco is run on at least 50% electricity by 2020.
• It is vital that the Clean Power SF program set the highest local hiring requirements to date, in a project of its size, so as to ensure that the promise of a vibrant emerging local green economy is made real.
• Communities outside of San Francisco are depending on Clean Power SF to set the highest possible standards for local clean energy and green jobs, so that they can call on their own local officials to meet or exceed those standards.

The hearing time, place & details are:

SF Local Agency Formation Commission (LAFCo)
Friday, July 30, 2pm
SF City Hall, Main Chamber, Room 250
Directions: From SF Civic Center BART/Muni, cross United Nations Plaza to the City Hall entrance on Polk Street between Grove and McAllister