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17 Dec, 2015
San Diego Vows to Move Entirely to Renewable Energy in 20 Years
Renewable Energy & Energy Efficiency | UNITED STATES | 17 Dec, 2015
Published by : Ecotechtube
Last
weekend, representatives of 195 countries reached a landmark accordin
Paris to lower planet-warming greenhouse gas emissions. On Tuesday, local
leaders in San Diego committed to making a city-size dent in the problem.
With a
unanimous City Council vote, San Diego, the country’s eighth-largest city,
became the largest American municipality to transition to using 100 percent
renewable energy, including wind and solar
power. In the wake of the Paris accord, environmental groups hailed
the move as both substantive and symbolic.
Other big cities, including New York and
San Francisco, have said they intend to use more renewable energy, but San
Diego is the first of them to make the pledge legally binding. Under the
ordinance, it has committed to completing its transition and cutting its
greenhouse gas emissions in half by 2035.
The steps to
get there may include transferring some control of power management to the city
from the local utility. Officials said they would also shift half of the city’s
fleet to electric
vehicles by 2020 and
recycle 98 percent of the methane produced by sewage and water treatment
plants.
The mayor, Kevin L. Faulconer, said San
Diego’s ocean, sunshine and other environmental attributes were “in our fabric,
our DNA, who we are.”
The City Council is controlled by
Democrats, but Mr. Faulconer is a Republican. He sold the plan to a
conservative business base in part by saying that transforming the electric
grid would drive the economy and create jobs.
“It’s not a partisan issue at all,” he
said. “It’s about putting a marker down. It’s the right thing to do.”
Many details have yet to be determined,
including how the new power sources will be delivered and managed. But the
mayor said the key first step was to commit to a goal — to “make sure we set it
and hold to it.”
The San Diego ordinance has been years in
the making. But Nicole Capretz, an author of an earlier draft and now an
environmental advocate, characterized it as a concrete step in the direction
set by world leaders in Paris.
“We’re
responding to that call,” Ms. Capretz said. “It’s up to cities to blaze new
trails. We’re just laying out the pathway for how to get these massive
reductions worldwide.”
Under the Paris accord, nations offered
general, nonbinding plans to reduce their carbon emissions.
Officials in the United States envision
reaching the nation’s goals mainly through higher fuel-economy standards for
cars and a move to cleaner sources of electrical power, something states could
help oversee.
This is where
the actions of a city like San Diego fit in. As the city moves to renewable
energy, the State of California can begin to build its bank of carbon
reductions and contribute to global goals.
Evan Gillespie, director of the Sierra
Club’s clean energy campaign in California, estimated that San Diego’s plan
would lead to an annual reduction of seven million metric tons of greenhouse
gases, a contribution to California’s broader effort to reduce greenhouse gas
emissions by 80 percent by 2050.
Those targets are California’s own —
passed by a state government that is seen as one of the most ambitious on climate
change, and that is as influential as many countries given its size
— and not set by the federal government.
Ms. Capretz, who wrote a version of the plan
for Mr. Faulconer’s predecessor, said that much of the earlier version remained
in the measure adopted Tuesday.
Echoing the mayor, she said she expected
that much of the renewable energy would come from solar
power. “We’re sunny in San Diego, so we’re counting on a lot of
homegrown solar on rooftops and parking lots,” she said.
Mr. Gillespie said San Diego had laid down a challenge to other cities. “We need others to see this and say, ‘Game on,’ ” he added. “We need places like Los Angeles, like San Francisco and New York, to step up.”
Original Article from :The New York Times
By:Matt Richtel