Tuesday, April 22, 2008

Smart Energy Solutions for San Diego (No Sunrise Powerlinks Need Apply)

This is an adaptation of a post originally made on the Desert Protective Council's DesertBlog.

One reason that activists in San Diego may find it hard to focus on forward-thinking solutions to environmental problems, urban design issues, social justice issues, and sustainability issues -- the kind of topics discussed on San Diego-Tijuana Design Plant Harvest -- is that our policy makers and corporations keep coming up with backward-looking, wasteful and unnecessary schemes that do more to enrich corporations than to solve any particular problem. Activists then need to spend energy and resources battling these boondoggles, and explaining the dirty reality behind the greenwashed veneer, rather than working for positive change.

The Sunrise Powerlink is one example of this syndrome. Billed by SDG&E as an environmentally friendly way to bring renewable energy to San Diego, this proposed 150-mile transmission line that would stretch from Imperial Valley to San Diego (and beyond) is not the clean green machine its supporters would have us believe. Instead, it is really just a smokescreen for SDG&E/Sempra's ultimate goal of completing a fossil fuel loop from western Baja, east to Mexicali, and then north to Los Angeles. Sunrise Powerlink means more pollution for the border region, destruction of San Diego's backcountry, and greater costs for utility consumers. Fortunately, in this case there are real, forward-thinking solutions that will bring us true green energy, produced locally. These ideas are contained in the "San Diego Smart Energy 2020" report, and exemplified by Southern California Edison's local solar initiative, mentioned in the original post that follows:

“That’s so San Diego!” This was my wife’s response to Dean Calbreath's excellent column in the U-T, comparing SDG&E's proposed Sunrise Powerlink with Southern California Edison's plan for locally generated solar power from photovoltaic panels. In particular, she was responding to the article’s conclusion that solar power delivered by the Sunrise Powerlink would cost almost twice as much as locally generated solar ($6 per watt vs. $3.85 per watt). Gee, what does that remind you of? Maybe the Chargers ticket guarantee, energy deregulation, or the city’s underfunded pension plan?

In addition to the cost comparison, Calbreath’s article covered most of the other bases, and he relies on quite a bit of documented evidence: San Diego does in fact have ample sunshine (SDG&E says the sun never shines here) and ample rooftop space for photovoltaic panels (SDG&E veep Mike Niggli says there are no buildings in San Diego). Niggli also dramatically overstates the cost of rooftop solar. SDG&E wants us to believe the only alternatives to the Sunrise Powerlink are static electricity or “weasel power.” (Seriously! Just check YouTube.)

The worst part of this is that SDG&E has made similar promises on renewable energy in the past, but failed to deliver. When it was pushing for the Southwest Powerlink in the early '80s, SDG&E claimed it would bring renewable geothermal energy from Imperial Valley to San Diego. Today, the Southwest Powerlink carries less than 5% renewable power, the rest of its capacity having been filled up with power from fossil fuel and other non-renewable sources, including from plants just across the border in Mexicali. You know the saying: "Fool me once..."

The article leaves open the question of why SDG&E hasn’t pursued local solar more aggressively. Why does the company keep ridiculously overestimating the costs and underestimating the capacity of local solar? Perhaps the company isn’t really interested in pursuing renewable energy at all? Perhaps what it really wants is to complete one more section of parent company Sempra’s original “Full Loop” for fossil fuel energy?

The real question at this point is why the expensive and destructive Sunrise Powerlink is still on the table as an energy option for San Diego, especially when there are so many better options out there. As comments from San Diego County’s land use department pointed out, “It is unclear why this alternative was selected" as the main alternative in the recently published Draft Environmental Impact Report, given its large toll on the environment. Could the fact that this bad project refuses to die be a result of the usual alliance of San Diego power brokers pursuing anything but the civic interest?

Let’s see, city officials and Chamber types getting behind a “solution” that is the most environmentally damaging, the most wasteful, the least secure, and the most expensive for the average citizen, but the one that enriches the wealthiest corporation in our region — that’s SO San Diego.

For real solutions for clean energy, go to www.sdsmartenergy.org.

Posted by at 12:39 PM 0 comments

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Friday, April 4, 2008

The Weekly Share 2008-04-04

This was composed using Google Docs, which automates posting the doc to the blog, using Firefox 3 beta 5 on an 8-year-old Sony subnotebook. I'm blown away by how easy it was (I exaggerate a bit--I doubt I'll go this crazy in the future--if I keep this up).

Contents

Food & Water

Urban Design

Collaboration (media & politics)

Indigenization

SDTJDPH-family blogs updated or modified


See my links tagged for:sdtjdph for some of what didn't make it in. Subscribe to this newsletter by feed reader or by email. To share things here, send an email to sdtjdph.share at blogger.com.

Posted by at 5:02 PM 0 comments

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Thursday, March 27, 2008

The Weekly Share 2008-03-28

To share things here, send an email to sdtjdph.share at blogger.com, following the format below.

(I tried to restrain myself to three items per category this time--but I fudged some, so it's odd--but it's out.)

Contents

Item types
  • Event, News, Resource
Item categories
  • Food, Urban, Collaboration, Indigenization, Health
Locations
Food
Urban Design (for a permaculture)
Collaboration (Media & Politics)
Indigenization Health See my links tagged for:sdtjdph for some of what didn't make it in.
Subscribe to this newsletter by feed reader or by email. Any errors found will be corrected in the version at sdtjdph.

Posted by at 6:12 PM 0 comments

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Friday, March 14, 2008

The Weekly Share 2008-03-14

Our newsletter has a new name: "Weekly Share" (previously "Weekly Wrap")! To share things here, send an email to sdtjdph.share at blogger.com, following the format below.
You may subscribe to this newsletter by feed reader or by email. Any errors found will be corrected in the version at sdtjdph.

Contents

Item types
  • Event, News, Resource
Item categories
  • Food, Urban, Collaboration
Locations
Food
Urban Design (for a permaculture)
[It's late--I got the food section done. To get an idea of some of the rest I would add, sort through my links tagged for:sdtjdph. If I keep this up, the next newsletter should come out Wednesday or Thursday of next week.]
  • News
  • Resources
Collaboration (Media & Politics)
  • Events
  • News
  • Resources

Posted by at 10:35 PM 0 comments

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Friday, March 7, 2008

March 7, 2008 Weekly Share - SDTJDPH

I'm testing out the idea of creating a weekly newsletter that I post to SD/TJ Design, Plant, Harvest. The newsletter will have sections that I will email out separately to several email lists. I'll need volunteers to help keep this going by contributing and also to help post if I'm not near a computer that week. I have started a separate blog to be used for contributing to the newsletter and preparing the weekly newsletter. Basically, email your contributions to sdtjdph.share at blogger.com, following the format I've used below. The newsletter has its own feed, and you also can subscribe to it by email. If any errors are discovered after posting, they will be corrected in the version at SDTJDPH.

Contents

Item types
  • Event, News, Resource
Item categories
  • Food, Urban, Collaboration
Locations
Food
Urban Design (for a permaculture)
Collaboration (Media & Politics)

Posted by at 5:41 PM 0 comments

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Thursday, February 28, 2008

The gods of streets renaissance blogging are a little closer to San Diego

Welcome, Streetsblog LA. (Thanks to carfreeusa)

So how can we get someone in San Diego to write about planning for: streets as public places, carfree living, carfree transit, and proximity all the time like Streetsblog (NYC) and Damien Newton (LA)?

Here's the links for background on Damien and the LA Streetsblog:

Streets are more than just car corridors; they are valuable civic spaces, resources, which must be wisely allocated. The New York City Streets Renaissance Campaign is building the movement to re-imagine our streets as lively public places.

[no mention of "carfree" of course--so I've probably already spoiled this venue. The strategy seems to be: encourage people to re-imagine, re-design, while advocating & providing data for reducing car use and leave it at that.]

If anyone from WALKSanDiego or SDCBC wants to give this a shot, the SD/TJ Design, Plant, Harvest blog was meant to be a demo space for this kind of discourse, if not the actual thing.

Here's a proposal: that someone (WALKSD?) start a pedestrian advocacy email list allowing discussion of streets and an announcement of the kind of walking tours / audits / re-designs that it does.

Eventually, we can combine the efforts of WALKSD, SDCBC, and other groups such as SD Food Not Lawns which seek to transform our public spaces to be more life-enhancing, and come up with complete street redesigns and reconstructions. We can tear up the middle of vastly overpaved streets such as Streamview Dr (just one example of many), plant orchards and gardens, bike lanes, crosswalks, water-harvesting curb cuts, traffic-calming curb-extensions, and so on.

Does that sound like fun? We could continue this conversation at sdtjdph. SDCityRepair is another possibility-- I'd love it if someone with a bit more savvy and leadership experience would take this up.

We'll figure this out eventually!

Posted by at 12:55 AM 3 comments

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Saturday, February 16, 2008

Videos, Photos, & Links tagged 'sdtjdph'

Videos | Photos | Links

Links tagged 'for:sdtjdph' at del.icio.us

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Videos in the sdtjdph group at YouTube
It's not perfect--not all of the videos in the group are displayed below. You can also tag the videos you upload with 'sdtjdph'. Wait 12+ hours for newly-tagged videos to appear in the search results and feed.top

Photos tagged 'sdtjdph' at Picasa
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Just exploring what is possible!

We can probably merge feeds from multiple sources--which content-sharing sites do you like best?

If you start tagging things so they show up here, add other tags too--such as 'sdfoodnotlawns' or a tag unique to your organization--so we can sort things out later.

If you have a whole album of photos related to an event, consider tagging only one 'sdtjdph', and caption it with the name of the event.

This post was inspired by Streetsblog.

Posted by at 1:40 PM 0 comments

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