[Sustain] PG&E Sponsored Fundraiser For Mayor's Solar Supporters

[Eric Brooks]

Hey all,

Vote Solar just proudly announced its successful fundraising event
'Equinox 2' in which, among its major donors, were PG&E (top donor),
Edison, Chevron and BP.
see http://www.votesolar.org/equinox2/thank_you/
and also the previous year's Equinox fundraiser at
http://www.votesolar.org/equinox/thank_you/

Vote Solar is the organization (founded by now SFPUC Commissioner David
Hochschild) which also put forward the poorly written solar Prop B in
2001 for 50 mw of solar on City facilities. Prop B passed, but failed to
implement because of its poor funding plan combined with the fact that
the SFPUC made no effort to find a way to make it work. No solar
facilities were ever built through Prop B, although Vote Solar's web
site blatantly and falsely claims otherwise.
(See http://www.votesolar.org/city-initiatives/successes.html )

David Hochschild is the architect of the Mayor's privatized solar
proposals.

Vote Solar has been one of the most vocal proponents of the Mayor's
proposals. Though Hochschild is no longer with Vote Solar, he spoke and
hobnobbed at the Equinox fundraiser. As did Phil Ting (who helped
Hochschild create and sponsor the Mayor's solar program and who received
an award at the event for that involvement). Also present was Mayor
Newsom himself, Assemblymember Mark Leno (who has frequently sponsored
milquetoast renewable energy legislation which has basically amounted to
faux stuff that allows PG&E to remain dominant in our Northwest power
market) and, Adam Werbach, the new greenwash champion for Walmart and
Wall Street..

David Hochschild -is- however VP for External Relations for Solaria
Corp., a private solar technologies company which is one of those proud
new Equinox funders of Vote Solar.

I didn't even notice the note on Hochschild's corporate position when I
saw the press release for his appointment to the SFPUC last year, but
now that I've picked up on it I'm pretty shocked. Someone with that kind
of energy corporation conflict of interest should not have even made it
onto the SFPUC commission in the first place, and should certainly at
the very least be recusing himself on all votes related to solar power
funding.

This all puts into even starker contrast the fact that, although
Hochschild has vociferously upbraided the SFPUC staff for not creating
solar and other renewables programs in San Francisco, he has never once
in those tirades mentioned the Community Choice renewable energy 
project, which would have already been out for bids long ago were it not 
for both constant interference from the SFPUC staff, and a resolute and 
total lack of support from the SFPUC commissioners themselves (including 
former commissioner Adam Werbach).

It has become clear that Hochschild and is his ilk are nothing more than
the next generation of private corporate developers manipulating their
way into sweetheart deals for their own companies at the expense of the
public good, while steering city government away from publicly owned
energy projects, into cozy and corrupt 'public/private partnerships'.

I would have thought that the visionary renewable energy industry could
have avoided this typical, tawdry trough feeding. I guess I was wrong.

peace

Eric

-- 
"I am not a liberator. Liberators do not exist. The people liberate
themselves." – Che Guevara