[Sustain] City Trying To Sneak In Fossil Fuel Plant Under SOMA Transbay Terminal

[Eric Brooks]

Here we go again... I found out about this when the reporter called me 
for comments about it. Note that an empty promise of hydrogen is given, 
but that the plant will be built to run on fossil fuel...

http://www.sfexaminer.com/local/High-tech_underground_power_plant_might_be_built_in_SoMa.html


  High-tech, underground power plant might be built in SoMa

*By John Upton <mailto:jupton at sfexaminer.com>*
Examiner Staff Writer 11/17/08


Commuters catch their buses at the Transbay Terminal. City officials are 
developing plans for an underground power plant to service proposed 
high-rise buildings on the site of the current terminal. Cindy Chew/The 
Examiner *SAN FRANCISCO* -- As controversy rages about if a power plant 
should be built or rebuilt in southeast San Francisco, city officials 
have quietly been developing plans for a separate underground plant to 
service planned high-rise buildings in SoMa.

Massive amounts of power will be needed for the planned 1,000-foot 
Transbay office tower and rebuilt Transbay Transit Center at Mission and 
First streets, and for the thousands of new homes and millions of square 
feet of office space expected to be built in the coming decades in the 
South of Market neighborhood.

The privately owned and operated plant would be designed so it could 
eventually run on hydrogen fuel cells instead of fossil fuels, 
Environment Department building official Mark Palmer said. Hydrogen fuel 
cells are an emerging type of technology that can be recharged using 
renewable or non-renewable power.

Waste heat from the plant would be trapped and used to warm water for a 
combined heating district, dramatically improving the plant's efficiency 
and eliminating the need for individual heating and cooling systems, 
which are often built on rooftops, according to Palmer.

"Instead of having a boiler and an air-conditioning plant in every 
building in a certain district, you could build a central facility that 
would provide heating and cooling for all the buildings," Palmer said.

Combined heating districts, which are common throughout the world, can 
double a power plant's efficiency by reducing the amount of heat that is 
wasted, according to Palmer. The districts also maximize useable space 
in new buildings.

About 170 buildings in San Francisco are already heated and cooled using 
a similar network of steam created by non-electricity producing boilers 
at Jessie Street between 5th and 6th streets and near the corner of Post 
and Hyde streets, according to NRG Energy, which owns the system. The 
steam can be seen wafting up from city streets.

Eric Brooks, chairman of the San Francisco Green Party's Sustainability 
Working Group, pointed to climate change and said The City should spend 
generously on a plant that runs on hydrogen cells that are recharged 
using renewable energy.

"Building any fossil fuel power plant --- even if it's really efficient 
--- is a bad idea," Brooks said.

A feasibility study, expected to be published within eight weeks, will 
determine how much power and heat will be needed by new SoMa buildings 
and whether it could be provided by a subterranean natural gas-burning 
power plant, according to San Francisco Redevelopment Agency Project 
Manager Mike Grisso.

jupton at sfexaminer.com <mailto:jupton at sfexaminer.com>


      By the numbers

40 acres Former freeway land to be redeveloped around Transbay Transit 
Center
3,450 New homes planned in redevelopment area
6 million square feet New office space expected near Transbay Transit Center
1,000 feet Proposed height of Transbay Tower
800 feet Maximum proposed height for some buildings near the Transbay Tower
850 feet Height of the Transamerica building --- currently The City's 
tallest
2014 Expected opening of new Transbay Transit Center

/Sources: San Francisco Redevelopment Agency, San Francisco Planning 
Department/


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

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