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Hey all,<br>
<br>
My opinion/report piece to prime the public on the benefits of
Community Choice, is now out in the San Francisco BayView. This paper
has a wide readership in the Eastern neighborhoods of San Francisco.<br>
<br>
see below or
<a class="moz-txt-link-freetext"
href="http://www.sfbayview.com/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=237&Itemid=15">http://www.sfbayview.com/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=237&Itemid=15</a><br>
<br>
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<td class="contentheading" width="100%"> Neighborhood-based
electricity for neighborhood-based democracy </td>
<td class="buttonheading" align="right" width="100%"> <a
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<td colspan="2" align="left" valign="top" width="70%"> <span
class="small"> by Eric Brooks </span> </td>
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<td colspan="2" class="createdate" valign="top"> Wednesday, 27
June 2007 </td>
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<div class="mosimage"
style="border-width: 1px; margin: 5px; padding: 5px; float: left; width: 139px;"
align="center"><a class="readon" target="_blank"
href="http://www.sfbayview.com/images/stories/20070627/solarpanel1062707.jpg"
onclick="MosImageExt_popup('images/stories/20070627/solarpanel1062707.jpg','200','150','Community Choice will bring solar power to a roof near you and stop plans for another polluting power plant in BVHP. Pack the next SF PUC meeting Tuesday, July 10, 1:30 p.m., in Room 400, City Hall.','bottom',''); return false;">Click
to Enlarge</a><br>
<a target="_blank"
href="http://www.sfbayview.com/images/stories/20070627/solarpanel1062707.jpg"
onclick="MosImageExt_popup('images/stories/20070627/solarpanel1062707.jpg','200','150','Community Choice will bring solar power to a roof near you and stop plans for another polluting power plant in BVHP. Pack the next SF PUC meeting Tuesday, July 10, 1:30 p.m., in Room 400, City Hall.','bottom',''); return false;"><img
src="cid:part3.02080105.03090408@aim.com" alt="Click to Enlarge"
title="Click to Enlarge" border="0" height="96" hspace="6" width="128"></a>
<div class="mosimage_caption" style="" align="">Community
Choice will bring solar power to a roof near you and stop plans for
another polluting power plant in BVHP. Pack the next SF PUC meeting
Tuesday, July 10, 1:30 p.m., in Room 400, City Hall.</div>
</div>
New legislation from the Board of Supervisors could soon help free our
neighborhoods from corporate, state and federal influence.<br>
<br>
On June 19, the San Francisco Board of Supervisors passed legislation
that will build enough public solar, wind and energy efficiency
projects to power San Francisco on 50 percent clean, local, renewable
energy within the next decade. Called Community Choice, the project
also puts an end to San Francisco’s century long dependence on PG&E
for its electricity supply, by allowing the City to bypass PG&E and
make its own energy purchases.<br>
<br>
The faster this project is built, the sooner the City will be free from
state and federal agencies which are forcing us to keep polluting
fossil fuel power plants belching their toxics in our communities.<br>
<br>
For decades, the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission (FERC) and the
California Independent System Operator (Cal ISO) have forced San
Francisco to maintain – and even plan more – fossil fuel burning
electricity plants on the Southeast side of the City under the guise of
maintaining local independence from the threat of electricity blackouts
and shortages. While the need for such increased local fossil fuel
based electricity is highly questionable, the state and federal
governments have repeatedly gotten away with perpetrating their fiction.<br>
<br>
This trickery has enabled Cal ISO and the staff of the San Francisco
Public Utilities Commission (SFPUC) to continue stubborn plans to build
yet another polluting natural gas power plant in the Bayview,
supposedly in order to shut down three diesel generators at the Mirant
Corp.’s nearby Potrero power plant.<br>
<br>
However, in the same time that it would take to erect the natural gas
plant – which only matches the power capacity of the Mirant generators
– the Community Choice project will install non-polluting solar, wind
and efficiency measures that will have more than twice the capacity of
those diesel dinosaurs, not only making the new natural gas plant and
the diesel generators completely unnecessary, but also enabling the
partial or even total shutdown of the final existing natural gas plant
in San Francisco, which is also housed at Mirant’s Potrero site.<br>
<br>
Indeed, the SFPUC commissioners have begun to reconsider – and lean
toward halting – the construction of the new natural gas power plant,
even in the face of objections from their own petulant staff, the Cal
ISO and FERC. If we, the people, keep up the pressure on those
commissioners, we may soon deal a death blow to that ill begotten power
plant.<br>
<br>
But shutting down polluting power plants is not the only benefit of
Community Choice. The true magic of the renewable energy project is
that it will decentralize electricity production in San Francisco so
that much of our electricity comes from solar panels and wind turbines
all over and around the City. This means that in the case of an
earthquake or other Katrina-like disaster, entire neighborhoods – and
key facilities like hospitals – will have their own independent power
supplies, protecting us from some of the worst consequences of such a
disaster.<br>
<br>
And it gets even better. Supervisor Chris Daly is preparing to
introduce an ordinance that will direct that every time we open up the
ground and city streets for other purposes, the City will also install
public power cables and high capacity internet lines, meaning that in
the space of 15 years, every neighborhood will not only have its own
solar and/or wind power but will also have the wires on which to
deliver that power to its own people – and its own public
communications lines through which to share a strong open democratic
dialog.<br>
<br>
The implications are powerful. The further Community Choice and the
Daly measure proceed, the more autonomous San Francisco neighborhoods
will become in their energy production and use; and while people’s
socialism is not exactly just around the corner in San Francisco, these
public power measures could lay its foundation. Such autonomy could be
a platform on which to secure the type of directly democratic
neighborhood council structures that are at last arising in Venezuela’s
Bolivarian Revolution, to challenge the neo-corporate elites who have
been dominating marginalized and colonized communities of the world for
centuries.<br>
<br>
With the poor and people of color being driven out of the City in
record numbers and at record speeds, such autonomy cannot come too
soon, and so we should do everything we can to accelerate the progress
of these community energy projects.<br>
<br>
But as one might imagine, there is at least one large corporation that
doesn’t agree: PG&E.<br>
<br>
Since shortly before the Community Choice project passed, PG&E has
begun openly manipulating to stop it from succeeding. PG&E knows
that the more our neighborhoods and cities gain their own panels and
power lines, the more its toxic profits sink into the dust. <br>
<br>
Over the past few months, PG&E has held repeated joint press
conferences with Mayor Newsom announcing empty renewable energy
promises that are speculative and tiny compared to the ready-for-action
Community Choice plan – all in order to trick the public into believing
that we don’t need Community Choice because PG&E will supposedly
give us renewable energy. Even more recently, PG&E began spouting
the companion fiction that if we accept Community Choice, we will pay
high prices for our electricity.<br>
<br>
In reality, we will pay less. PG&E’s statewide plans rely heavily
on power from nine new polluting natural gas power plants that it
intends to build in California. And because natural gas is running out
on this planet just as oil is, there will be shortages of – and wars
over – that natural gas, making its price fluctuate wildly and
eventually skyrocket, continuing to devour our community’s tax base as
the U.S. pays for its perpetual fossil fuel-grabbing war machine.<br>
<br>
Our best protection against such a continued grim energy future is the
clean, cheap solar and wind power that we will gain from projects like
Community Choice.<br>
<br>
So when PG&E starts to sound the false alarm that we will lose
money if we don’t stick with their toxic electricity, simply don’t buy
its lies. <br>
<br>
And instead fix your eyes on a Bolivarian future.<br>
<br>
<i>Eric Brooks is a local grassroots organizer. To learn more
about Community Choice, visit <a class="moz-txt-link-freetext"
href="http://communitychoiceenergy.com">http://communitychoiceenergy.com</a>.</i></td>
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