Hi all, This is the most important update I've ever given on CleanPowerSF (Community Choice). With just one month to go before we must have a signed contract with Power Choice LLC to begin San Francisco's city wide clean energy program, San Francisco Public Utilities General Manager Ed Harrington has completely reversed his public position on the program and openly attacked it, trying to drive a dagger into its heart. Most notably Harrington said in a public hearing that "You cannot charge PG&E rates and get wind and solar." As most or all of you know, who have done extensive work on renewables and efficiency, Harrington's statement is laughable, especially in the case of CleanPowerSF, which has been carefully designed and redesigned over the course of seven full years to make absolutely certain that we can get a citywide renewables network while meeting or beating PG&E rates. Harrington made the statement on Friday April 23rd, during his presentation on the status of CleanPowerSF to a joint meeting of the SFPUC and LAFCo commissioners in City Hall. Harrington's entire presentation can only be described as a cartoonishly deceptive and corrupt attack on the integrity of CleanPowerSF with the purposeful intention of both, killing the program, and also giving PG&E a perfect sound bite that it can use to demonize community power projects and promote Prop 16. Harrington began his presentation by showing a completely meaningless graph that compared the up front cost of PG&E power to the up front cost of renewables and efficiency, which of course showed solar and wind power as far more expensive. By purposely leaving out the project's carefully designed combined renewable/efficiency mix, and, most importantly, the obvious and assumed 15-20 year pay back period of the project, Harrington was able to make his presentation appear to show that getting renewables for the same or lower rates than PG&E was impossible. Harrington referred to negotiations with Power Choice with statements which made it clear that he had been working for a 3-5 year contract with the company and avoiding a 10 year or longer term contract because, quote: "That means we really are sticking the City with somebody for a -long- time, that you may not know about; and do you really want to commit to that." Of course the truth is that no one in their right mind would plan a renewable energy project with a 3-5 year payback because it is impossible. The -only- way to get such a project done is to go -beyond- 10 years to a 15-20 year pay back period. We -have- to commit to that, or there will be no project...! As absurd as Harrington's new position is, he nonetheless outrageously tried to get away with it in public in front of the commissioners. Luckily, none of the 5 LAFCo commissioners present bought Harrington's obvious bullshit, and the 4 SFPUC commissioners appeared dubious, although alarmingly a couple of them indicated that Harrington's presentations had impacted their perspective on the matter. NEXT STEPS We have just a couple of weeks to strongly weigh in on this process and get it back on track so that Harrington and his staff cannot get away with tanking CleanPowerSF. The Board of Supervisors has a lot of lee way to take over the process if we give them strong encouragement. Luckily, the day before Harrington made his outrageous presentation, we had just (on Earth Day) delivered to all key City Hall decision makers, the new group sign-on letter that many of you helped get approved, from all of the major enviro, environmental justice, and neighborhood groups that signed last year's letter, but this time with the powerful addition of the Ella Baker Center, Green For All, the SF Gray Panthers, and Greenaction. The challenge that we now face is that we very recently have once again been completely shut out of the negotiation process toward the final contract. None of our allies, not even the new LAFCo staff, have been allowed to engage in the contract negotiations. The only City negotiators in the room are SFPUC staff, LAFCo counsel Nancy Miller, and City Attorney Theresa Mueller the latter two who have a long history of blatantly enabling the SFPUC staff to continuously get away with pulling maneuvers like Harrington's which totally undermine CleanPowerSF. Absolutely -no one- we can trust is in the room. And this means we need to push hard for Paul Fenn and Local Power to be hired by either the SFPUC, or more likely the LAFCo, to be the lead author of the contract with Power Choice. This is the only way that we have any hope of getting a contract that won't have poison pills in it that will surreptitiously kill the program. The key thing we will need from those of you who are reading this, is to help join in another big showing of public comment and constituent calls and letters to the Mayor, Supervisors, City Attorney and SFPUC Commissioners - to both get Local Power involved in the drafting of a strong contract - and to also get the thing signed into law by May 31st so that we can beat the June 8th Prop 16 deadline. The good news is that our ally Supervisors were appalled at what Harrington did, and are now stepping forward aggressively to call Harrington and the SFPUC staff to the carpet so that we can win a good contract in time. I'll email soon with alerts that you can join in, and also copy to others, to get comments and turn-out to City Hall. I'll close by showing you a comment that General Manager Harrington made to an SF Bay Guardian Reporter just one month before his presentation on April 23rd; a quote which is completely opposite what he said in the hearing: Harrington said he believed the CCA program would be attractive to San Franciscans because of its environmental edge. “I think people here want to take care of the world, they want to do things that are right. They probably don’t want to spend a lot of money to do it -- and I don’t think they have to,” he said. “That’s the part that makes me crazy: If we can provide greener power for equal to or less than PG&E … why wouldn’t we try to do that for the city?” (See full article at http://www.sfbg.com/politics/2010/03/29/deadline-looms-san-francisco%E2%80%9... ) To watch the LAFCo/SFPUC hearing video go to: http://sanfrancisco.granicus.com/ViewPublisher.php?view_id=16 and click on the 4/23/10 hearing link. The CleanPowerSF presentation and Q&A makes up the first hour and a half of the hearing with Harrington's comments near the beginning. Please contact me with any questions. peace Eric Brooks 415-756-8844