Green Party lawmaker leads fight to provide half of power to San Francisco from
solar, wind
Green Party of California
www.cagreens.org
Contact: Susan King, spokesperson, 415.823-5524
funking@mindspring.com
Dr. Bob Vizzard, spokesperson, 916.206 8953, thevizz@aol.com
Sara Amir, spokesperson, 310.270-7106 saraamir@earthlink.net
Cres Vellucci, press secretary, 916.996-9170 civillib@cwnet.com
Friday, April 20, 2007
SAN FRANCISCO -- San Francisco Supervisor Ross Mirkarimi - the Green
Party lawmaker who last month pushed through a bill to make San Francisco the first city in the
nation to ban plastic bags - co-introduced historic legislation here this week to require at
least 50 percent of all the energy to the city be provided by solar or wind electricity.
If approved by the full Board of Supervisors next
month, the ordinance for San Francisco's Community Choice will be the first effort to
implement a state law passed in 2002 which allows communities to withdraw from purchasing power
from private providers (PG&E, in San Francisco's case) and become a buying co-op known as a
"Community Choice Aggregator."
The legislation calls for constructing wind,
solar and efficiency projects with the goal of meeting over 50 percent of the
city's overall electricity demands through renewables by 2020.
"As long as this nation is disproportionately
reliant on oil and fossil fuel technology, we stand vulnerable. San Francisco
needs to mount a smart, energetic counterattack designed to protect our environment and safeguard against
energy market fiascoes," Mirkarimi has said.
The state's Community Choice bill passed with
help from Paul Fenn of Local Power. Fenn was also the main co-author and
negotiator for the new San Francisco ordinance, introduced by SF Sups Mirkarimi and Tom Ammiano. The implementation
plan was strenuously debated and re-written to reach its current form.
"The newest science on global warming shows that
all industrial countries like the U.S. will need to cut our CO2 emissions
by up to 90 percent in the next 20-25 years in order to avoid a global
catastrophic climate collapse. It is absolutely vital that the Board of Supervisors pass the
Community Choice renewable energy project immediately," said Eric Brooks, Co-Chair of
the San Francisco Green Party Sustainability Working Group.
"We should hurry with implementing a way to get
more renewable energy to San Franciscans and avoid siting polluting Natural Gas Turbines in
southeast San Francisco, as is being considered, and making other mistakes we might need to live
with for a long time," said Don Eichelberger of SF Green Party Sustainability Working Group.