The blackout that shrouded San Diego in darkness in September demonstrated the problem with relying on power grids as they’re currently designed. The problem began at a substation in Arizona, and a series of triggering events caused failures all the way to San Onofre nuclear plant on the coast. At the cost of an estimated $100 million in damages, and major inconvenience to millions of people, the San Diego region received a crash course about the fragility of depending on a grid that runs mostly on distant sources of energy.

But it didn’t have to turn out this way. Four years ago a San Diego engineer, Bill Powers, published a groundbreaking report, San Diego Smart Energy 2020. The report was all about how to use off-the-shelf technologies in order to build and generate power locally to enhance the existing grid, and provide protection against these sorts of events. The report isn’t a pie-in-the-sky vision of the future. It uses affordable technologies that are available and ready to deploy. It’s a practical guide that includes a 20 percent reduction in energy usage through existing efficiency measures and 2,000 megawatts of local solar projects. To back up the solar, which doesn’t generate at night, Powers’ report proposes 700 new megawatts of small co-generation facilities, similar to what is already in use at Qualcomm, UCSD, SDSU, and Children’s Hospital, which are highly efficient users of natural gas.

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California  – Do Not Let Big Oil Win

Oil companies are working very hard this week to block a measure that would protect California’s oceans, beaches, bays and coastlines from oil spills.

This coming Monday, an important bill sponsored by Pacific Environment and supported by several environmental groups will be voted on by the California State Senate.  Assembly Bill 1112, authored by Assembly Member Jared Huffman,  tightens up our state’s oil spill prevention standards while ensuring that there are adequate funds to manage these programs— and paid for by Big Oil, and not the citizens of California.  If this law does not pass, California’s waters will be at risk of devastating and costly oil spills which have severe impacts on our marine environment and public health.

Here’s why this this bill is important:

Our state’s ability to prevent and respond to oil spills is funded by the Oil Spill Prevention Administration Fund (OSPAF), which collects very small fees from the oil industry at a current cap of a nickel per barrel of petroleum product that enters our state.  Unfortunately, this fund will be deficient by millions of dollars over the next several years and the state will have no choice but to cut programs and staff as early as 2012. Clearly, that nickel is not enough.

Huffman’s bill, AB 1112, will bring the fund back to solvency by requiring oil companies to pay an additional 1 and ¾ cents per each barrel of petroleum product shipped into California.  The bill also strengthens the state’s oil spill prevention program by increasing monitoring and safety measures on board the most dangerous oil tankers and offshore drilling platforms.  Unless lawmakers pass this bill, California’s wildlife, beaches and bays, tourism and fishing industries, and human health will be at risk of a catastrophe that could cripple our state.

So, who would be against safeguarding our state from oil spills?

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While Sunday 10/10/10 was celebrated all over the world by activists as “Global Warming Work Party” and now known as the “Biggest Day of Climate Action”, I was fortunate enough to participate in Pacific Environment’s Vessel Watch trip to the Gulf of the Farallones National Marine Sanctuary to collect and record data on whales (humpbacks, blue whales, etc) and help raise awareness about the impacts of shipping traffic on our magnificent marine life that frequent this sanctuary.

 

Vessel Watch Trip Leaving San Francisco Bay

On board the 65’ Catamaran “KittyKat” were experienced naturalists plus my colleague Jackie Dragon, the director of our Marine Sanctuaries Program; fellow colleagues and researchers; and several members of the public who for the first time were going to see and hear these amazing creatures in the wild.  The trip took us 27 miles beyond the Golden Gate to the Farallon Islands, a group of six small islands and giant rocks near the edge of the continental shelf. The sanctuary supports an abundance of life, including many threatened or endangered species – including the humpback whale, blue whale, great white shark and even killer whales.  The naturalist informed us that just two weeks ago they saw pods of the endangered northern right whale dolphins, an extremely rare sighting.  There are three typical seasons where researchers come out to collect data and they are – birds, whales and sharks.  Right now is great white shark season and the Farallons are heavily frequented by shark cage divers.

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With his veto pen in hand yesterday, Governor Schwarzenegger missed a huge opportunity to leave a real environmental legacy. Instead, he demonstrated his disregard for California’s priceless marine environment and its billion dollar associated economy, swiftly undermining our ability to respond to the next devastating oil spill.  The governor vetoed AB 234 (D- Huffman), a bill that would have been a triple-win when it comes to protecting our state from oil spills.

If signed, the legislation would have required a safety precaution known as pre-booming – placing oil containment boom in the water – during the fuel transfer operations that take place daily in California’s coastal waters. This technique could have prevented the Dubai Star tanker from spilling over 500 gallons into San Francisco Bay last October. In addition to this increased protection, the bill included a timely take-a-way from the BP gulf oil tragedy and would have insured that the 27 oil rigs in California state waters are equipped with fully redundant safety mechanisms to prevent a blowout here.

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By Julianna Calcagno

Marine Sanctuaries Program Intern – Summer, 2010

When was the last time you wanted a noisy leaf blower or a honking car alarm to stop blaring? Imagine thousands of similar sounds intruding into your daily life from breakfast through dinner time, and all through the night. This is what it’s like to be a whale in today’s noisy oceans. It’s called noise pollution. You and I may not notice it up here on land, but it is really bad for you if you are one of the animals that live in the vicinity of all the noise produced by humans on a daily basis in our oceans. The blue, grey, and humpback whales that swim and feed in the krill-rich waters of the Gulf of the Farallones National Marine Sanctuary are subject to dramatically increased background noise because of all the shipping traffic that drives through those waters on the way to the busy Port of Oakland, the 4th busiest port in the nation.

Now picture being at a concert and trying to hear something important that the person right next you is saying. Unless you have a hearing super power you would barely hear what the other person is saying. That is what the whales have to endure all the time. The noise that the ships make – mostly from their propellers – is at the same level, or frequency, that whales use to communicate with each other. In their darkened ocean world they can’t rely on sight, like humans can. Whales depend on sound to communicate through vast amounts of water, to find food, to mate, to survive, and protect themselves from predators.

Scientists recently discovered that some whales are changing their vocalizations – essentially screaming – so that they can be heard over the racket all the boats are making. But doing this is likely straining the whales and at some point they won’t be able to call loud enough to be heard in our industrialized ocean, leaving them silenced and alone.

If ships slowed down, though, they wouldn’t be spreading as much noise pollution, and they would save innocent whales that die each year after being struck and killed by fast-moving vessels.

Maersk, the world’s largest shipping line, is doing it! If they can slow their speed to 12 knots (about 14mph) – instead of the much noisier and dangerous 20 – 24 knots – then so should the rest of the shipping companies.

Try to picture having no way to communicate, protect yourself, or even be able to eat because of some body else who wants to be able to move faster to a destination.  For whales’ sake, and cleaner air and less climate change, ships should give whales a brake!

This week, just days after BP finally capped the hemorrhaging well in the Gulf, President Obama issued an Executive Order delivering a first-ever National Ocean Policy (NOP). Instead of 20 different agencies administering more than 140 unique laws, often with conflicting purposes, in a piecemeal fashion, we will now have a guiding vision for all federal agencies with a mandate for protection and restoration of our coasts, oceans, islands and Great Lakes.

While the new policy can’t prevent a blow-out like the Deepwater Horizon it can prepare us much better to address such accidents, before they occur.  The NOP is the result of a yearlong public process that considered input from many stakeholders including commercial fisherman, conservationists, scientists, the recreational community, business owners and thousands of citizens. In San Francisco, over 500 people packed the hearing to weigh in on the question of how to best manage our shared ocean resources.

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Posted by Andrea Barnetche

Four years ago, California passed the state’s landmark greenhouse gas reduction law –AB 32– mandating a 25 percent reduction in industrial greenhouse gases by 2020. This law made California a leader in clean air and energy policy, and a leader in clean tech businesses in the nation. The law, which has earned support from businesses, labor, environmental and health organizations, demands polluter accountability by requiring polluting industries to reduce toxic emissions that will threaten our health and contribute to global climate change.

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It’s this time of the year when the entire Russia Program team is heading out to Russia’s regions for site visits and program related activities. On June 15-28 my colleague Jon Spaulding and I are conducting a follow-up professional exchange on alternative energy and energy efficiency in Russia. This is a sister visit to our April alternative energy exchange whereby we hosted a delegation of  Russian renewable energy professionals and NGO leaders in northern California to learn about California’s latest technologies and regulatory policies for renewable energy and energy efficiency development.

Next week, we will be bringing a group of five U.S. renewable energy experts to Russia to share their knowledge about contemporary technology and legislative policies on renewable energy sources and energy efficiency in the United States.  One of the trip’s highlights will be meeting with Andrey Yalbakov, a Russian participant who was part of the Russian exchange that we hosted here in April and who recently was awarded the 2010 Young Entrepreneur of Russia Award for his work in solar, wind and mini hydro-generation in the Altai Republic.

Andrey Yalbakov, recipient of the 2010 Young Entrepreneur of Russia Award for his work in solar, wind and mini hydro-generation in the Altai Republic.

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AN OPEN LETTER TO PETER DARBEE, CEO of PG&E,

On behalf of Pacific Environment, I am writing to thank you for your generous contribution to spreading the word about public power in California. Thanks to your $45 million public education campaign, millions of Californians now know that by working with their local elected representatives, California communities can choose to buy their own energy. This can be done in partnership with your company, PG&E through a Community Choice model, or without, with public power that is owned 100 percent by the community.

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