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San Jose Creates New Clean Energy Department for 100% Renewable Clean Energy

San Jose Clean Energy, approved unanimously this May by the City Council, is a new program that offers a choice for more renewable energy at competitive rates with local control and benefits than currently offered by the investor owned utility, PG&E. Many cities in California have created their own Clean Energy alternative and San Jose is one of them! The program, which will offer electricity to residents that is cleaner and/or more affordable while creating more local clean energy jobs, includes a new department, director, 20 staff, and a Citizens Advisory Committee. 

These programs are enabled by a 2002 state law (Assembly Bill 117) that allows cities or counties to choose their electric provider and the source of their electricity.

Communities can purchase and generate electricity according to their own community priorities – greener than PG&E offers, at a competitive cost.  PG&E still maintains the power lines (and manages delivery and billing), but the power purchase contracts are set by the city’s CCE program. Proven successful programs in Marin, Sonoma, and Lancaster (see below) are delivering electrical power with a much higher portion of renewables than PG&E currently provides, at lower costs than PG&E.

The benefits to San Jose are:

Clean Energy: San Jose will, with this one action, enable the community to make a major transition to clean energy faster than any other way.  Reducing greenhouse gas emissions is a major goal for the State, and a focus area of San Jose’s Green Vision.

Choice: Each customer personally chooses the energy plan that best fits them. Whether to potentially pay less than they pay now for a cleaner energy mix, pay a bit more for 100% renewable energy, or pay the same price they pay now for the same mix (stay with PG&E) there are no risks to individual rate payers.

Community Control and Economic Benefit: San Jose has made buying locally produced clean energy a priority so local energy companies and producers will have an increased market which stimulated localrenewable energy development projects, helps create local jobs and attract businesses, and puts competition in the energy utility market. San Jose can  capture some of the approximately $400 million per year that San Jose pays PG&E for electricity generation, and have the decision-making control to save customers money, and invest revenues locally to produce jobs and benefit the local economy.

As an example: Since the launch of Sonoma Clean Power (SCP) in 2014, they have increased the percentage of overall spending in Sonoma County from an estimated 3% of dollars by PG&E prior to SCP launch, to over 25% today by SCP, and this percentage is expected to increase over time. SCP has already achieved $50 million in direct customer savings plus over $35 million in shifted spending back into the county.

Marin Clean Energy and Other Leaders

Three community choice districts are already successfully operating in California, and CCE’s operate in at least 5 other states as well.  Originally termed Community Choice Aggregation (CCA), the terms CCE and CCA are interchangeable.

• • Marin Clean Energy (MCE) was the first CCE/CCA in northern California: it first came online in 2010, and by year end 2014 had grown to serve over 125,000 customers in Marin County, unincorporated Napa County and the cities of Benicia, El Cerrito, Richmond and San Pablo. It serves residential, commercial, and municipal customers, and is expected to increase the number of communities it serves in 2016.

• • Sonoma Clean Power is a CCA serving most cities (and all unincorporated areas) in Sonoma County, and came online in 2013.

• The southern California city of Lancasterlaunched their CCA in early 2015. Lancaster represents a single-city CCA model.

More locally, San Francisco, San Mateo and Santa Clara Counties have created Community Choice Energy programs in 2016!

• • In San Mateo County all 20 cities plus the County Unincorporated area have voted to join the local CCE program, Peninsula Clean Energy (PCE).. Program launch in August, 2016.

• • In Santa Clara County all but one of the 11 cities in consideration have voted to join the Silicon Valley Community Clean Energy Partnership (SVCCEP), started in late 2016. 

• San Francisco has established a CCA (CleanPowerSF), offering service in May of 2016.

Other California communities are investigating CCEs as of June 2015, by formal action of elected bodies (list possibly incomplete):

• • Los Angeles County, including the cities of Manhattan Beach, Hermosa Beach, Carson, Torrance, Inglewood, Culver City and Santa Monica.

• • Santa Cruz/Monterey/San Benito Counties (and all cities therein)

• • Lake County

• • Mendocino County

• • Humbolt County

• • San Luis Obispo County

• • Santa Barbara County

• • City of Morro Bay

• • City of Davis

• City of Solana Beach

Links to Marin’s, Sonoma’s, and Lancaster’s CCAs, and other resources, are here at our Resources page.

San Jose′ Community Energy (SJCE) is a group of residents committed to bringing affordable renewable energy to our community.  We advocated for the formation of a CCE program in San Jose′. 

San Jose plans to roll out the new program incrementally over the next year. To learn more visit the City’s website: sanjoseca.gov

By: Cheryl McGovern

The Big Fat Fake Division

It’s the most familiar tactic in the history of manipulation-divide and conquer. The corporatized political parties that have been trading the football of the US Government back and forth for decades have successfully engaged the entire republic in a non-debate about something that has no divisive features. Their strategy of pitting sides against one another is about as sophisticated as a teenager angling for the car by getting Mom and Dad to fight about who caused the scratch on the door. Embarrassingly, far too many of us keep falling for it.

The Environment is Not An “ISM”

Our planet, the water, the air, the animal and plant life, is not an institution, a theory, a political invention, or any other “ism.” It is a very concrete, finite location and resources. It is the context in which all human activity, good, bad, and neutral, must take place. Living consumes and makes waste. Modern, human life has added a layer of consumption and waste production that can’t be automatically re-incorporated into Earth’s natural cycles. We continually convert a certain amount of the Earth’s matter, into permanently unusable, sometimes even dangerous, waste. That waste is accurately called pollution, a now-old-fashioned word, too clear and useful to be in favor today.

We all know what pollution is and why we don’t want it. It makes living on Earth a bad experience. When it builds up in the air or water or soil we get sick. Everybody knows it’s bad. No one is confused or undecided. No one would rather live in pollution. No one prefers a river with raw sewage spilling into it to one without. But guess what! By changing the language to “climate change” and framing the debate around whether or not it’s caused by human activity, the corporate interests that would pollute freely for profit, distracted us all. Worse, we’re not even debating climate change, or even its causes any more. We’ve devolved into a useless non‑dialogue about climate change DENIAL! Denial is not an issue. It’s a pretense that something doesn’t exist. Talk about talking about nothing!

Sincere Language

But what happens when we call things by reasonably accurate terms, instead of manipulative spin yammer? Replace “climate change” with “planet-wide heating.” Now, instead of a vague, meaningless phrase, we have a fair description of what is actually happening. Instead of arguing about whether society should manage and restrain things that may be turning up the heat, let’s focus on the fact that those same activities simply pollute. Heating up or not, we’ve spent four decades proving that we can choose whether or not to make our planet a filthy, dirty one, or try and clean up after ourselves. Why would we turn back and choose pollution now? We wouldn’t. That’s why the profiteering exploiters prefer we never pose the question that way.

Their argument was, ‘People don’t cause global warming, so forget about protecting the environment and let’s exploit without limits, because money.’ By this logic, if you are making breakfast and you drop the two eggs you were going to scramble, you should throw the other ten eggs on the floor too. Rational adults rejected this idiotic argument so the profiteers now respond with denial, like a three-year-old having a pout.

Planet-wide heating is not good news, but whether our actions can avert it or not, we still have to live here for the foreseeable future. And since we do, why would any sincere, rational person agree to end the limits on pollution, or abandon recycling? We wouldn’t and we don’t.

The Violence of Oil and Gas Pipelines!

In 2016 the United States dropped bombs on seven, what are commonly described as “Muslim Countries”: Iraq, Libya, Somalia, Syria, Yemen, Pakistan and Afghanistan. These military operations were justified by the Obama Administration as a war on terrorism or ISIS. Was “Terrorism” the true motive of these operations?

Retired General Wesley Clark, West Point Valedictorian, Vietnam Veteran and Supreme Allied Commander Europe of NATO during the Kosovo War, published a book in 2003, Winning Modern Wars. In this book he recited a conversation he had with an unidentified Military Officer in the Pentagon who, shortly after the 9/11 attacks, revealed a script to attack seven Middle Eastern countries: Iraq, Syria, Lebanon, Libya, Somalia, Sudan and finally Iran. With this revelation we now know there was a premeditated plan by the United States to attack seven additional countries to Afghanistan with the passing of the 2001 Authorization for Use of Military Force. Which intentionally used vague language to describe the scope of the authorization in order to open the door for the expansion and use of military operations.

The motive of fighting “Terrorism” has been invalidated as well. After a trip to Syria, Republican US Senator Richard Black gives a description of the country unlike anything else you will see on Corporate American media. In an interview with Executive Intelligence Review Magazine’s Jeffrey Steinberg, Senator Black says (3:00), “Syria is one of the most incredibly wonderful nations on Earth,” and goes on to say, “The fact that America set out to topple the Government and destroy it, long before there was the faintest hint of civil unrest,… is really one of the great stains on American honor.” He describes Syria as having religious freedom greater than in the United States. Later in the interview he he gives two devastating revelations. He says (9:28), “One of my questions, is why is there war in Syria?..We know this was not a popular uprising. This was a calculated decision by CIA, MI6, French Intelligence, working with the Muslim Brotherhood, Turks, Saudis…an organized plan to topple the Government and of course, you know, we were familiar that there were competing plans for oil and gas pipelines.” Even more disturbing he says( 35:54), “…we have gone full circle from opposing Al-Qaeda, which sent three thousand Americans to a faming death on 9-11, complete circle to where we now supply them, we arm them, we finance them and it’s all coming with the approval of the highest authorities in the United States Government.” Yes, that is a current United States Senator who said these things.

Alan Greenspan, Chairman of the Federal Reserve from 1987 to 2006 may have been the decision maker behind these wars and certainly a major influence to invade Iraq. He stated in his book, The Age of Turbulence, “I am saddened that it is politically inconvenient to acknowledge what everyone knows: the Iraq war is largely about oil.” He seems to suggest it was his idea to invade Iraq in a quote from a Washington Post article, Greenspan: Ouster of Hussein Crucial for Oil Security, September 17, 2007, “Greenspan said he had backed Hussein’s ouster, either through war or covert action. “I wasn’t arguing for war per se,” he said. But “to take [Hussein] out, in my judgment, it was something important for the West to do and essential, but I never saw Plan B” — an alternative to war.” We can now certainly conclude that the wars in the middle east are for oil and not a war against “Terrorism.”

The violence for oil has landed on our homeland as well. In North Dakota, Energy Transfer Partners LLC, is able to impose its will with the support of local and out of State Police Departments and Local, State and Federal Governments, against the best interest of Indigenous Nations and the American public. They are constructing an oil pipeline, known as The Dakota Access Pipeline (DAPL), under the Missouri River, which will eventually contaminate the river. According to the US Department of the Interior Bureau of Reclamation, Basin Report: Missouri River, “The Missouri is the longest river in the United States. It has a watershed of more than 500,000 square miles, includes portions of 10 states and one Canadian province, and encompasses approximately one-sixth of the United States. The Missouri drains the largest watershed within the United States and produces annual yields of 40 million acre-feet.” The report goes on to say, “Adequate and safe water supplies are fundamental to the health, economy, and ecology of the United States, and global climate change poses a significant challenge to the protection of these resources.” Protecting this resource from oil spills and climate change is critical to the health of the people of the United States, Indigenous and otherwise.

Water Protectors in North Dakota, the Standing Rock Sioux and other Indigenous Tribes, stood peacefully against the construction of the pipeline. Armed private security were brought in and used dogs to attack the Water Protectors. Luckily this action was captured by Amy Goodman of Democracy Now. This inspired people from all over the United States to support the effort against the DAPL bringing supplies, Money and People Power. Activists converged on Standing Rock in solidarity with the Water Protectors, they were met however with more violence. The Morton County Sheriff’s Department and outside Police Departments sprayed Water Protectors with water, from water cannons, in the frigid cold of North Dakota’s winter, they used tear gas, concussion grenades and shot the Water Protectors with rubber bullets. Sophia Wilansky, 21, nearly lost her arm to one of these grenades. Vanessa Dundon, was hit in the eye with a tear gas canister and nearly lost her eye and Marcus Mitchell, 21, shot in the eye with some kind of pellet rounds, also nearly losing and eye.

Civil Rights are ignored when it comes to protecting the profits of oil and gas companies. There were several high profile arrests of Water Protectors and activists: Standing Rock Tribal Chairman David Archambault II who was charged with disorderly conduct, an arrest warrant was also issued in Morton County for Green Party presidential candidate Jill Stein and her running mate Ajamu Baraka on misdemeanor counts of criminal trespass and criminal mischief, a warrant for journalist Amy Goodman’s arrest was issued by Morton County related to the filming of the dog attacks on Water Protectors. Protectors, Physician Sara Jumping Eagle, along with the daughter of LaDonna Brave Bull Allard, who founded Sacred Stone Camp and Actor Shailene Woodly were strip searched for misdemeanor arrests. Allard said that when her daughter was arrested and taken into custody she was “strip-searched in front of multiple male officers, then left for hours in her cell, naked and freezing.” All of this violence and violations of Civil Rights against Americans protecting one of the most important watershed in the United States showed us that the profits of oil and gas companies are more important than the American values we were raised to believe in.

Let’s stop the violence and move away from fossil fuels and towards clean renewable energy. The Green Party advocates for the Green New Deal which, includes investments for renewable energy, taxes and fees for industries that increase carbon emissions and to achieve full employment with living wages in green jobs in sustainable energy. Review the Green New Deal here: https://sccgreens.org///green-agenda/green-new-deal/

The Carbon Fee and Dividend proposal, by the Citizen’s Climate Lobby, looks to return to citizens the dividends paid by the fossil fuel industries by the amount of greenhouse gas emissions they release. You can learn more about this plan here: http://citizensclimatelobby.org/carbon-fee-and-dividend/

We must stand up to the violence in the name of oil and gas.