San Diego To Run 100 Percent On Renewable Energy By 2035 (outerplaces.com) 113
The city of San Diego has announced a bold new plan to run completely on renewable energy by 2035. While the city already produces the second largest electrical output from solar energy in the U.S., the new plan further details a way to cope with the changing climate. It plans to reduce 50% of the greenhouse gas emission by 2035, as well as create new jobs through the manufacturing and installation of solar panels. "San Diego is a leader in innovation and sustainability," the Climate Action Plan reads. "By striking a sensible balance between protecting our environment and growing our economy, San Diego can support clean technology, renewable energy, and economic growth." San Diego joins San Francisco, Sydney, and Vancouver in its effort to run entirely on renewable energy.
Easy! (Score:2)
Far enough in the future... (Score:1, Troll)
2035? That's far enough in the future for most of today's politicians — except the junior ones — to have retired and/or moved on...
Get the credits and compliments now, never have to answer for them.
Not entirely unlike the dire global warming predictions we see in the popular press every week or so.
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2035? That's far enough in the future for most of today's politicians — except the junior ones — to have retired and/or moved on...
San Diego has term limits, so they will all be gone long by 2035. But with rapidly falling solar panel prices, lots of sunshine, and plenty of rooftops due to suburban sprawl, San Diego should be using mostly renewables by 2035.
Re:Far enough in the future... (Score:4, Informative)
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They can't do it without storage.
Wait... you mean solar doesn't work at night? Elon Musk thinks he going to improve battery technology enough to make it economically feasible for storage, but I have my doubts.
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The same people who endorse a manned mission to Mars and ubiquitous driverless cars want you to know that renewable energy is impossible.
Duly noted.
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Yeah, what would Elon Musk know about spaceships or cars, fool he is.
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California passed a 1.3 GWh storage mandate about 3 yrs ago, to take effect in stages over the coming decade.
The storage market is heating up and will likely explode as much as solar has in recent years.
Tesla has a plan to use battery storage along with SolarCity to provide utility & grid services and has already shipped 2500 PowerWalls and 100 PowerPacks this past quarter.
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Have you read the California law and plans from California regulators? It relies on legislating cost effectiveness but the only thing they are producing is rent seeking. They might as well mandate energy storage using unicorn horns.
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As I'm a long way from CA, the only thing that really matters if it helps or hinders the development & affordability of energy storage.
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That's true, but you're overstating the problem. You only really need a tiny bit of storage to maintain a voltage on the wire. Then use demand-response pricing to fulfill demand while preventing blackouts and brownouts. Then increase storage using whatever technology is available until it no longer makes financial sense to add more (when MC=MR).
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That's true, but you're overstating the problem. You only really need a tiny bit of storage to maintain a voltage on the wire.
No, you need a lot of storage for time shifting. You may be thinking of voltage regulation and frequency response, but that is not the central challenge. They need to store a lot of power generated during the day for use at night, and/or when the wind is blowing for use when it is not. Storage for hours or even days is required, and a lot of it. Unless, of course, you back it all up with conventional power sources and not renewables.
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You're only thinking about the problem from the supply side. To equalize supply and demand when demand>supply, yes, one way is to increase supply. What's the other?
In other words, how does eBay prevent too many people from winning the same auction? (They can't force the seller to sell more.)
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The only way to prevent that is to make electricity free, but that will only create a different set of problems.
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The only way to prevent that is to make electricity free, but that will only create a different set of problems.
I agree with you on that point. But I still don't think its realistic to expect people to not run air conditioners on a hot summer evening, when the winds are not blowing. Not to mention running refrigerators. You are not going to be able to power just those two things alone without a huge amount of storage.
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Did you know that before refrigerators, people used to have fresh milk delivered every day to their front door? True story. So making refrigerators too expensive to run overnight will create jobs, and that's a good thing, isn't it?
And before residential A/C, people used to put up wet sheets in their windows to stay cool. Today, swamp coolers, ground source heat pumps, and earth sheltered construction are a few modern, low power alternatives. So we'll be fine.
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Did you know that before refrigerators, people used to have fresh milk delivered every day to their front door? True story. So making refrigerators too expensive to run overnight will create jobs, and that's a good thing, isn't it?
And before residential A/C, people used to put up wet sheets in their windows to stay cool. Today, swamp coolers, ground source heat pumps, and earth sheltered construction are a few modern, low power alternatives. So we'll be fine.
Yup, that's progress. No refrigerators. Did you know that swamp coolers aren't worth a damn in humid climates? Those heat pumps you talk about require electrical energy and are very costly. I guess the poor lose out again. You simply validated my points, not a practical path forward without storage. You are trying so hard to justify San Diego's grand oversight. Why not just accept that storage is needed? We can have refrigerators, Air Conditioning at night, and the poor won't be left holding the short end o
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TIL setting prices at market equilibrium is "idealistic but impractical."
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TIL setting prices at market equilibrium is "idealistic but impractical."
Whatever, but you still need a lot of storage to be using 100% renewables.
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That would only be true if demand for energy were perfectly inelastic.
The problem here is that you are speaking in philosophical terms, and I am speaking a terms of practicality and realism. In the real and practical world, you must have storage to use 100% solar and wind based renewables. In a hypothetical world, which would never really exist, you could make the case storage would not be needed.
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It's funny how you claim to be "speaking a [sic] terms of practicality and realism," yet so far you have completely failed to prove the need for storage.
Considering that 99% of human history was without electricity, you need to explain why all of a sudden we "need" something that we never needed before. What changed, and why can't it change back?
Your very existence appears to disprove your theory that storage is necessary, so unless you can come up with even the smallest piece of evidence to support your cl
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You only need storage if you you generate enough surplus power during daytime (talking about solar here) and you want to use it at night.
For wind you don't need storage, it blows at night just as it it does at day.
To be carbon neutral, it is enough to sell excess power to neighbouring "districts" and get their excess power when you are in need.
The idea that you need storage for a renewable grid, regardless of technology, is a /. myth.
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To be carbon neutral, it is enough to sell excess power to neighbouring "districts" and get their excess power when you are in need
The idea that you need storage for a renewable grid, regardless of technology, is a /. myth.
Funny stuff. There is a big difference between 100% renewables, as stated, and 'carbon neutral", which was not stated. The latter is just an accounting game, when in reality they are using power at times from non-renewable sources. But, for an entirely renewable grid depending on wind and solar, you'd need storage, there is no other practical solution. Its obvious to anyone with common sense.
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Its obvious to anyone with common sense.
Nope.
But, for an entirely renewable grid depending on wind and solar, you'd need storage
You don't.
Look at a load curve of your country. You have something like 100% load from roughly 8:00 in the morning to roughly 20:00 in the evening. Preceded and succeeded by a roughly 3 hours ramp up and ramp down time down to nightly base load. Base load in my country is 40% of peak, in France it is close to 60%, no idea about yours.
If you only had solar power and wanted to cove
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. Going from ~40% renewables to 100% does not affect the storage situation at the slightest.
The most ignorant thing I think I've seen you say.
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Well, then take a piece of paper and do the math your self?
To store something you need to produce more power than you need at the moment where you produce it. Otherwise you have nothing to store.
To use stored power you need to have a situation where you need more power than you can produce.
Now make some simple graphs and try to construct both situations close enough (in time) together, so that storage makes sense.
Then you realize quickly that this desperate need for storage is a myth.
The only way where stor
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Well, then take a piece of paper and do the math your self?
To store something you need to produce more power than you need at the moment where you produce it. Otherwise you have nothing to store.
To use stored power you need to have a situation where you need more power than you can produce.
Now make some simple graphs and try to construct both situations close enough (in time) together, so that storage makes sense.
Then you realize quickly that this desperate need for storage is a myth.
The only way where storage makes sense is for individual installations, not grid wide.
This, that you just wrote, is highly concentrated ignorant bullshit. It makes no sense at all, not a bit. Anyone reading can see that, and even the renewable industry itself knows storage is needed and is pursuing those technologies. So, I don't even need to respond further.
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Then explain me why Germany has 40% renewables right now and no storage beyond what it already had 20 years ago?
If you can not follow the simple logic:
a) To store something you need to produce more power than you need at the moment where you produce it. Otherwise you have nothing to store.
b) To use stored power you need to have a situation where you need more power than you can produce.
You should at least refrain from insults.
Regarding a)
As long as your grid is not able to produce at certain points more tha
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>
The need for storage is a myth brought up by the anti renewables mafia.
You'll have a hard time backing that up. Its a statement solely from you, not backed up by any facts. There renewable industry themselves acknowledge the need for storage, even they don't try to sell us such hogwash. I'll keep this as a reference for anytime I want to show others just how out of tune you are with reality.
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I gave you enough facts.
a) neither Germany nor Portugal nor Denmark is building storage
b) you need excess energy to store anything, powering down conventials makes more sense
c) you nee a phase of a day where you have not enough energy to use the stored energy
If those 3 things are not facts, I don't know what you consider a fact.
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I really should feel bad about wanting to mod you up.........
Talk is cheap (Score:5, Insightful)
I live in San Diego and these plans are just the usual political bullshit. All talk and no substance. The city couldn't even pull together an actual centennial celebration of Balboa Park--millions of taxpayer dollars were spent and it all just disappeared into the hands of various marketing companies and consultant firms, and nothing ever materialized. Meanwhile, the park's buildings and infrastructure are crumbling. And this is just one example of gross political mismanagement. The whole SD Chargers debacle is another. Why are taxpayers asked to foot the bill to help build a new football stadium just to prevent a mediocre team from leaving?
Having previously lived in LA, San Diego politics makes Los Angeles look like a well-oiled machine. "Climate Action Plan" is just another euphemism for "taxpayers will somehow get shafted by the time this is all said and done." 2035 will roll around and people will have paid for smoke and mirrors, like they have done time and time again. People are willing to fund projects, but only if the costs come under the budget, and what is promised is what is delivered. But there's not mechanism in place to hold officials accountable should they fail to make good on their promises, just as is the case with the rest of the US government.
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But there's not mechanism in place to hold officials accountable should they fail to make good on their promises...
Yeah, I guess voting out the incumbents and petitioning to put somebody else on the ballot is out of the question. This democracy stuff is high maintenance, babe...
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You incorrectly presume that when someone is voted in to replace the incumbents, that they are immune to the corrupting influences of the political system. Do you really think that the mere threat of voting someone out of office, even if executed, is enough to deter politicians from being corrupt? You must have an incredibly idealistic and naive view of the way American government works.
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You incorrectly presume we are required to reelect them. We are not. Eventually the message gets through, and we can always add the element of criminal prosecution. But, do what you want, apparently passing the blame is still the rule of the day.
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Re: Talk is cheap (Score:2)
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The voters have to do their own vetting. Don't be crying for everything to be spoon fed to you.
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You can only vote for candidates that have been vetted by those in power.
That is absurd... The process to get on a ballot is very straightforward, available to anybody, rich or poor. As far as counting the ballots, we should be watching more closely. This is our problem and nobody else's.
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Oh, and how could I have forgotten the San Onofre nuclear power plant? Edison/SDGE mismanages the plant, ignores documentation of design flaws, causes the plant to become unusable, and then the cost of decommissioning is passed on ratepayers, when this plant was supposed to continue providing energy for decades. Who fucked up the plant? The utilities. Why did they fuck it up? Greed. They didn't want to pay for the fix, and thought that the design flaws posed an acceptable risk. And who is paying for
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That can quickly become unenforceable, much like trying to jail people for spitting on the sidewalk if every 10th person refused to obey the law.
If neighborhoods or gated communities went off-grid en masse, the city ordinances against it wouldn't be worth toilet paper.
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Going off-grid is unlawful in any area where grid power is available. You must have an electricity hook up or your dwelling will be considered uninhabitable.
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Installed it with a design flaw? Your understanding of what happened is badly flawed. The utility had some major equipment failures at the plant (iirc correctly it was the cooling pumps). The permit they operate under allows them to replace or upgrade equipment as needed. BUT if the equipment is not the same (within limits, minor modifications can be made) they must re-safety validate the entire operation. The equipment that failed was replaced with brand new, completely different equipment. Then the utilit
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Once d
Re:Talk is cheap (Score:4, Interesting)
Oh how could I have forgotten the Ivanpah Solar Power Facility? NRG dumps over a billion dollars of government money on this and even after charging double the going rate of electricity to ratepayers they are threatening default. Why did they build this unworkable piece of shit? Greed. Now we've got this eyesore in the desert to clean up, one that is a navigation hazard to passing aircraft by the way. This plant produced expensive power, killed hundreds of birds, disturbed the habitat of a rare desert turtle and now the government is left holding the bill.
There's a lot of people on Slashdot that love to give nuclear power a bunch of shit when it fails but ignore or excuse the failings of solar power. I'm not accusing wickerprints of being one of the solar power zealots, the comment above is only about how politicians shit on taxpayers.
San Onofre might have been a huge clusterfuck of a project but that is just one of hundreds of nuclear power plants in the world, most of which don't make the news because they operate safely, quietly, and profitably. It seems to me that solar power only serves as a means to take taxes from the poor so that rich people with connections can lobby for subsidies and walk away with more coin in their pockets, the mess they leave behind is the taxpayers problem.
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Nuclear is pretty safe - when done correctly - but a lot of the problems have been forgotten or covered up.
If you look at the individual histories of plants, even in nuke-loving France, you'll find plenty of screwups.
Ivanpah may be having problems but there are dozens of solar plants that operate safely, quietly and profitably.
The SEGS units in the Mojave, perhaps 150 miles away have been operating safely & quietly, presumably profitably for 30 yrs, longer than many nuke plants
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I guess the difference is that utility scale solar is a relatively new technology and still developing at a rapid pace, so you expect there to be problems but also that once overcome the long term benefits will be worth it.
Nuclear, on the other hand, is long established and well understood. There are few excuses left for operators now. Also, I'm not an expert on US energy history, but in the UK many of the plants have never really been profitable. They were built by the government, were so unattractive they
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I didn't mention Ivanpah because my point was to provide examples of mismanagement and corruption in San Diego politics. Has nothing to do with nuclear vs. solar. I'm open to considering any energy production method that isn't based on fossil fuels. Of course, these may have other environmental impacts, but the whole idea is to weigh those impacts against each other and the benefits.
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The whole SD Chargers debacle is another. Why are taxpayers asked to foot the bill to help build a new football stadium just to prevent a mediocre team from leaving?
This has nothing to do with corruption or mismanagement. It is direct democracy. The stadium funding will be decided by direct popular vote on June 7th. If you don't like it, don't vote for it. It is losing in the polls, so you will likely get what you want.
Me too. (Score:1)
I also will be running on 100% renewable energy by 2035. Why not... sounds reasonable. Surely 20 years is enough for someone somewhere to invent something that will make it all work for me. I just have to sit back and wait for the innovation to roll in. And maybe I can get the government to pass a law to legislate it all into existence. And maybe repeal some of those pesky laws of physics.
Linked PDF.... (Score:4, Insightful)
It has lots of pretty pictures...
But interesting parts:
Page 19 - pie chart of emissions inventory - largest segment is transportation, 55%, so needs most attention.
Page 37 - plan of action is to get 25% of transport done via public transport by 2035... in California... which has 840 cars per 1000 people...
Good luck with that.
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.84 car ownership? far out!
That sounds like a very low birth rate. Perhaps they're factoring in a bunch of senior citizens who own multiple vehicles that won't be driving in 19 years time.
Natural Gas (Score:1)
So they finally found a good use for smug farts.
it's easy to drive this change (Score:3)
if you want everyone to switch to renewable energy, it's not a complex process. all you have to do is slowly increase a tax on fossil fuel energy sources (and imported electricity) and use that money to subsidize investments in renewable energy. when gasoline is $10 per gallon, electricity is $1 per kWH and a solar panel with microinverter are $50 each, you see everyone switching to solar power, reducing their power consumption or paying out the nose because they can afford to do so.
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What you propose will lower the standard of living for millions of people. That means people will go hungry, delay medical care out of concern for the inability to pay, people won't be able to afford to go to college. I'm sure Obamacare will mean everyone gets top notch medical care. Future president Sanders will give everyone a college education. As for getting enough food for everyone I hear that the Soylent Corporation has a great idea for government subsidized nutrition supplements.
Where is this mon
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Considering I think people should be shot for murder, rape, animal abuse, child abuse, successive drunk driving and drug dealing, just to name a few laws we already have on the books against doing, I may not be the right person to ask.
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The problem with death penalty on rape -- e.g. in Thailand -- is: every rape victim gets murdered.
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What you propose will lower the standard of living for millions of people.
i never claimed it was a perfect solution, only that it was an easy solution. however, tell me this, what about the standard of living for trillions of multicellular organisms on the planet. who are you to say that humans are so important that they cannot be inconvenienced to prevent the ecosystem from dying off? that doesn't just include wild animals but other humans as well.
Where is this money going to come from to pay for all of this if people cannot afford to buy $10 gallons of gasoline?
well if you read my post carefully, you would have noticed i wrote, "slowly increase a tax on fossil fuel energy sources," and not
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If you believe we have to tax gasoline to the point it becomes $10/gallon then you are admitting you don't believe your own hype. I thought that solar power is already at price parity with coal. If the price of solar cuts in half every ten years, or whatever the claim is, then we should see solar cheaper than gasoline real soon. In 20 years we should have a solar powered society only on the basis that solar power is so cheap that it will just not be profitable to pump oil out of the ground any more.
If yo
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If you believe that solar power can only win this race by hobbling carbon fuels with exorbitant taxes then you have just admitted that you do not believe solar power will ever be cheaper than coal and oil.
the difference is that solar is an upfront investment. many humans have weak long term planning skills and so paying $300 for electricity sure beats a $30K system. however, i've made no claims about the price of solar because the price isn't the issue here, the environment is the issue. the sooner we switch of fossil fuels, the better chance we have at fixing the problem we've created.
By saying we must tax carbon fuels out of existence is admitting we will not be running out of oil any time soon.
the problem is not about running out of oil, the problem is all the carbon in the atmosphere is causing the earth to reta
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the sooner we switch of fossil fuels, the better chance we have at fixing the problem we've created.
Agreed, but getting there by artificially raising the price of energy just leaves us with fewer resources to fix the problem. If we have the government tax energy to fund this transition then we are relying on the government to be incorruptible angel geniuses that won't use that money to buy votes, give money to their buddies, or merely choose solutions poorly. That "cash for clunkers" bomb of a program should be a huge clue that these people are corruptible, far from geniuses, and certainly not angels.
By
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Agreed, but getting there by artificially raising the price of energy just leaves us with fewer resources to fix the problem.
[...]
How does making diesel fuel, the very thing that powers trains, trucks, bulldozers, etc. that will build the infrastructure we need so expensive that people cannot afford to run them help?
which part of "use that money to subsidize investments in renewable energy" didn't you understand?
Making fossil fuels expensive will not help in transitioning from them, it will just be a burden on the economy and prolong the transition.
no, it would force the transition to happen. the reason you didn't understand that is that you simply didn't read (let alone consider) my full proposal before launching into a blind rage.
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which part of "use that money to subsidize investments in renewable energy" didn't you understand?
The part where you think that our government consists of genius angels that won't use this tax money to fund their pet projects instead of investing it in renewable energy. Your proposal also requires these genius angels to know enough about science and technology to effectively predict the future on which technologies will pan out and which will not. I have greater faith in the market to figure this out.
no, it would force the transition to happen. the reason you didn't understand that is that you simply didn't read (let alone consider) my full proposal before launching into a blind rage.
Your "proposal" is a single sentence that requires an incorruptible government to be successful. I've
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What you propose will lower the standard of living for millions of people. /. regularly and I simply have no idea why switching to renewable would lower the standard of living.
Can you explain why? That argument comes up on
Especially in a country where only the super rich have a nice standard of living.
Can the standard of living actually be lowered for an average american?
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Can you explain why?
Yes. Imagine your typical wage earner. They get X dollars per hour of work, and they work Y hours per month, leaving them with Z as a monthly income. They have to spend this income on consumables like food and fuel, to pay off long term expenses like a mortgage and/or student loans, as well as things like insurance and so forth. For the typical person that might mean something like, pulling a number out of the air, $200 on fuel each month.
Right now with $2 per gallon of gas that means their 100 gallons
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So you want to explain that having $200 less at the end of the month does affect your standard of living?
Where do you live? In a third world country or what?
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So you want to explain that having $200 less at the end of the month does affect your standard of living?
Where do you live? In a third world country or what?
I live in the United States of America, where the median income is less than $52000/year. A nation where about half of the population lives paycheck to paycheck. A nation where 1/3rd of the population has nothing saved for retirement.
If you gave people below the median income an extra $200/month "free" by lowering their taxes then they'd have money to buy a "new to you" car, or pay for night classes at a university or community college, or use their vacation time to take an IT certification course, or use
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Cheap energy is how we reduce energy usage, not with expensive energy. It takes energy to save energy. Those aluminum blades on a windmill take a lot of energy to make, the more energy costs the more difficult it will be to raise the money to build that windmill.
Wow I wrote that already a few days ago, but you topped it: this is the stupids thing I ever have heard.
For starters: blades of wind mills are not made from aluminium.
Secondly if energy is cheap, no one will reduce its usage, why would they?
utilit
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Um, what is in it for the rent seekers and politicians if a Pigovian tax is used?
The method must be obfuscated for maximum kickbacks and graft. Think of Congress and the Space Shuttle.
End date 2 years = won't happen (Score:5, Insightful)
Any 20 year plan proposed by a government entity is doomed to failure. Any action proposed by a government official that cannot be in office to see it happen means it simply will not happen.
There is a famous speech by JFK that proposed an American will walk on the moon in 8 years. I suspect that the project survived after he died because his VP was on board and was able to get elected as POTUS afterward.
That's how to make a government promise work, set a goal in a meaningful time frame, get a lot of people to support it, and make it happen yourself. If you put a goal out beyond your time in office then it's not a promise, it's happy mouth noises.
Had this been a promise to deploy a certain number of solar panels and/or windmills in 2 years, maybe within 5 years, then I might believe them. Setting a twenty year goal is meaningless. Few people can stay in office that long. Even fewer can keep a promise that long.
Is the Sunrise Powerlink finally in service? (Score:2)
This is the transmission line that for years was supposed to bring power from solar and wind projects in desert Imperial County to San Diego. Like every other project that might do some good, the flat-earth lobby has fought it every step of the way, imposing court delays to make it as ludicrously overpriced as everything else in California. That is, after all, their whole strategy. Look this game plan up under "California high speed rail."
Now if only they... (Score:2)
typical san diego (Score:2)
My favorite part of this is the tortured logic around the (lack of) funding for anything. The budget for 2017 plans on $106M being spent on street repairs. For the climate action plan, they hope that 10% of the street repairs are helpful for mitigating greenhouse gas emissions. So, that's a $10.6M expenditure on the CAP plan! The vast majority of the people being "hired" on this plan are being hired into the sewer repair project. This is a long-term program that was going to hire those people anyway. A
Better if they quit taking colorado water (Score:3)
Typical election year drivel (Score:2, Informative)
The mayor is a "moderate" Republican trying to appeal to a growing liberal core in the center of the city. There are a few things to keep in mind with all such plans announced by cities:
Nowhere in the plans are solid, fixed, detailed plans to ban the use of things like gasoline or the use of electricity from coal-fired power plants, so they are still going to have non-renewables. Even if every car and truck based in the city was electric, visiting vehicles would not be. Also, they are connected to the natio