The Burlingame Voice

New Year, New Green Reality for 2022

Let's start the New Year off with a bit of news on the climate change front.  2021 was a wild climate year finishing off with 212 inches of snow in December in the Tahoe Basin--breaking a 50 year record.  We may have gotten a modest respite from the megadrought although the press quotes from Water Board officials indicate a wait-and-see position.  It can be difficult to get real insight into what is happening around the world on climate as much of the press filters out "bad news".  The Wall Street Journal often has news that you will not read in the Comicle or our local press.  They did just that last week in a piece titled "Many Climate Ambitions Will End With 2021".    The journalist, Joseph C. Sternberg, had a look around Europe and found a few interesting moves that California officials would benefit from understanding.  Here are a few snippets:

It’s New Year’s resolution season, and don’t be surprised if politicians world-wide settle into the same informal pledge: Talk as little as possible about climate change in 2022.  The biggest, most entertaining and also most telling climb-downs are happening in the U.K.  Prime Minister Boris Johnson in October unveiled an ambitious policy program to get Britain to net-zero carbon-dioxide emissions by 2050.

Sure enough, the backtracks and U-turns began before that document was written. The most controversial component of Mr. Johnson’s net-zero boondoggle concerns an attempt to steer households away from the gas boilers on which 86% of them rely for hot water and central heating.

Mr. Johnson said in October he hopes that by 2035 the government will be able to phase out installation of new natural-gas heating units. That represents a step back from earlier plans to require carbon-efficient heat pumps in new homes as early as 2025, and the extended deadline still faces stiff opposition stemming from the high cost of heat pumps.

Among the smaller reversals, the U.K. Transport Department in November backtracked from a plan to require small businesses with parking lots on their premises to install electric-vehicle charging points. The proposed rules governing other structures such as new housing, residential conversions, and new mixed-use developments are so porous as to resemble a well-aerated Swiss cheese, with cost limitation emerging as the primary concern. This difficulty installing charging stations augurs the collapse, sooner or later, of Mr. Johnson’s announced plan to ban new internal-combustion cars by 2030.

French President Emmanuel Macron faces a campaign for re-election in 2022, and he learned the hard way in 2018 how higher fuel prices can trigger debilitating popular protests.  At Mr. Macron’s behest, the European Commission in Brussels may be on the verge of including both nuclear and natural gas on a list of environmentally friendly energy sources eligible for “green investment” from governments and private investors. 

Even in Germany politicians are starting to change course.  A coal phase-out will happen ideally by 2030—with the newly inserted word “ideally” blunting Green ambitions by marking the whole project as tentative.

We are often asked to emulate our European partners in their efforts, but it appears if we do now then Californians would have to backtrack as well.  Happy 2022.

I enjoy getting input and ideas from readers on the side.  Here's one that came in overnight.

 

Planning for a Rollicking Rollins Rd.

I’m very excited by the impending housing growth in North Burlingame that will end up bringing “thousands of new homes” to the Rollins Rd. industrial section of town.  The amount of planning that went into this decision by state and county officials, the City Council, the Planning Commission and city staff is impressive.  Here are the details:

Water:   I know the decision makers have a grasp on our dire water situation because they said so back in May  calling it “alarming”.  They also know the SFPUC cannot be trusted to keep the Peninsula’s water interests front-of-mind regardless of whatever “contract” we have with them, so the negotiations with the state to gain access to Bayfront land for our new desalinization plant (instead of a park) are to be complemented.  Desalinized drinking water is about ten times as expensive as water agencies buy now due to the energy costs.  Then there is the cost of getting rid of the brine, but the free land access will help the economics.  The new water tank on Rollins will ensure reliable water for the new neighborhood.

Outflow:  In the spirit of “what goes in, must come out”, the city study on sewage treatment capacity at the Bayfront plant will probably find a need for additional capacity, but we can be sure that raising the sewer rates to pay for it will be easy as we just saw this year.  Burlingame is a welcoming community, so higher rates will be fine with the public.

Power:  The decision makers’ extensive negotiations with PG&E to get it to strengthen the Burlingame grid are to be complemented.  Not only will the grid improvements supply the new desalinization plant’s load, but it will also ensure grid stability for the rest of the city.  Generous state and federal funding for new solar panels on the new construction and some existing Rollins Rd. buildings will help; as will a brand new grid-based battery facility.  Whoever got that big grant should get a promotion.  The natural gas pipes should be fine since there won’t be any natural gas allowed.

Schools:  Given the thousands of new homes coming, it was prescient of the city council to snap up a large parcel on Rollins Rd. and sign a long-term, low-cost lease with the Burlingame School District.  This will enable BSD to build a new school serving North Burlingame Eastside students.  The parcel may be large enough to also build a BIS Annex to cut down on car traffic to BIS.  I expect that the next school bond measure to pay for it all will pass easily as Burlingame is a welcoming community.

Traffic:  As we consider the extensive traffic study conducted as part of the General Plan update, it is gratifying to see that the Broadway grade separation project is now fully funded and we are ready to start The Big B'game Dig in 2022.  As today's SF Comicle notes:

The intersection of Caltrain and Broadway in Burlingame has the ignominious distinction of being the street-level train crossing most in need of fixing in the state, based on a calculation that factors in number of accidents, disruptions to local traffic and other overall safety concerns.  The busy crossing serves demand from trains, vehicles, pedestrians and cyclists, a hectic mix that has resulted in 11 car-train collisions in the past five years, a number of near misses and some fatal accidents. It has also caused considerable traffic backups: The crossing gate is currently down about an hour per day, and the city estimates that will rise to nearly three hours per day by 2040.

The project should go fast as most of them do; and be completed in time to help ease the load on Millbrae Ave. and Rollins Rd. for the new North Burlingame residents.  Luckily, the city’s negotiations with Caltrain were also successful in getting the Broadway station to reopen.  That will make a big difference for local traffic through the B'way intersection over the next 10 years.

Of course, Rollins Rd. isn't the only part of town with strong growth so all of these impending improvements will benefit the whole town.  That's why Burlingame is a welcoming community.

I admit I was initially skeptical about a huge new residential section at the north end of town.  It seemed like many of the growing pains would be intractable problems, but with a lot of diligent work everything appears to be on track.  Many people are to be complemented.

EV Charging: Still Slow Uptake at Lot Y

It has been a year since we checked in on the usage of the eight EV charging spaces in Lot Y south of Broadway on Chula Vista.  I use Lot Y often and have noticed some uptick in usage which has been extremely low in the past as noted here.  Last October/November 2020 usage was running a half of a charge per day, per space during Covid limitations.  Things have opened up a lot since then--just look at the traffic in town these days.  So one would expect some uptick in EV charging as well.  Here's the numbers from the city:

                   2020 minutes    2020 sessions          2021 minutes    2021 sessions

October            2650                121                        12,287                366

November         3571                137                        13,386                360

So the spaces are being used 2.8 times as frequently and providing 4.1 times as many minutes of juice.  That tallies to one and a half charging sessions per space per day.  That is still very light usage although I once saw four EVs charging at the same time.  I was at the lot on Wednesday afternoon when the regular spaces were very close to full and the eight EV spaces were empty.

There has been plenty written about the increasing load on the California grid from EVs, but not as much about the environmental effects of all the new batteries for EVs.  NBC News jumped on that last week

A nickel mine stretching nearly 4 square miles scars the forest above farmland (in the Philippines). The mine, Rio Tuba, plays a vital role in satisfying the global demand for a mineral more coveted than ever due in part to the explosion of the electric car industry.  The raw nickel dug out of the ground here ends up in the lithium batteries of plug-in vehicles manufactured by Tesla, Toyota and other automakers, according to an NBC News review of company filings and shipping records.

With the demand for nickel skyrocketing, the Rio Tuba mine is now on the brink of expanding deeper into the rainforest, adding almost 10 square miles to its current footprint. Local environmentalists fear that it will wipe out the forest’s fragile ecosystem and increase toxic runoff into the rivers that flow past the farmland down below, jeopardizing the crops.

I'm sure there are other mining areas seeing the same growth.  There's no free lunch, somewhere, somehow someone pays.  

The CA exodus is real, so why do we need SB 10?

There are plenty of people who foolishly believe we can build our way out of the so-called "housing crisis".  Dense development hasn't caused lower housing costs anywhere in the world--in fact, many of the densest locations are also the costliest.  And when the other quality of life components and job prospects are as good as the Bay Area, one would have to be extra foolish to try to out-build the demand and further diminish the quality of life.  But Sacramento has foisted SB 9 and SB 10 on us anyway.  Most of them couldn't get through Econ 101, but that is where we are at.

The Burlingame City Council will discuss what to do about SB 10 tomorrow night.  The Staff Report is super thin on SB 10:

SB 10. California Senate Bill (SB) 10 allows (but does not require) local agencies to adopt an ordinance to allow up to 10 dwelling units on any parcel if the parcel is within a transit-rich area or urban infill site. (Ed:  pretty much all of B'game).

The General Plan Update has already provided a range of multiunit residential and mixed use land use districts with a wide range of residential densities, and the Zoning Ordinance Update underway will provide refined development standards for the corresponding zoning districts.

Staff requests direction from the City Council on whether to pursue zoning allowed by SB 10.  Whereas SB 9-compliant zoning is required, municipalities may choose to adopt (or not adopt) SB 10-compliant zoning.

And the report claims that neither SB 9 or SB 10 will have any fiscal impact!  It might be time to double-check the thinking on that since residential property taxes never cover the cost of providing city services--never mind the costs to the school district that is pretty much out of real estate.

But let's look a little deeper courtesy of last Sunday's Mercury News piece with the sub-head "In an area noted for its booming economy, stunning weather and natural beauty, a majority feel their quality of life is in decline".  The Silicon Valley Leadership Group and the Bay Area News Group commissioned a survey by Embold Research to dig into this and it's not pretty.

In a foreboding breakthrough, for the first time since the poll began posing the question in 2018 a solid majority -- 56% -- said they expect to leave the Bay Area in the next few years...a similar majority said the region is headed in the wrong direction.  In the survey of 1,610 registered voters, 71% said the Bay Area's quality of life has declined in the last five years.

Two problems topped the list of increased concern being "serious or very serious"?  Drought (+41%) and Water Supply (+32%).  I'm glad to know I'm not alone on this.  The cost of housing was still the highest overall at 92% but only up 6%.  What if even half of the half of people that are considering leaving do so?  Even if it is only 10% that would be significant.   B'game has a huge amount of new housing already approved, in design and "in-the-dirt".  Maybe we should see how that all plays out?  I hope the council's direction to staff on SB 10 is a brisk, clear "forgetaboutit" so they can get back to ensuring our public safety, water supply, small business vitality, economic health and quality of life.

Gas Power: Throwing the Baby out with the Bath Water

The old saying "Don't throw the baby out with the bath water" seems appropriate for the latest climate edict out of Sacramento courtesy of Assemblyman Marc Berman from the "leafy suburb" of Menlo Park.  Newsom signed AB1346 that outlaws the sale (but not the use) of "off-road" gasoline engines by 2024; or later if the California air police deem it necessary.  The Wall Street Journal offers some helpful points to understanding this latest maneuver

As an Assembly bill analysis notes, “for commercial uses, there is very little market for zero-emission equipment as today’s technology is relatively expensive and requires multiple batteries and/or frequent recharging and replacement” and “may be inadequate even if money is no object, particularly when used in rural areas without convenient access to recharging.”  No market? No matter. Sacramento will dictate a new one by banning the old one.

Banning sales of new small-combustion engines in tools “could have a few unintended consequences,” the analysis added. For instance, it could “lead to prolonged use of older, dirtier engines,” and the “purchase of non-compliant engines out of state for use in California.”  Home Depot stores in Tijuana and Reno no doubt will appreciate the sales boost.

Even better is this hidden gem

You won’t read this in other newspapers, but many Democrats who represent working-class communities are starting to worry that the state’s environmental policies are driving up the cost of living for minority communities.  Notably, about one in five Democrats in the Assembly and a third in the Senate from mostly lower- and middle-income districts abstained or voted against the bill.

"Abstaining" is the classic legislative ploy to avoid responsibility.  No one can say you voted against it.  There are plenty of people, including some long time readers of the Voice, who will applaud the move against gas leaf blowers.  I'm ok with that too; except for the $30 million of taxpayer money that is allocated to subsidizing the shift.  The "baby in the bathwater" is the fact that the bill includes gas-powered generators!  Talk about an absolutely idiotic ban.  Generators are flying off the shelves due to unreliable electricity.  Generac, the largest vendor in the U.S., has an enormous backlog -- its company stock is up more than 400% since January 2020.

I don't own a generator.  I've been meaning to buy one for years, but my move to solar that went quite well now has me planning a battery back-up as Phase 2 of the project.  I'm fortunate that I can afford the project with a little planning.  For most people, an $800-1,300 generator with no installation costs is a reasonable choice--or was.

Oil and gas for them, but not for us?

"Think globally, act locally" is quite the mantra.  Many local officials in B'game and our neighboring towns appear to take it to heart especially regarding saving the climate.  And then there are the contradictions like this from yesterdays WSJ.  Or dare I say the hypocrisy?  In the immortal words of the grandfather in Moonstruck, "I'm confused".  What is going on here?

Perhaps it is time to repeal the ban on natural gas hook-ups?  After all, shouldn't we take our cue from the White House?

ECR: The Renewal Project Goes off the Rails

This is a tough post for me to write.  That's why it has taken me two weeks to write it since the Caltrans virtual meeting about the El Camino Real Roadway Renewal project on July 14th.  I really want to see some things fixed on ECR as noted here, here here and here.  But sometimes the cure can be worse than the illness and from what I heard, this is one of those times.  The virtual meeting had numerous presenters each with their own piece of the project, but the overarching view was obscured by bureaucracy and over-regulation along with some over-engineering.  We heard about this "once in a generation project" which is an understatement--a generation is 20-30 years--and while the project may take half of that to complete (certainly more than the 2 years stated), we will be living with the results for much longer---if it happens.

Caltrans presented three options:  the No Build alternative, the Roadway rehab without undergrounding the utilities and the Roadway rehab with undergrounding.  At least the horrendous "road diet" option reducing regular users to one lane in each direction with a center turn lane and all sorts of other goodies for people who don't actually drive on ECR is "not viable".  The good news ends there, because once the anti-eucalyptus forces start drooling over the two Roadway rehab options, we are headed for a dramatic changes that will take years to recover.  PG&E and the city council want the utilities underground.  I'm still not sure why when you consider the historic, nationally-registered eucalyptus grove will be a casualty of that move.  The renderings of what a denuded ECR would look like were all "20 years post-build" and even after 20 years still looked like a sad shell of the canopy we have now.  One astute questioner noted that they drive south on ECR every weekday morning and there are several months of the year when the sun is directly in the eyes of drivers.  Only the towering eucs make for a partial sun shield that surely makes for safer driving and pedestrian crossings.  Been there, experienced that.  And it's not just sun blindness--remember this incident?

Given how long it took to take out just one eucalyptus at Howard Ave. a couple years ago (about a week), we could be faced with a year or more of horrific traffic closures as there are 390 of them in the tree rows.  The claim is that only 3% of them are in "good condition".  And yet they go on year after year with minimal incidents.  It seems like selective replacement as we have been doing is better than a wholesale removal and replacement with 7 to 14' trees.

As for the rough sidewalks pushed up by tree roots, one of the Caltrans personnel finally said what I have been thinking for years-- why not just "bridge over slightly raised roots".  It is apparently allowed and would work in the places that are not too bad.  Throw in some serious digging at the 4 or 5 known flooding areas to clear roots and debris and rebuild the drains and you have what I would call a "Light Build alternative".  Public comment can be made at www.ElCaminoRealProject.com until next Monday, August 2nd.  I'm not sure it will do much good at this point, but a light build is all we need.

My Gubernatorial Pipe Dream

Today was the last day to file papers to replace Gavin Newsom as governor of California.  I did not get my paperwork in as planned.  Ever since Arnold bested a field of 135 candidates to replace Gray Davis in 2003, I have regretted not throwing my hat in the ring.  But I was busy back then.  What could be more fun than a "gadfly" run at the governor's mansion?  More importantly, for $4,200 anyone could have their candidate's statement printed in the voter guide and mailed to all 20.9 million registered voters in the state.  That is a bargain!

I didn't get around to filing today, but I did write my candidate's statement.  Here you go:

Day 1:  I will kill the High-speed rail project saving California taxpayers $100+ billion.  Newsom knows it is the right thing to do, but cannot buck Big Labor.

Day 2:  I will redirect all available infrastructure funding to our water systems and new storage.  We cannot address housing until we have sufficient water security for the population and businesses that are already here.  Our best defense against climate change is a lot more trees that need water.

Day 3:  I will quadruple our wildfire firefighting capabilities by redirecting much of our $105 billion budget surplus to personnel and equipment.  There is no excuse for being surprised 5 years in a row and we need those trees, not the pollution from the wildfires.  It's a no-brainer.

Day 4:  I will sign an executive order guaranteeing Californians easy, cost-effective access to all sources of energy including natural gas, gas for cars, propane and nuclear power without limitation.  Existing local restrictions will be invalidated, and the existing solar credits and net metering will continue.

Day 5:  I will clear the way for single-family residential zoning to stay single-family residential zoning.  These neighborhoods are the backbone of our communities and need to be safeguarded.  There is plenty of R2 and R3 zoning to meet our near term housing needs.

Day 6:  I will issue a series of RFPs to upgrade the primitive computer systems at the EDD, the DMV, the court system and the voter registration system while recouping the $30+ billion of EDD fraud that Newsom seems to have forgotten about.

Day 7:  I will issue an executive order that reinforces cities’ and town’s rights to have at-large city council and school board elections when they have less than 100,000 residents.  Postage stamp-sized governance is not good governance.

Then I will have dinner at the French Laundry. I will pay for my own dinner and no lobbyists will be invited.  Breakfast at Alana's the next morning and then back to work.  There is plenty more to be done.  When you read that voter's guide before September 14, you know what to look for!  I appreciate the people who previewed my agenda and offered to host a coffee for me.  That and $30 million would have done the trick :-)

Koonin - Part 1 "Unsettled" is Required Reading

I've just finished reading the most important climate change book available today.  Steven Koonin's Unsettled addresses "what climate science tells us, what it doesn't, and why it matters".  Koonin was a professor at CalTech for 30 years, provost for 10 of those years, chief scientist at BP focused on renewable energy technologies, Undersecretary for Science at the Department of Energy in the Obama Administration and is now a professor at NYU.

His book uses available data from many government and academic sources and applies his cross-functional knowledge in physics, computer modelling, statistics, climate science, etc to understand what the data tells us--and more importantly, what it doesn't tell us.  Over 14 chapters, his analysis is devastating to "The Science" that our politicians and climate activists claim is all settled.  By eliminating the cherry picking of data that occurs via selecting narrow windows of time or geography, adding the statistical confidence intervals to measurements that get headlines and noting the counterbalancing effects of some forms of emissions Koonin shows that the media (and some unscrupulous academics and government agencies) are misleading the public.

The book is technical as it must be, but he has written it for the general public so it's very readable if you have some basic knowledge of chemistry, physics and math--mostly statistics.  I've listed this post as Part 1 because I plan to serialize some parts of the book.  Here in B'game we have banned natural gas in new construction, begun worrying about sea level rise, promoted electric cars and issued warnings about all sorts of natural disasters supposedly related to climate change.  Before we get too far into these restrictions and expenses wouldn't it be good to know more about how human activity is really affecting the climate.

Going Solar: And hoping it ends up worth it

Some so-called environmentalists talk the talk, but when it comes to walking the walk they are mostly hot air.  I fall into the category of doing what you can as it makes practical sense.  I've been gauging the practicality of going to rooftop solar on my house for a couple of years and finally decided to get an expert opinion to strengthen the analysis.  By word of mouth, I learned about local Burlingame solar guy Steve Pariani.  He's really local; born and raised here and lives in town.  His company is Solar Pro Energy Systems.  After giving him my electricity usage and having him use satellite imagery to assess my roof's solar capacity, it appears to be a reasonable investment--not great like buying some Reddit-hyped stock, but OK.  Unless the "equity police" in Sacramento and the monopoly utilities misguidedly screw things up.

I have a clear southern exposure--very few trees on that side--and a decent amount of square footage.  There is room for 25 panels that would generate 8.5 KW for a one-year total of 12,871 kWh--the equivalent of driving 10,000 fewer miles per year!  As with any big investment--and this is definitely a big one--there are risks.  Steve has walked me through the technology and I don't find that to be much of a risk.  But with hacks like Assemblywoman Lorena Gonzalez of San Diego pushing bills like AB 1139 to make the investment LESS attractive, you never know.  You would think with all of the growing pains on the California grid and the pressure to move to even more electricity usage (banning natural gas, EVs, etc) nobody would mind some Californians putting up major capital investments to generate additional juice, but you would be wrong.  Here is one example that Calmatters published.  AB 1139 died last week at the deadline, but you can bet the woman behind the idea to make Uber and Lyft drivers full-time employees (which many of them didn't even want) will be back next session.  The tougher battle may be with the CPUC.  As the California Solar & Storage Association (CALSSA) writes about the threat to Net Energy Metering

Whether we are talking AB 1139 or the IOU NEM-3 proposals, the utilities are trying to outright kill rooftop solar and storage in California, protect their monopoly, and grab more profits for themselves. It doesn’t matter the forum; the impact of the attack are the same: kill rooftop solar in the country's number one market.
 
The CPUC NEM fight is going to be harder to win politically for several reasons. First, it takes place at a little-known state agency with limited opportunity for public engagement. Second, there are only five decision makers at the CPUC, all political appointees, and, unlike in the state legislature, none have stepped forward (yet) to champion distributed generation. And third, if the utilities "own" the legislature, getting the Speaker, the Chair of Energy Committee, and the Chair of Appropriations Committee to back AB 1139, just think of how much they have captured the CPUC.

I'm going for it and hoping the sun shines brightly and the Legislature and/or the CPUC don't screw it up.  Common sense is in short supply these days which makes my decision much more of a gamble than I would prefer.  So much for real environmentalism.  Here's local small businessman Steve Pariani.