HomeMy WebLinkAbout7/19/2022 Item 6d, Hatcher
July 19, 2022
Mayor Stewart
SLO City Council
emailcouncil@slocity.org
990 Palm Street
San Luis Obispo, CA 93401
Re: Comments for 7-19-2022 City Council Agenda Item # 6.d
Dear Mayor Stewart and SLO City Council:
We are not in favor of an all-electric mandate at this time. We are not saying don’t do it at all. If that is
the wave of the future, we will absolutely ride it.
We heard your “if not now, then when?” argument. The most logical, sensible “when” is after the grid
updates are complete. When the grid can handle it. Why would we normalize brownouts and blackouts
that cause their own health and safety hazards? Taxing the grid affects everyone using it.
How much extra juice will your decision require from the grid? You ban natural gas because of health
and safety concerns. This jeopardizes grid use for our north county neighbors with life-threatening heat
indices, needs for AC and PPE. It forces use of fuel-powered generators releasing greater emissions than
gas.
If the grid could handle the current demand, we would not face blackouts and brownouts, not see
POTUS, DOE, Governor Newsom, and our Legislature all trying to keep Diablo Open to salvage the
whopping 10% of California’s electricity it produces.
Outages demand higher electricity prices for grid updates, which directly corelates with high Electric
prices and the implementation of some of America’s most-aggressive, stringent renewable-energy
mandates. Your decisions are not made in a vacuum. They have intended and unintended
consequences, especially on the poor and middle class. Be part of the solution, not the problem.
Do Renewable Portfolio Standards Deliver? That 2019 study by academics Greenstone and Nath at the
University of Chicago found that renewable-energy mandates lead to ““substantial increases in
electricity prices” I know this does not fit neatly into your climate change agenda, but all the blue text is
hyperlinked to studies referenced for your review.
The report, by Michael Greenstone and Ishan Nath, states renewables “raise electricity prices more than
previously thought” due to “hidden costs that have typically been ignored.” They also found that the
mandates “come at a high cost to consumers and are inefficient in reducing carbon emissions.”
Greenstone and Nath found “the intermittent nature of renewables means that back-up capacity must
be added” and that “by mandating an increase in renewable power, baseload generation is prematurely
displaced, and some of the cost is passed to consumers.” Renewable-energy mandates lead to lead to
“substantial increases in electricity prices that mirror the program’s increasing stringency over time.”
SLO is already in the top five most expensive cities in the country, please do not continue to implement
further anti-poor and anti-working class policies. A 2021 report by the Public Policy Institute of California
stats more than one-third of Californians are living in or near poverty. CA has the largest Latino
population in America, around 15 million. That’s roughly 40 percent of the state’s population but the
PPIC report also states they represent 52 percent of poor Californians.
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Jennifer Hernandez of theLatino leaders group The Two Hundred sued CA over its climate, housing, and
transportation policies. Their250-page civil rights lawsuitclaims“Entrenched special interest groupsand
environmentalists, block meaningful housing policy reforms” and The state’s housing crisis is “deepening
an already severe civil rights crisis.”
Many of the regulations they and we fight were never approved by the state legislature. Appointed
Boards like the Air Resources, Forestry, Water Quality, bypass the legislative process to create rigid rules
in silos that become mandates.
Thank you for hearing our thoughts.
Lindy Hatcher,
L indy H atcher
Executive Director
HBACC
LHatcher@hbacc.org