HomeMy WebLinkAbout6/1/2017 Item 1, Meyer-Veium
San Luis Obispo City Council (emailcouncil@slocity.org) 6-1-17
RE BUDGET SETTING PROCESS/ Sustainability, CCE, Clean energy future
From Eric Veium and Eric Meyer
Council,
In light of the news that President Trump has just pulled our nation out of the Paris
Climate Agreement we feel the need to double down on our local community’s
desire for a more sustainable future. San Luis Obispo residents care strongly about
this subject and have consistently shown a desire to lead. We thus have 2 asks for
your consideration in the budget
1- San Luis Obispo residents have shown strong interest in the creation of a locally
controlled Community Choice Energy (CCE) Program. At this time the City budget
has allocated $25,000 toward implementation of CCE. That 25 K is going towards
one of several possible alternatives. We would suggest that our community needs
to understand the other alternatives also… before committing to any.
A CCE energy program will quickly repay any funds utilized to create it. This is
shown time and again in all the CCE programs developed around the state to date. It
is also shown by the enthusiastic willingness of banks to fund CCE programs
development.
In order to better investigate all possible CCE alternatives we request that the
$25,000 implementation funds amount be raised to $100,000 with the intent being
to get us through the feasibility study phase with the flexibility and resources to
allow us to choose which path (out of many alternatives… not just the one we are
currently following) is best .
2- Clean energy programs have the potential to create great economic benefits to
SLO city residents. With the closure of Diablo Canyon our community needs to step
up it’s job creation and capital creation in the energy sector in order to replace that
lost revenue and those lost jobs. We believe that there are tremendous small scale
and medium scale local opportunities in the clean electricity generation and storage
industries which, when combined with building retrofits, vehicle electrification and
other renewable energy can really add jobs and dollars to our local economy in
ways not yet understood… all while making SLO a more energy efficient and lower
carbon community. So we ask that you set aside $50,000 to study the economic
benefits that a focus on clean energy can have on our community.
Thank you, Eric Meyer, Eric Veium