Environment & Sustainability TAG: Keeping the Power: On Energy Resiliency in San Mateo County
Thursday, April 28, 2:30 - 4:00 pm, Slides, Event Recording English and Spanish
MEETING RECAP
On April 28, we held our Environment & Sustainability event, "Keeping the Power On: Energy Resiliency in San Mateo County," which took place at the Chan Zuckerberg Initiative Community Space. The discussion focused on the issues of electrification and resilience of the power grid, especially for the Coastside community, and how different counties in the Bay Area approach electrification from an equitable standpoint. State Senator Josh Becker presented the state's efforts to reach the get-to-zero emissions goal by 2045. Dr. Liang Min, Managing Director at Stanford's Bits and Watts Initiative, discussed the vulnerabilities of our grid system infrastructures and found inequities in how to address the aging infrastructure.
The conversation started with a presentation by Irma Rodriguez Mitton, the Executive Director at South Coast Sustainable and a Pescadero resident. She discussed how the Coastside community dealt with recent blackouts and power grid vulnerabilities and how these issues impact the confidence of rural communities in electrifying their homes and businesses. Cristina Crespo Montañés, a research affiliate at UC Berkeley Energy Resource Group, continued the discussion by presenting research on the perspectives of residents in Alameda County on the role of reliability in energy users’ perspectives on residential electrification. Montañés discovered that even those who had not experienced blackouts were fearful of future power loss and had taken precautionary measures to prepare for them.
The conversation then turned to how California's unreliable grid is affecting its ability to meet mitigation objectives. The state currently relies on an increasingly unreliable grid to meet its decarbonization goals while promoting widespread electrification of energy demand. Additionally, Californians already pay among the highest prices in the nation for electricity, and further increases in electricity bills, required upgrades to aging distribution grids, and fear of more frequent outages due to extreme weather conditions can disincentivize households from increasing their electricity dependence.
Montañés also discussed how the unevenness of both services needed for energy transitions and the spatial distribution of disconnections could divide space between those in lightly populated areas versus urban cores. She pointed out that this divide can exacerbate air pollution and hinder climate mitigation strategies when users decide to purchase fossil fuel generation instead of relying on the grid. Montañés concluded with the need to center the user and unpack user experiences with and perceptions of networked energy infrastructures. Changing energy practices will impact how the home, as a social space, is being used and made meaningful. Not recognizing the role that psychological effects of unreliability events (or the fear thereof) play on households’ attitudes to energy transitions is risky.
State Senator Josh Becker shared his legislative efforts to work towards the goal of decreasing greenhouse gas emissions. The Senator presented a target of 40% below 1990 levels by 2030 and net-zero (with an 85% reduction) by 2045. Faster declines are needed to hit these targets, and the progress to date has mainly come from decarbonizing electricity. California has been making legislative efforts to promote electrification and grid resiliency. Some of the key measures that Senator Becker is involved in include SB 49, which provides tax incentives for the construction of solar canopies over large parking lots; SB 410, which improves the response time of electrical utilities in providing new or upgraded service to customers to ease building electrification switches and electric vehicle infrastructure buildout; SB 420, which streamlines the transmission approval process to improve California's reliability and clean energy; and SB 755, which creates a one-stop-shop application at the CEC for all building electrification, low-income energy support, and energy efficiency programs. Other efforts include CARB's 5-year Scoping Plan, which aims to achieve 100% residential and commercial appliance sales by 2035 and 2045, respectively, and CAEATFA's financing program for electrification and decarbonization upgrades. These efforts are part of California's broader goal of promoting clean electricity as the basis for everything else.
In his presentation, Dr. Liang Min highlighted that climate change is causing extreme events, with 7,348 such events occurring between 2000-2019, affecting 4 billion people and causing 1.2 million deaths and $3 trillion in losses. He also noted that there has been an 83% increase in climate-related events in 2000-2019 compared to 1980-1999 and that wildfires pose a great threat to grid reliability. The threats and vulnerabilities vary by region and socioeconomic groups, highlighting the need for awareness of grid vulnerability and evidence-informed policymaking. Dr. Min demonstrated multiple disparities for low-income communities, including a lower fraction of buried underground lines and more aged transformers. Dr. Min proposed two power line burying models, namely general cost sharing and local cost sharing, and suggested that coordinating lines that need to be underground and providing incentives to homeowners to go solar can make underground wiring costs far less expensive.
Overall, the discussion at the event revealed the challenges and complexities of transitioning to a clean and reliable power grid. The speakers emphasized the need to center the user and the social and psychological impacts of energy transitions on households. To ensure that San Mateo residents have access to reliable electricity, it's essential to prioritize grid resiliency and address issues like the unevenness of services needed for energy transitions and the spatial distribution of disconnections that could divide space between urban and rural communities. By centering user experiences and perceptions of networked energy infrastructures, we can ensure that changes in energy practices are inclusive and equitable and avoid a vicious cycle of decreased expectations for electric service and grid defection. Legislative efforts towards promoting clean electricity, like tax incentives for the construction of solar canopies over large parking lots and improvements to electrical utilities' response time, are promising steps towards achieving a more reliable grid. San Mateo residents must take an active role in advocating for and participating in efforts to increase grid resiliency to ensure that their homes and businesses have access to reliable and affordable electricity.
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