Sustainable Development Focus
THE SAN DIEGO UNION-TRIBUNE - Jul 22 The San Diego County Board of Supervisors is scheduled to vote Wednesday on the first batch of seven new suburban housing projects, which would generate enough greenhouse gases to cancel out all of county’s envisioned efforts, under its climate action plan, to reign in transportation emissions by mid-century. The county has said it will allow developers to purchase offsets to account for roughly 77 percent of all the potential greenhouse gases attributed to the nearly 10,000 new units. The rest of the emissions would be addressed through onsite efforts, such as solar panels and electric car charging ports. Such credits would be bought through carbon registries and could represent projects located anywhere in the world. The Sierra Club has filed a lawsuit challenging the use of the offsets, arguing that the strategy undermines the county’s pledge to limit emissions within its jurisdiction.
COMMERCIAL PROPERTY EXECUTIVE - Jul 18 As the push for electrification of commercial buildings slowly picks up steam, forward-thinking owners are leading the way. Sara Neff, senior vice president of sustainability at Kilroy Realty Corp., reports that the Los Angeles-based REIT “is dipping our toe in the water” and developing an all-electric mixed-use property in San Diego. Kilroy’s 2100 Kettner, a 174,380-square-foot, Class A office project aiming for LEED Platinum certification, will feature an all-electric core and shell and a Variable Refrigerant Volume HVAC system, as well as a solar array to reduce carbon emissions. A new Rocky Mountain Institute report estimates that using electricity rather than fossil fuels to heat homes and commercial buildings would cut carbon emissions in the U.S. by 10 percent.
SAN FRANCISCO CHRONICLE - Jul 24 In an effort to encourage companies and their employees to contribute to the local economy, Supervisors Ahsha Safaí and Aaron Peskin are co-sponsoring an ordinance that would ban “employee cafeterias” from new office buildings in the city. This comes as local retailers, particularly those downtown, complain of a drop in business as more companies offer their workers meals in private corporate cafeterias, Safaí said. The supervisors’ proposal would put the city at odds with the tech industry, which largely views free food as an essential perk to lure talent. This ordinance wouldn’t apply retroactively to companies that now have cafeterias, but instead to new construction — such as the roughly 7 million square feet of new office space proposed under the Central SoMa Plan that will soon go before the Board of Supervisors.
BLOOMBERG - Jul 12 The first electric, double-decker bus to be ordered by a public transit agency in the U.S. is headed for the Los Angeles area. The vehicle, powered by battery technology from Proterra Inc. and manufactured by the U.K.-based bus builder Alexander Dennis, will join Foothill Transit’s fleet next year. The companies said the bus marks North America’s first electric, double-decker bus order for a public transit agency. The order brings a global shift toward battery-powered buses to California’s San Gabriel and Pomona Valleys, where Foothill operates routes. Almost half of municipal buses globally will be electric in 2025, based on Bloomberg NEF forecasts.
PALO ALTO ONLINE - Jul 24 The simmering community debate over how much office space Palo Alto should accommodate is set to flare up again this Wednesday night, when the city's Planning and Transportation Commission will consider abolishing a policy that limits new non-residential development downtown. The proposal to scrap the cap was prompted by the City Council's 5-4 vote in January 2017 to amend the city's policies for office growth as part of the city's Comprehensive Plan update, which was completed in November of that year. Palo Alto already has a citywide limit of 1.7 million new square feet of office and research-and-development growth. A citizen initiative to reduce that limit to 850,000 square feet will be appearing on the November ballot.
PASADENA NOW - Jul 24 Pasadena is exploring the idea of converting hotels and motels into affordable housing for low-income residents. The city’s Department of Planning and Community Development will present the concept and research about how it might work to the Planning Commission this Wednesday evening. Besides benefiting low-income renters, allowing the conversion of older hotels and motels into refurbished affordable housing could offer an incentive for their owners to sell the properties to housing developers, according to Department of Planning documents.
CURBED - Jul 17 A new $44 million Green City program funded by Electrify America seeks to radically upgrade Sacramento’s electric vehicle infrastructure—adding hundreds of cars, charging stations, and buses—to see if building a support network for more sustainable transit can be replicated in other cities. The plan will begin rolling out this summer. The Sacramento plan comes as cities and states are increasingly taking the lead on promoting electric vehicles, while the federal government backtracks on cleaner emissions standards. This Green City program is one facet of Electrify America, the program that emerged out of Volkswagen’s emissions-cheating scandal, which will spend $2 billion on supporting electric vehicle adoption.
