Innovative Sustainability Approach

Link to the Article: http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/blogs/green/detail?entry_id=59438

Article Title: Paying for clean energy just got easier

Article Summary: The city of San Francisco has created a new program called GreenFinanceSF. It is a financing program that breaks the cost barrier for the water-savings, energy efficiency, and renewable energy projects. The city pays for the upgrade, and you pay off the loan over 20 years through property taxes.

Article Analysis: According to the Energy Information Administration every day, the average American uses about as much energy as is stored in seven gallons of gasoline. Together, homes and building consume more than a third of the energy used in the United States today. Any place where people live is considered a residential building. Commercial buildings include offices, stores, hospitals, restaurants, and schools. Residential and commercial buildings are grouped together because they use energy in the same ways—for heating and cooling, lighting, heating water, and operating appliances.
Almost half of San Francisco’s greenhouse gas emissions come from energy usage in local buildings. At the same time, excessive water usage in buildings strains California’s water resources. Currently, the largest constraint to San Francisco’s buildings becoming more efficient in their use of energy and water is the large up-front cost of these improvements. In response to this challenge, San Francisco has developed an accessible financing program that residential and commercial property owners can use to finance sustainable building improvements. This effort coincides with efforts across California and the United States to establish similar financing programs.
The high up-front cost of energy and water conservation improvements is a barrier that prevents San Francisco homes and buildings from becoming more efficient.
GreenFinanceSF breaks this barrier for private property owners by providing financing to install energy efficiency, renewable energy and water conservation measures. Participants repay the up-front financing of the projects over a period up to 20 years through an annual special tax on their property tax bills.
GreenFinanceSF is available for interested home and business owners to finance privately-owned energy efficiency, renewable energy and water conservation improvements. The repayment obligation is attached to the property, rather than the individual, and is paid back through property taxes over the life of the financing.
GreenFinanceSF is an example of a global problem being solved at a local level. According to Wheeler, 2004, long-term planners need to assess how near-term actions can lead to long-term goals. A long-term perspective also means being able to look at small, incremental changes, in the present and to see how they can interrelate and reinforce one another to build a more sustainable society in the future. GreenFinance SF is a great example of using a small, incremental change which could have a potentially huge payoff (if the program is successful) in the future for the City of San Francisco.

One of the reasons this program is successful and implementable in San Francisco, is because sustainability is a huge ticket item on the City’s agenda. They have made a commitment to decrease their energy consumption and the public generally supports this decision. This program may be hard to implement on a national level, because a lot of the voters and citizens are not necessarily on board with green energy policies. The economy and job creation has taken a forefront to many other policy issues.

If these policies were to be implemented at a national level, equity concerns could arise. Some areas (small towns) may not have the technology to implement this policy. For example, solar panels are a fairly new (mainstream) technology that not a lot of persons outside a large city have the knowledge to install. It would be hard to garner support from those persons living in these smaller communities.

I think it would have improved environmental quality if policy makers had tried to implement this issue at the national level because it would help the United States conserve energy and not be so dependent on non-renewable resources. Perhaps if this program is successful in San Francisco, the federal government could adopt such initiatives. In order to get people on board with these policies at a national level, the government will have to prove (by measurable results) that the cost is worth it and that the U.S. as a whole is becoming “greener”.