Why SPUR Spurns Real Action on Climate Change
and the limits of corporate-funded think tanks
Spoiler alert: it’s because they’re too dependent on PG&E funding, just like Mayor Ed Lee!
Meet SPUR
San Francisco Planning and Urban Research is a well-funded nonprofit that “promotes good planning and good government in the San Francisco Bay Area.” Their beautiful, modern office downtown holds a bunch of really smart, well meaning people. They research things like urban planning, transportation, and the environment, host thought-provoking forums on topics of the day, give out good-government and civic awards, and they publish an impeccably researched voter guide. (Hey, just like us!) Lots of San Francisco urbanists and smart-growth advocates cite SPUR in debates about housing, and they usually get puzzled and/or offended when progressives are skeptical of SPUR.
SPUR Takes on Climate Change
Gabe Metcalf, SPUR’s Executive Director, just wrote a persuasive and eloquent article about the rapidly approaching catastrophe of climate change and how the Bay Area can lead the way in minimizing the carnage. It follows a script similar to those think pieces on the SF housing crisis that are all the rage these days: it clearly presents the relevant facts, provides interesting historical context, personalizes it with honest and believable passion, and builds to a call to action for a dauntingly ambitious, but realistic long-term solution. Metcalf writes:
It is possible to generate the vast majority of the region’s energy and transportation needs with renewable energy: wind, water and solar. It will take time, policy change and significant resources, but it is a goal worth aiming for.
And that’s where he loses us. Because here’s the thing: we don’t need time and significant resources to initiate a dramatic shift to 100% renewable energy in San Francisco!
We have a program all teed up and ready to go to switch from PG&E’s dirty electricity to 100% clean power. It there was the political will to make it happen, it could be up and running by the end of the year. It’s called CleanPowerSF. Metcalf must know that, but he didn’t mention it. Why not?
SPUR, Let Us Introduce You to CleanPowerSF
Last August, after a decade of work, the City was ready to launch CleanPowerSF, a Community Choice Aggregation program, that would buy 100% renewable electricity on the wholesale market and deliver it to San Franciscans over PG&E’s existing power lines. Those of us who are willing to pay a few bucks more a month could help make San Francisco a climate leader.
San Francisco’s Climate Action Strategy says “moving to 100% renewable electricity is the single biggest step the City can take to reduce GHG emissions.” Here is Ed Harrington (former head of the Public Utilities Commission and City Controller) saying that more eloquently:
Last year, when a supermajority vote of the Board of Supervisors prevented Mayor Ed Lee from vetoing CleanPowerSF, it seemed like the years of work from Tom Ammiano, Mark Leno, Ross Mirkarimi, David Campos, John Avalos, and countless advocates was finally going to pay off in real action to address climate change.
But launching the program depended on one final administrative approval of the maximum rate that CleanPowerSF could charge from the San Francisco Public Utilities Commission, and the PUC Commissioners are all appointed by the Mayor, who adamantly opposes CleanPowerSF. By a 3-2 vote, the PUC essentially shut the program down, despite the fact that it’s already a state-certified CCA approved and funded by the Board of Supervisors and the California Public Utilities Commission.
The City Charter gives the PUC broad power over electricity service in the City. So three unelected appointees have essentially been able to thwart the will of a supermajority of the City’s legislative body and stopped any real progress on renewable power in San Francisco. ☹
What Do SPUR and Ed Lee Have in Common?
Why, they’re both funded by PG&E, of course! Ed Lee infamously called PG&E “a great company that gets it” two days after the utility was found to be at fault for the San Bruno pipeline explosion. PG&E has been one of the major funders of the intertwined Willie Brown-Gavin Newsom-Ed Lee administrations—mainly through unrestricted contributions to PACs run by groups like the Chamber of Commerce, the Building Owners and Management Association, and euphemistically named groups like the “Committee on Jobs.” They also sprinkle money around to lots of nonprofits . . . including SPUR!
Look at the flyer for any of SPUR’s fancy parties or award ceremonies, and you’ll see PG&E listed prominently. A quick look at SPUR’s annual report shows PG&E on the short list of big-money contributors:
And PG&E hates CleanPowerSF because it would break their monopoly on electricity service in San Francisco and force them to get serious about renewable energy.
PG&E Won’t Let SPUR or Ed Lee Support Renewable Electricity
Which leads us back to Metcalf’s article, The Great Dithering. That’s the name Metcalf suggests for our current period of human history, “in which humanity failed to act rapidly or decisively enough to avert catastrophic climate change.” But Gabe, you’re dithering! Your article concludes with saying we need to build high-speed rail and transform the Bay Area into walkable, transit-oriented neighborhoods, which of course we do. But while we’re working on those ambitious, long-term plans, we could launch 100% renewable electricity with CleanPowerSF this year!
But odds are we won’t. Because too many of our politicians and our think-tanks are beholden to corporate interests. All of our local environmental groups still support CleanPowerSF. Eight of the eleven members of the Board of Supervisors support it and are continuing to develop it. But Ed Lee is trying to erase CleanPowerSF from the books.
This week’s Bay Guardian shows how the Mayor’s office forced the Department of the Environment to delete CleanPowerSF from the City’s Climate Action Strategy. And SPUR, who is supposedly committed to combating climate change has their head in the sand on the single biggest action San Francisco can take to reduce our greenhouse gas emissions. And that sucks.
SIDENOTE: What This Says About SPUR
The League of Pissed Off Voters has a range of opinions about SPUR. We all agree—and even Metcalf agrees—that SPUR has a shameful history. They were originally called San Francisco Planning and Urban Renewal when they were founded by the City’s largest corporations as a faux-community group to push through redevelopment of the South of Market and Fillmore. (Chester Hartman’s City for Sale is the definitive history of this period and should be required reading for anyone interested in San Francisco politics.)
Some of us continue to dismiss SPUR outright as corporate mouthpieces. Some of us see them as now having mostly good intentions, but still being limited by their corporate funders. This 2007 Bay Guardian article captures SPUR’s identity crisis (although most of the progressives quoted in the article no longer work at SPUR).
Metcalf deserves credit for standing up for rent control, public housing, and more affordable housing. At the same time, we’re still wary of SPUR’s housing policy when most of their big funders are major players in the development industry. SPUR’s Ocean Beach Master Plan is an example of how they can do great work on areas that don’t conflict with their funders.
But on climate change, SPUR should be ashamed for helping to suppress CleanPowerSF: the single biggest action San Francisco can take to address climate change.
What Can We Do About It?
Raise hell! Join us and environmental, transit and recycling activists in protesting the Mayor’s corporate-sponsored Earth Day Breakfast on Tuesday April 22nd from 8-9 a.m. Or you can call or email the Mayor and tell him to either support CleanPowerSF or offer an alternative route to 100% renewable electricity.
You can contact SPUR and ask them to quit pontificating about climate change and take real, local action by supporting CleanPowerSF. And if you go to SPUR’s lunchtime forums or other events, ask them about it!
As we’ve said, the folks at SPUR are really smart and well meaning. But until they’re willing to disagree with their corporate sponsors, they’ll continue to be part of the problem.
