■ Panel frustrated by lack of progress in reducing city emissions
Benicia Community Sustainability Commission expressed frustration Monday night that the city hasn’t come closer to reaching its greenhouse gas emission goals.
Members’ disappointment began early in the meeting, when Economic Development Manager Mario Giuliani described progress of the Business Resource Incentive Program (BRIP), designed to reduce water and power consumption as well as waste production at Benicia Industrial Park, one of the city’s larger generators of greenhouse gases.
The city awarded BRIP $1.1 million in Valero-Good Neighbor Steering Committee Settlement Agreement money through the commission’s grant program, increased the amount the commission had recommended be allocated to the program.
Giuliani had hoped the commission would welcome the news that the program had won its third and most prestigious award, the Helen Putnam Award of Excellence. He called the program a “marriage of economic development and sustainability, and said the program was reducing greenhouse gas emissions by 192 metric tons a year through evaluations of commercial and industrial operations and providing grants and loans to pay for improvements to accomplish program goals.
But Commissioner Bruce Barrow and Chairperson Constance Beutel were unhappy that the program’s partner, Carbon Lighthouse, also had bought 258 metric ton credits, and that the next phase of the program wouldn’t produce more dramatic results.
Later in the meeting, Beutel said, “BRIP has not delivered.” She praised the WattzOn program that performed similar evaluations of residences, gave homeowners lists of improvements they could make, and trained Benicia High School students as interns as they helped conduct those tests.
Ex-officio member Marilyn Bardet challenged a program that provided money to businesses who could make the environmentally friendly changes and pick up the costs on their own, “if they had that ethic.”
Beutel further expressed the commission’s frustration through her draft of the panel’s annual report to the City Council.
“It starts with a sobering assessment,” she said.
She began with the 2010 emissions report results, subtracted the 2020 emission reduction goals and divided that number by seven to explain what Benicia needs to accomplish to get to those goals by the end of the decade.
The city and its residents and companies must quit producing more than 29,000 metric tons of carbon dioxide every year, she wrote.
Bardet wondered why the city and residents have managed to reduce water consumption by more than 20 percent since the drought was declared earlier this year, but have been unable to meet pollution reduction goals.
“Why do we have a problem?” she asked.
Barrow told her, “Water is something you see,” and it’s a substance a person can control by the turn of a spigot or faucet. “With greenhouse gas, you can’t do that.”
Ex-officio member Joe Muehlbauer agreed with Barrow’s assessment about water. “It’s tangible. It’s accountable.”
“We’re dealing with a Gaia system,” Beutel answered.
Beutel’s draft has recommended the city join Marin Clean Energy, a community choice aggregate electricity supplier that puts electricity from clean sources into the utility grid.
Her report recommended funding of more solar projects and incentives for 100 alternative-vehicle purchases and fast chargers for electric cars.
She also suggested Benicia invest in water capture and become more energy self-sufficient; enforce building and remodeling laws to encourage water and power conservation; lure clean businesses to Benicia; identify available land for food production; and, as the sea level rises along the city’s coastline, move to higher ground.
She said she hoped that unlike with other reports, which the Council has accepted after praise from Mayor Elizabeth Patterson, this time the commission might seek the Council’s guidance about the next steps the panel should take.
But staff members at the table discouraged asking specific questions, and Management Analyst Gina Eleccion said the Council is developing a template it expects its advisory panels to follow so those annual reports are consistent.
On another note, Beutel showed the commission a new template of her own that she said the commission could use to record and categorize its measurements of emissions reductions and other conservation efforts.
She also showed the panel the beginning of her history of the commission’s accomplishments.
The panel also heard reports from agencies to which it had awarded grants, and agreed to ask the Council to let DST Controls keep its two-year, $25,000 grant for an in-conduit micro-hydro generation feasibility study but provide an update early next year.
The study depends on water, and company President Read Hayward said the drought has prevented DST from accomplishing that work.
The commission also recommended the Council approve keeping Alex Porteshawver as its climate action plan coordinator, though she is leaving the actual contractor, Sonoma State University, for a position with PMC, which has an Oakland office.
Porteshawver said she has arranged to have the city’s contract transferred from Sonoma State to PMC, once she receives Council approval.
“PMC has a long-time relationship with the city,” Eleccion told the commission. “This is a great career move.”