Climate Change - What’s the point of electrification if our Grid is still carbon-powered?

“Pick Peter if you believe climate incentives are more powerful than mandates” was in my candidate statement. I supported Peninsula Clean Energy (a renewable electricity purchasing agency that supplies electricity in our county through our utility) and EV charging stations required in multi-family residential and commercial zoning in Menlo Park.

However, many Peninsula cities are banning natural gas appliances in new homes. So if you change your furnace, water heater, and stove to electrical, we would add demand to the grid when the problem is our state still uses natural gas power plants for 40% of our electricity generation. It took months to find the rebates eligible on and to find a heat-pump water heater that didn’t require an expensive electrical panel upgrade.

Incentivize transition of cars and buses to EVs over the next decade, and prioritize renewable energy sources such as offshore windmills and solar, to replace gas in our power grid. My classmate is building offshore wind farms - a very promising cost-effective source of renewable energy. We also need to reforest for carbon capture and geothermal generation. And yes, keep nuclear power plants open, because someday we will harness nuclear fusion power and will need that power plant expertise.

Cyclists are opposed to expanding our freeways to address congestion, as that simply allows more people to drive to work. But as we migrate to EVs, isn’t that a good thing? 30% of car sales in CA are EVs. I haven’t replaced my 2003 car yet, as I’m waiting for solid state batteries that have a range over 500 miles and charge in 15 minutes. But by 2030, I should be able to buy an EV with solid state batteries. By then, shuttle buses will also be EV.

I believe in mass transit, as I used the subway nearly evey day when I worked in New York. In fact, I got out of the subway under the World Trade Center to commute to my office near Wall Street.

Yet mass transit on the Peninsula is limited - it’s based on a single rail line from San Francisco to San Jose that’s 160 years old. It’s only now converting from diesel locomotives to electrical. It’s taken over 2 decades to fund and implement electrification which promises more frequent service. Yet there’s no west-east connection linking Caltrain on the Peninsula with BART in the East Bay. Many employees on the Peninsula live in the East Bay. I’ve been a fan of Dumbarton Rail which would connect Caltrain to BART, but no one is actively lobbying for the $1.3 billion price tag. The $1.2 trillion bi-partisan infrastructure plan would have been a great opportunity to fund Dumbarton Rail.

So how do you expect workers to give up their cars to commute, when mass transit is so inconvenient in Silicon Valley. Yes that’s right, Silicon Valley has the worst mass transit infrastructure of any major metropolitan region except maybe Los Angeles.