REGION: County to bid for climate hub
New California Institute for Climate Solutions could be headquartered locally
By DAVE DOWNEY - Staff Writer | ∞
State regulators have created a $600 million California Institute for Climate Solutions that will distribute grants to researchers studying ways to slash utility greenhouse gas emissions.
The California Public Utilities Commission has invited the state's regions to bid to become the global warming think tank's headquarters. And the wheels are already turning in the minds of local leaders.
"San Diego will be putting in a bid," Tony Haymet, director of the Scripps Institution of Oceanography at UC San Diego, said in a telephone interview last week.
Haymet, who also is vice chairman for the board of a new advocacy organization called CleanTech San Diego, said business and academic leaders met Saturday to discuss landing the institute.
The new research is targeted at cleaning up power plants and natural-gas delivery systems. Funding the project is expected to boost monthly utility bills for residents in San Diego and Riverside counties by up to 30 cents.
Scott Anders, research director for the Energy Policy Initiatives Center at the University of San Diego School of Law, said San Diego County would be a natural location for the think tank's headquarters.
The Energy Policy Initiatives Center is quantifying, for the first time, the region's annual greenhouse gas emissions in a project funded by the San Diego Foundation. Anders said results are anticipated in June.
The utilities commission voted Thursday to create the institute as a tool for identifying ways utilities can meet California's mandate to slash emissions by 25 percent ---- to 1990 levels ---- by 2020. Some research will explore ways to adapt to the effects of climate change.
Under the plan, the think tank will get $60 million a year over 10 years from electric and natural-gas providers.
During its first decade, the institute will be required to raise an additional $600 million from other sources. Ten percent of the budget is supposed to cover administrative costs with the rest paying for the research.
Utility commission president Michael Peevey said the program will add 25 to 30 cents to customers' monthly electric and gas bills.
"We have embarked on another ground-breaking path to find solutions to the most pressing problem of our time," Peevey said. "Innovation ---- technological and otherwise ---- is the key to alleviating the adverse consequences of climate change."
The San Diego area has long been a player in global warming research.
In the late 1950s, Scripps pioneer Charles David Keeling was the first to document rising levels of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere, based on observations he made at Hawaii's Mauna Loa Observatory. His Keeling Curve charts the increase in concentration from 315 parts per million at that time to 380 parts per million today.
Additionally, some of the leading authors of 2007 groundbreaking reports by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change were Scripps scientists. The reports blamed human activities for the planet's recent warming and said more heating is coming, threatening to trigger droughts, more wildfires and rising seas.
Haymet said the institute-funded research would be different.
"It won't be identifying the problem. A number of us San Diego have been doing that," he said. "This will actually be responding to (the problem)."
Contact staff writer Dave Downey at (760) 745-6611, Ext. 2623, or ddowney@nctimes.com.
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Concerned-1 wrote on Apr 14, 2008 3:43 PM:What a bunch of Malarkey. Global Warming will kill us. Not the actual warming, but the idiots reacting to it! The most pressing problem of our time is over population. Global warming is a political ploy geared for the left-wing lemming mentality. Go ahead, make some more hair-brained laws, see if it helps. Arrrg!
North County Havoc wrote on Apr 14, 2008 9:41 PM:Good Job PUC...now at a time when "Green Attributes" in utility contracts that are suppposed to be viable ways for power producers to monitize thier reduction in carbon emissions can't be utilized because of the mashed potato language that the PUC has put into Utility contracts comes this Break Through Leadership Initiative...that the rate payers of California will have to pay....its all a bunch of BS, plain and simple. There is no intent by the State of California PUC to help solve the problem, only politicise that it exists and make it look like they are doing something about it...and can you all figure out why? ...the Staffers at the PUC, as most Political offices, lack real world experience....and all the while those select few in the power generation industry that have come up with viable ways to reduce carbon emissions are denied the ability to cash in on that development. Way to go PUC, way to go..
To Concerned-1 wrote on Apr 15, 2008 8:05 AM:Be careful when you travel. You don't want to get to close to the edge of the earth.
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