For The Record

For generations accustomed to fuel shortages and expansive foreign oil, today is almost unrecognizable.  What's more, the right of passage called getting a driver's license is likely never to be the same again - partiucularly if you had trouble with parallel parking.

Sacramento is the first city in the country to successfully implement a holistic approach to diverting organic waste from the landfill. Sacramento Mayor Kevin Johnson dubbed the process “farm-to-fork-to-fuel,” touting his city as a national leader in food energy security.

It is also a microcosm of FutureStructure in creating a system from formerly discrete parts.  Editor Chad VanderVeen discssed closing the loop on this episode of FTR.

When almost anything is possible, everything becomes your beat.  In this episode, we meet Chad VanderVeen, the new editor of FutureStructure.  Just as people who buy a new car suddenly notice how many of that make and model are on the streets, Chad is seeing elements of FutureStructure everywhere he looks.  Even a minor software upgrade on your smartphone unlocks a world of possibilities at the supermarket, and that only hints at the potential of a world where everything is connected.

Electric consumers expect power to be availabile reliably and priced inexpensively. Rooftop solar fits that bill, particularly when the installations are connected to the grid. For electric utlities, rooftop solar supplies power to the grid when it isn't needed and draws power out when it is. The costs to system operators can be economic and political. Jim Waring, Executive Chairman of CleanTech San Diego, explains in this episode of For the Record.

The bankruptcy of ECOtality, a maker of commercial and residential electric vehicle charging infrastructure, stranded about 13,000 commercial and residential stations. The assets of the company, which had won a $99.8 million grant from the U.S. Department of Energy four years ago are being sold at auction.  An initial offer of $3 million from a little known company called Tellus Power Inc. is now the bid to beat in order to win control of the company.

The auction of the stranded assets is only part of cleaning up what was both a policy and market failure. As CleanTech San Diego Chairman Jim Waring discusses in this episode of For The Record, it is a cautionary tale for policy makers and regulators in other communities as they roll out EV charging stations in a still nascent and volatile market.

The San Dieogo Zoo provided a high profile location for five new electric vehicle charging stations.  It also raised an unexpected public policy question - what are the obligations for making charging stations compliant with the Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA)?

It is an ostentatious first world problem. Thousands of backyard pools in attractive neighborhoods in San Diego. Pool pumps have emerged as the single biggest drain on energy systems. A pilot program is doing 250 million kilowatt hours of good in mitigating the problem.

What would happen if "reallocate" was added to the familiar "reduce, reuse, recyle" meme of sustainability. A non profit collaborative is working with building owners in San Diego to use big data smartly in order to use energy more effectively. Its good for the city, good for the environment and it is even good for baseball fans.

If it takes a village to raise a child, imagine the amount of work and collaboration to raise a village ... or a city.  Veteran public servant Jim Waring says the founders of the non profit collaborative called CleanTech San Diego took a big tent approach to building a movement toward a sustainable future.  Economic development was front and center, politics were off the table.

Roads, bridges, ports.  Concrete and steal.  It is the hard stuff of infrastructure, all of which is necessary but not sufficient as we think about the future.  

Often overlooked in public policy discussions is the centrality of soft infrastructure to getting decisions right.  It all comes down to executing well against good ideas.  Dennis McKenna, the meme maker behind FutureStructure and the CEO of e.Republic, explains where soft infrastructure plays in this evolving framework for building the future.