S.F. clean energy program could generate 8,100 jobs, report says

Chris Paras (l to r), utility specialist PUC, talks with Doug Joya, electrician DPW, look in a combiner box on the roof of Thurgood Marshall Academic High School which will be connected to the solar panels (partially seen at right) being installed on the roof on Friday, November 14, 2014 in San Francisco, Calif. less Chris Paras (l to r), utility specialist PUC, talks with Doug Joya, electrician DPW, look in a combiner box on the roof of Thurgood Marshall Academic High School which will be connected to the solar panels ... more Photo: Lea Suzuki, The Chronicle Buy photo Photo: Lea Suzuki, The Chronicle Image 1 of / 4 Caption Close S.F. clean energy program could generate 8,100 jobs, report says 1 / 4 Back to Gallery

A renewable energy program in San Francisco could create more that 8,100 construction jobs by building $2.4 billion worth of proposed solar, wind and geothermal projects, a new report says. That refutes many criticisms made by Mayor Ed Lee when the city killed a previous version of CleanPowerSF, supporters of the plan say.

The proposal, which has wide support among the city’s supervisors, would allow San Francisco to generate or purchase its own clean energy and deliver it to consumers through Pacific Gas and Electric Co.’s existing transmission network. The idea is to offer a cleaner alternative to PG&E.

Because CleanPowerSF could shake the company’s decades-long monopoly over delivering energy to San Francisco, it has met stiff opposition — including from Lee and his allies. But the program is overwhelmingly supported by the Board of Supervisors and the city’s left, which has long sought an alternative to PG&E.

The study by energy consultants EnerNex was commissioned by the city’s Local Agency Formation Commission and states the city doesn’t need to contract with an outside company and could easily administer CleanPowerSF through the San Francisco Public Utilities Commission.

The often-fractured Board of Supervisors has coalesced around the program, known as community choice aggregation, or CCA, and continued to push for some iteration of it even after the PUC commission last year refused to set rates and bring in Shell Energy North America to be the city’s power broker for at least five years. The PUC commission is appointed by the mayor.

Supporters said the EnerNex report sketches out a plan that avoids many aspects of the earlier proposal criticized by the mayor and others — that it wouldn’t create local jobs, that the power wouldn’t be renewable or cheap enough, and that it would be run by an out-of-state corporation best known for its oil division.

Report affirms job creation

Supervisor London Breed said the report affirms what she and other supervisors “have been saying all along, and what Marin and Sonoma have already demonstrated: that a robust clean power program will not only provide cleaner air and competitive rates — it will create jobs and benefit the local economy.” Marin and Sonoma counties already have CCAs.

Supervisor Scott Wiener said the study “demonstrates a clear path for CleanPowerSF, in terms of clean and renewable energy generation, and that it could happen with or without the Shell contract,” and “does a great job talking about all the different opportunities to increase the generation of clean and renewable energy — solar, wind, geothermal, hydro power.”

A spokesman for Lee, who has always insisted he does not oppose the CleanPowerSF program itself, seized on the report’s findings that a Shell contract was unnecessary.

“After months and months of study, public power advocates have finally concluded that a contract with Shell Oil was never an appropriate way for San Francisco to make progress on our environmental goals,” spokeswoman Christine Falvey said in a written statement. “This latest report confirms that a real clean energy program should include real local jobs and real clean energy ... which is something we can now all agree on. In recent years, these critical elements were nowhere to be found.”

Lee opposes opt-out method

Falvey said the mayor still has concerns over whether a program would rely in part on transferable renewable energy credits rather than 100 percent clean energy generation, and he continues to oppose the opt-out provision that, under state law, automatically enrolls customers who could opt-out if they’d rather stay with PG&E.

To ensure that rates are competitive with PG&E’s, the report says the city will have to determine generation prices ahead of time and build a program backward from there. The Local Agency Formation Commission, which commissioned the report, is an agency of the board of supervisors.

EnerNex also recommends focusing on local employment, in part by giving “a preference for projects that are physically located within the city and county of San Francisco.” The report lays out at least five large-scale solar projects that could be built in San Francisco and would create about 1,000 local construction jobs. Other potential projects identified in the report would create local jobs, because they are close enough to San Francisco to fall under it’s “local hire” ordinance. EnerNex anticipates the program would create 180 permanent operations jobs.

The report notes the program could help the SFPUC stabilize its power division, which has serious budget challenges because most of the hydropower it generates through its Hetch Hetchy water system is sold to city agencies or wholesale at deeply discounted rates. The report recommends using CleanPowerSF to help fund a pet project of Lee’s, GoSolarSF — which provides incentives for property owners to install solar panels.

More local jobs

Those sorts of private renewable energy projects on homes and businesses within the city also stand to help CleanPowerSF improve its green portfolio, lower costs for consumers and create even more local jobs, the report states — up to seven construction jobs for every $1 million spent on build out.

The report isn’t the only angle supporters are taking. Supervisors earlier this year approved legislation directing the city to study the option of joining Marin County's renewable power program. Wiener and Breed have also authored what he called “complimentary” legislation that stands to significantly expand the PUC’s power customer base by giving the agency the first crack at providing hydropower to nearly all new developments in the city. Currently, the PUC must compete with PG&E. The legislation is expected to get its first public vetting Nov. 24.

Marisa Lagos is a San Francisco Chronicle staff writer. E-mail: mlagos@sfchronicle.com

Twitter: @mlagos