Five steps we can take now (see below for details on each):

1. OHM – Connect. Reduce use of dirty “peaker” plants at times of high use by cutting your electricity. You can earn cash and prizes and you can earn a donation to 350 Humboldt.

2.  Use Ecosia as your search engine. It’s ad revenue goes to funding tree planting by local groups.

3.  Write letters to influence policy on your own or you can join 350 Humboldt members every week at 7pm Sunday at this link:   https://us02web.zoom.us/j/85643874306?pwd=Tm1yeXJBVVhWMGt5ZjZXVTVYbGFoZz09

4.  Sign a petition initiated by progressive members of Congress to initiate democracy reforms, like an end to gerrymandering: https://www.signherenow.org/petition/democracy-reform/juggernaut/

5. Ask  Senator Mike McGuire to co-sponsor Cortese’s SB30, SB31 and SB32. [email protected]

Ohm-connect

One hour a week the Ohm Connect folks determine when “peaker” gas plants would ordinarily have to be used. By getting thousands of people to reduce their energy use to a minimum in that hour they avoid having to turn those dirty plants on. PG&E pays them for the reduction and they pay us.

Signing up is free and they offer prizes and money for participating. Over 125,000 people participate, getting rewarded for helping reduce CO2 emissions.

Right now Ohm Connect is paying a $10 bonus to you if you are recruited through an existing customer and a $40 bonus to the existing customer. So sign up using Steering Committee member Dan Chandler’s sign-up link and he will transfer all the customer bonus money to 350 Humboldt: https://ohm.co/dwchandl

Thanks very much to the Five and counting 350 members who have already signed up. That’s $200 going to 350 Humboldt.

Here is the Ohm Connect website if you want to check it out first: https://www.ohmconnect.com/how-it-works

And here is an article explaining how it works and why it is going big.

https://www.fastcompany.com/90582902/a-100-million-investment-will-fund-the-largest-virtual-powerplant-in-the-u-s

Ecosia Search engine

Switch to the Ecosia search engine. Ecosia uses its ad revenues to buy tree planting through grass roots organizations (not monoculture). Does not sell your data. (It is also easy to use Google for any specific search, just add #g to your search string.)

https://www.ecosia.org

Independent verification below (we heard about it on the podcast “How to Save a Planet”, which also investigated it.)

https://greenstarsproject.org/2019/10/12/green-search-engine-ecosia/

https://www.snopes.com/fact-check/ecosia-use-profits-to-plant-trees/

https://www.patharoundtheworld.com/ecosia-review/

LETTER WRITING THIS WEEK

Utilities are lobbying the CPUC to gut net metering, California’s cornerstone rooftop solar policy. Net metering lets solar users share their extra solar energy with neighbors for a bill credit. The utilities’ stated objective is to slash the bill credit such that solar’s payback period will go from currently 5-8 years to 20-25 years. This will effectively tank the growth of rooftop solar, jeopardize the state’s climate change goals, and prevent millions from accessing tools to help them control their energy bills and avoid power outages. Our goal is instead to protect and strengthen net metering to keep rooftop solar growing, get it into the hands of more low-income people and renters, and increase the use of solar-powered batteries. CPUC launched their proceeding last year and is expected to make a final decision late this year.

While some have argued we need “industrial scale” solar rather than rooftop a new study this week shows how rooftop solar could save Americans $473 billion in electricity costs. (https://www.latimes.com/environment/newsletter/2021-01-07/how-rooftop-solar-could-save-americans-473-billion-dollars-boiling-point)

Send an on-line message supporting net metering at https://solarrights.org/savecaliforniasolar/

For those who really want to get into the weeds on this issue, see the CALIFORNIA SOLAR & STORAGE ASSOCIATION comments at: https://docs.cpuc.ca.gov/PublishedDocs/Efile/G000/M348/K579/348579838.PDF

NATIONAL PETITION TO ENACT MEASURES TO SAVE DEMOCRACY

In March 2019, the U.S. House passed the For the People Act, which went a long way toward enacting the reforms necessary to protect our Democracy and fight corruption in Washington. The bill, which passed the House with strong support from Democrats, included strong provisions on campaign finance reform, government ethics, voting rights, gerrymandering, and more.

For the sake of our democracy, we must say NO to dark money, partisan gerrymandering, and foreign interference. And YES to automatic voter registration, ballot box protections, ethics reforms, and small donor empowerment. Join progressive members of Congress in supporting H.R.1. https://www.signherenow.org/petition/democracy-reform/juggernaut/

EMAIL SENATOR MIKE MCGUIRE

Ask Senator Mike McGuire to co-sponsor Senator Cortese’s SB30, SB31 and SB32. [email protected] Identify yourself as being a member of 350 Humboldt.

The bills all enact policies to  help decarbonized buildings. Specifically:

SB 30 would, on or after January 1, 2022, prohibit a state agency from designing or constructing a state facility that is connected to the natural gas grid. The bill would require the department to develop the California State Building Decarbonization Plan that will lead to the operational carbon-neutrality of all state-owned buildings by January 1, 2035.

SB  31 would require the State Energy Resources Conservation and Development Commission to identify and implement programs to promote existing and new building decarbonization. The bill would, to the extent clean energy or energy efficiency funds are made available from the federal government to address economic recovery and development due to the COVID-19 pandemic, authorize the commission to expend federal moneys, to the extent authorized by federal law, for projects for existing and new building decarbonization. The bill would additionally require the commission, under the EPIC program, to award funds for projects that will benefit electricity ratepayers and lead to the development and deployment of commercial and residential building decarbonization technologies and investments that reduce or eliminate greenhouse gas generation in those buildings.

Existing law requires the Public Utilities Commission to require each electrical corporation to identify a separate rate component to collect revenues to fund programs provided to low-income electricity customers for targeted energy efficiency services. This bill would authorize the expenditure of those revenues for existing and new building decarbonization.
Existing law makes a legislative finding and declaration regarding the principal goals of electric and natural gas utilities’ resource planning and investment. This bill would additionally state as a principal goal of electric and natural gas utilities’ resource planning and investment the decarbonization of existing and new buildings.

SB 32 would require a city or county to amend, by January 1, 2023, the appropriate elements of its general plan to include goals, policies, objectives, targets, and feasible implementation strategies, as specified, to decarbonize newly constructed commercial and residential buildings. [So as to achieve the 40% reduction by 2030.]