Want Solar Power on Your Roof?

Protection from Future Blackouts?

PROPOSITION H is a charter amendment which will allow the City to use its buying power and low-interest financing to make solar power and other clean energy technologies affordable and available to the residents and businesses of San Francisco.

Why? Because SF needs clean local power, and we need it now. In addition to facing energy price volatility and rolling blackouts caused by misguided state policies, San Franciscans have an inadequate supply of locally generated energy. With only one transmission corridor connecting The City to the grid, we could face prolonged blackouts in an earthquake or other disaster. By building a citywide network of solar power facilities on homes, businesses and government buildings, we can both reduce the local economy’s long-term exposure to energy price fluctuations and blackouts, and provide greater energy security in the event of an earthquake or other disaster.

Let’s not forget the environment. Electricity generation is the largest single cause of Global Warming. City governments have been repeatedly challenged to take the lead in tackling this problem, but generally lack the means to act decisively.

San Francisco has found the will. PROP H will provide the way.

San Francisco Board of Supervisors President Tom Ammiano, Local Power, and a group of consumer and environmental organizations have proposed legislation that the city and county of San Francisco build a 50 Megawatt “San Francisco Solar Power Facility” on residential, commercial and industrial rooftops in the sunnier neighborhoods of San Francisco. PROP H was written to finance this project.

The SF Solar Power Facility will cover the city’s rooftops with 100 football fields of solar panels, creating a local power plant six times larger than the world’s largest solar network (Sacramento at 8 Megawatts). The infrastructure will meet 5% of the community’s peak electricity load, and will deliver a significant reduction in the city’s contribution to Global Warming, of which electricity (and the U.S. itself) is the largest single cause.

The city will offer San Francisco residents and businesses wishing to purchase solar installations for their buildings both (1) a significant volume discount from purchasing with the city and (2) low-interest financing from revenue bonds, replacing the prohibitive up-front cost of conventional solar installations with an affordable lease-to-own program.

The World is Getting HOT. Let’s Bring Solar Power to San Francisco. YES ON H