California’s first energy forum headed by an all-female panel took place Monday; two Cal Poly students attended.
Empower Poly Coalition Vice President Tyler Hartrich helped organize the event and electrical engineering sophomore Mark Cabaj heard about the event from physics professor Peter Schwartz.
“I am shocked that not many students came out for the event,” Cabaj said. “I learned a lot of information about policies regarding climate change.”
The panel discussed new legislation affecting California’s energy and climate fields, as well as how corporations affect consumer energy consumption.
After waiting 15 minutes for more students to arrive, radio personality for KCBX-FM (National Public Radio) on the Central Coast, Marisa Waddell introduced the panel, which consisted of three female experts in California’s energy and climate fields. Speakers included two doctoral candidates in the Energy and Resources Group at the University of California, Berkeley and a utility consumer advocate attorney from The Utility Reform Network.
Schwartz, who helped organize the event, said the panel was comprised only of women because all three speakers have thoroughly studied renewable energy. Schwartz added that women usually provide a perspective of what energy does for society.
“They are often focused on equity and environmental issues more than technology, which we are recognizing is increasingly important, because the purpose of converting energy is to serve society optimally,” Schwartz said.
The panel said what California does will affect climate change policy because the state is responsible for 7.5 percent of the total U.S. greenhouse gas emissions. Speaker and doctoral candidate Carla Peterman said of all the emissions released by the state, electricity makes up 25 percent and transportation contributes 40 percent.
She said in finding clean burning alternatives, one of the things we must do is weigh the cost and benefits of distributive and collective solar and wind plants.
The panel weighed the cost and benefits of centralized versus distributed energy. Centralized energy implies a plant where power can be collected and then distributed to consumers. Transmission lines can cost up to $1 million per mile. Distributive energy means a particular site being retrofitted with devices to lower fuel consumption; for example, installing solar panels on a warehouse rooftop.
Peterman said an affordable collaboration of distributive and centralized power is needed to relieve our reliance on fossil fuels. Also with wind, solar and storage technology developing it will soon be available to communities to lower energy use, but people must also evaluate their consumption to improve greenhouse emissions.
“Even if we can reduce emissions by how much energy we supply, we can also reduce emission by how much energy we demand,” Peterman said.
Panel members said climate change is one of the signs of urgency for legislators attempting to address new climate legislation. Doctoral candidate Catherine Kunkel, whose research interests include energy and climate policy, said there are a lot of factors driving us to get off fossil fuels, for example the Gulf oil spill that highlighted the risks of our demands for oil.
She said California Assembly Bill 32, a bill that establishes a timeline to reduce California emissions to 1990 levels by 2020 (a 15 percent reduction from today), is a fairly comprehensible. The bill includes 73 measures to curb greenhouse gases while adding green jobs to boost the economy.
“It (AB 32) will drive a lot of innovation in terms of new policy the biggest reduction in vehicle efficiency standards and electricity standards,” Kunkel said. “There is still a lot of work to be done with the framework and goals laid out by AB 32 and there are a lot of interesting decision to be made within the next few years.”
She said California would like to think of itself as a leader in energy efficiency. Kunkel disagreed with this notion because while a surplus of funds may be collected from an energy efficient project, it can be difficult to find another opportunity to turn into a reality. She then cited AB 32 as an example of a bill that is still being fine tuned to fit California residents needs, but she fears will be killed off by oil companies. Currently Texas oil companies, Tesoro Corp. and Valero Energy Corp., plan to submit signatures for an initiative seeking to suspend AB 32 until California’s unemployment rate improves.
“There is no one technology or sector that will meet all of our goals. There is a lot of work to be done in energy efficiency to affect climate change, but in addition to all of this there is a concern there will be repeal AB 32,” Kunkel said.
“It is our belief and my belief, that utility and policy makers should be a very active part of ushering in a new energy paradigm that is sustainable from an environmental perspective but also societal perspective meaning that everyone can afford basic services in their home and everyone lives in community where the air is breathable and the water is drinkable,” Goodson said.