About Carbon Free Silicon Valley
Our Group
Carbon Free Silicon Valley (CFSV) is a grassroots environmental advocacy group founded 2016. Our purpose is to work with our local clean energy agencies, municipal utilities, and elected officials across Santa Clara and San Mateo Counties to ensure Silicon Valley leadership in achieving aggressive greenhouse gas reductions.
OUR Vision:
A thriving carbon-free Silicon Valley.
OUR Mission:
We are working to complete the transition to carbon-free buildings and transportation by 2030.
We are devoted to the success of our local Community Choice Energy (CCE) agencies – Peninsula Clean Energy, Silicon Valley Clean Energy and San José Clean Energy and attend their Board Meetings to share our perspectives. Similarly, we also have a focus on aggressive greenhouse gas reduction actions that can be achieved through the City of Palo Alto Utilities and Silicon Valley Power, Santa Clara’s municipal utility.
CFSV was created by Carbon Free Mountain View to engage additional local activists across the region in a collaborative effort to accelerate the reduction of local GHG emissions.
We collaborate with other organizations with similar goals, including the Campaign for Fossil Free Buildings in Silicon Valley.
Membership in CFSV is free and open to anyone who supports our mission. Please join our GoogleGroup to share your ideas and learn from others.
OUR BOARD
Bruce Hodge, Chairman Palo Alto
Steve Schmidt, Secretary Los Altos Hills
James Tuleya, Sunnyvale
Bruce Naegel, Mtn. View
Bruce Karney, Mtn. View
Gary Latshaw, Cupertino
Diane Bailey, Belmont
Tom Kabat, Menlo Park
Bret Andersen, Palo Alto
Serena Zhao, San Jose
See detailed Board Bios here.
About our Programs
Increase access to clean electricity
This is largely complete, but with some remaining work to be done. Through the successful formation of two local CCEs with policies in place to offer 100% carbon free electricity, we are well on our way! Many thanks to CFMV for their tireless efforts to get this done.
PROMOTE "BENEFICIAL ELECTRIFICATION"
As we increasingly have access to 100% carbon free electricity, our next big carbon reductions will come from shifting our energy use from fossil fuels to this new clean electricity. We refer to this shift as Beneficial Electrification.
Happily, two proven technologies -- Electric Vehicles and Heat Pumps -- make this transition easier every year. Deep decarbonization of our lifestyles are now in reach through three easy steps:
Electric vehicles are now available from most manufacturers and are available in many styles: compacts, sedans, SUVs, and pickup trucks. They all have lower fuel and maintenance costs than equivalent fossil-fueled vehicles.
Before your natural gas water heater dies, consider a new heat pump water heater, which are three times more energy efficient. If your water heater is 6 years old or more, be proactive and replace it with a heat pump water heater before it fails.
Considering adding air conditioning? Or perhaps your gas furnace is on its last legs? Solve both problems and go green when you switch to a heat pump space heating system (which can also cool your home).
We are encouraging clean energy providers and other local agencies to help promote this shift. See a draft two page white paper on this topic.
SILICON VALLEY CARBON FREE LEADERBOARD
We'd like to recognize best practices across the region. Some examples of leadership:
Most aggressive GHG reduction targets: In 2016 Palo Alto's city council approved a target of 80% reduction from their 1990 base year by 2030. Read more about their plan here. We need more leadership like this.
Promoting clean electricity: Sunnyvale, Mountain View & Cupertino provided the leadership and resources that made SVCE possible for over 500,000 residents in Santa Clara County. See details here. Great job.
Reporting annual GHG Inventories: Los Altos Hills has been updating their community and municipal GHG inventories annually since 2008. "You can't manage what you don't measure."
Fuel switching roadmap: While not in Silicon Valley, our kudos to the group in Sonoma County who published this White Paper detailing how to move to a carbon neutral society.
Menlo Park’s Reach Code: Demonstrating both innovation and bold action, in 2019 Menlo Park developed and approved a new style of reach code that was used as a model for many other California cities. Bravo!
What other regions are leading the charge to address climate change? What area has the best policies to promote EVs? Or switching homes off natural gas toward clean electricity? And for all these efforts... are actual results being measured, or just estimated?
If we can all highlight these effective new policies we can encourage more widespread adoption by others. Here’s a short document describing a range of decarbonization options that any city can pursue.
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HELP US CREATE A CARBON-NEUTRAL COMMUNITY
Carbon Free Silicon Valley has a simple discussion list that is open to all. Sign up below to get on our list if you'd like to join the movement.
“An interesting proposal from the local advocacy group Carbon Free Palo Alto: they’re pitching a plan for “beneficial electrification” that would incentivize utilities to track down their customers’ old fossil-fuelled appliances (think gas-powered water heaters or cooktops) and offer to guide those customers through the steps required to replace them with ultra-efficient electric models. The utility would use “its access to low-cost, long-term capital to finance installations” and then recover its “costs from customers during the lifetime of the new device.””
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