A Greener San Diego: The Year 2023 in (Mostly) Good News

In October, Wallethub named San Diego the Greenest City in America, which is nice. This accolade got me thinking about the progress we’ve made since last Earth Day in America’s Finest City …

Climate and Energy

• The City of SD released its Climate Action Plan in August 2022, and Climate Implementation Plan in March 2023. These plans are … aspirational, meaning expensive with goals that will be challenging to achieve. But the vision of net-zero in 2035 is laudable.
• San Diego County’s CAP Update is in the works for later this year, after a judge bounced the 2018 plan for not being good enough to meet state guidelines. The County plan will likely have the same net-zero-by-2035 goal.
• In September, the State mandated that all new cars sold by 2035 must be zero-emission vehicles, primarily battery electric vehicles. Just days later, the grid was so strained from a heat wave that the state pleaded for conservation, highlighting the challenge of upgrading our grid to eliminate fossil fuels.
• The State extended the life of CA’s only nuclear power plant, Diablo Canyon, which was planned to close in 2025. The extension to 2030 will provide more time to transition to clean energy sources, but it’s unclear if nuclear will be part of the long-term solution.
• In November, the State released a plan to become net-zero in carbon pollution by 2045. It relies on an ambitious mix of green energy and conservation, highlighted by a robust off-shore California wind energy industry, which doesn’t actually exist at the moment, but which got a big boost in December, when the state’s first-ever off-shore wind lease auction was a rousing success.
• San Diego Community Power took over powering homes and businesses in San Diego, Imperial Beach, La Mesa, Chula Vista, and Encinitas from SDG&E in May. The locally run not-for-profit promises greener power at cheaper prices, though the watts are still delivered by SDG&E. National City and the unincorporated areas of SD County will join this month. Carlsbad, Del Mar, Escondido, San Marcos, Solana Beach, and Vista have their own Clean Energy Alliance that works the same way.
• SDG&E successfully lobbied to lower the rates it pays to homeowners with rooftop solar by about 75 percent, starting with systems installed next month. They argued that with lots of solar customers selling excess energy to utilities at retail rates (the utilities usually buy juice at cheap wholesale rates), non-solar customers (often lower income) are having to bear higher prices.
• CA has so much solar that on some sunny days with cool weather it “curtails” (shuts down) some solar production. State officials can sell some excess energy, but are looking to battery storage solutions as well.

Water

• With all the rain this winter, San Diego and most of the rest of CA is officially out of drought, according to the federal Drought Monitor.
• Preparing for the next dry spell, San Diego is building its wastewater recycling project, Pure Water, mandated by the feds to keep us from dumping too much waste out to sea from the Point Loma treatment facility. It won’t come online for a few years. Some East County cities are also pursuing a similar plan.
• With this season’s rains, the problem of billions of gallons of untreated sewage from Tijuana polluting the Tijuana River has been worse than ever. But the solution is also closer than ever, with the International Boundary Waters Commission announcing in August a $474-million plan to reduce flows by 50 percent by 2027. Welcome news to officials in Imperial beach and Coronado, which bear the brunt of beach closures, and who were dismayed in May when the County began using a new, more-accurate test that resulted in more days when swimming was verboten.

Waste

• On April 1, San Diego finally banned Styrofoam take-out containers, over the objections of the restaurant business (customers were clamoring for unrecyclable litter?).
• California’s composting law went into effect last year, and this spring SD is finally doling out green bins for organic waste. Composting keeps organic waste out of landfills where it can produce methane, a potent greenhouse gas. Compost will be available for city residents to use in their garden for free, and for sale to commercial buyers. Win-win-win! Most other cities in the region are also compliant with the law, though much of the unincorporated area is exempt. San Diego is looking to up its relatively low “tipping fees” at the Miramar landfill to help pay for composting.
• San Diegans passed Measure B in November to scrap the century-plus-old “People’s Ordinance” that mandated the City provide free trash service to homeowners. The City hasn’t decided how or what to charge for trash, but hopefully they come up with a system where the more garbage you throw out, the more you pay.

Planning

• The City is working on community plan updates, which govern how much housing and other uses are permitted in city neighborhoods. Increasing the amount of housing can ease the housing crisis, allow people to live near jobs and recreation, and redirect growth away from open space. The Mira Mesa plan was approved in December, and rezoned lots of commercial land for high-density housing. Updates for University City, Hillcrest, Clairemont, and the College Area are in progress, spurring stiff resistance from single-family homeowners. I guess if you already own a home, the housing crisis and homelessness are somebody else’s problem.

Transportation

• In late 2021, SANDAG released its ambitious Regional Plan to dramatically increase public transit. But the plan would also dramatically increase taxes to pay for it, and one tax that would charge drivers by the mile for driving set off a political firestorm. Local politicians in charge of SANDAG’s Board, chair Encinitas mayor (now state senator) Catherine Blakespear and vice-chair San Diego mayor Todd Gloria, who had supported the charge, turned tail and ordered it removed from the plan. It’s not clear how the plan works without the charge, which would both raise revenue and discourage driving.
• SANDAG partnered with MTS and NCTD last May to provide young people with free transit service. By March of this year, kids with a Youth Opportunity Pass racked up over 5 million rides on local transit, a bright spot as transit services struggle to recover from Covid.
• Bike lanes sprouted up all over San Diego county, with some predictably unfortunate (and fortunately ineffective) opposition from entitled drivers. The City and North County communities in particular are zooming ahead, especially on the 101, which sees throngs of cyclists and more than its share of accidents. The City also responded to two fatalities on Pershing Drive by beginning a project to turn the absurdly wide and high-speed road through Balboa Park into a recreational amenity and safe corridor for bikes and pedestrians.
• CA announced it will launch a rebate program for electric bicycles, which have proven extremely popular.

It’s been a year of great intentions and modest achievements, ambitious plans and stubborn realities. But I’m proud to live in a San Diego that’s envisioning a greener future.