SAN ANTONIO -- The No. 1 goal of the SA Climate Ready Plan is simple on paper: attain carbon neutrality by the year 2050.
- Plan seeks to attain carbon neutrality
- Goal is set for year 2050
- Plan been in the works since 2016
Environmentalists question if the City of San Antonio realistically can meet that goal if CPS Energy continues to burn coal
"We're disappointed that the draft has significantly weakened over the last year." -- Environment Texas Executive Director Luke Metzger.
Released to the San Antonio City Council just a few days ago, the 92-page document is the latest and perhaps the final draft of a go-green public policy plan in the works since 2016.
LEARN MORE | SA Climate Ready Website
City of San Antonio Chief Sustainability Officer Doug Melmick presented the document to the council at Thursday’s council meeting.
"This plan at the end of the day though, while it is under a climate umbrella. It's about air quality, public health, transportation options and jobs,” said Melmick.
The document lays out business, government and community goals on how best to reduce greenhouse gas, while increasing and promoting renewable energies like solar and wind.
"Let's just bring people up to speed as far as why it's important and give them very practical steps they can take to make a difference,” said Melmick.
The San Antonio carbon-neutrality roadmap appears to have hit a bump in the road according to Environment Texas executives. Metzger believes city leaders caved to energy executives by scratching the goal of eliminating CPS Energy's coal use by 2050.
"It's unclear that we're actually going to achieve that goal. That's why we need those specifics of shutting down coal plants, moving to 100 percent renewable energy, we need those specifics put back into the plan," said Metzger.
In April, the CPS Energy president sent a letter to the Chief Sustainability Officer for the City of San Antonio expressing cost concerns to "decarbonize the grid and transition away from traditional fossil generation," and that, before the nation's largest city-owned utility company could phase out the coal-burning Calaveras Power Station, an "in-depth analysis of the costs" to go green must be done first.
"We're just discouraged that a lot of the teeth in the plan have been removed," said Metzger.
By email Monday, Councilwoman Ana Sandoval who chairs the Community Health and Equity Committee and is a leading voice for approving the SA Climate Ready Plan, told Spectrum News: “Coal is our dirtiest energy source,” and if immediately possible to eliminate coal from the city’s energy’s portfolio she would, “shut it down tomorrow.”
The email went on to say: “The truth is: America was built on coal. Transitioning from it won’t be easy and it certainly won’t be fast. Whenever the conversation comes up, I push for clean energy, but I understand that it’ll take time and technological advancements before we can accomplish that.”
Two other items were removed from the plan: a requirement for buildings to generate energy equal to their demand, and the idea of all vehicles to be electric or carbon-free. The city is expected to approve the SA Climate Ready Plan sometime in October.
Below is an excerpt from the April, 2019 letter to Doug Melnick, Chief Sustainability Officer for City of San Antonio from Paula Gold-Williams, CPS Energy President & CEO.
"As San Antonio’s municipally owned electric and natural gas utility for the last 76 years, we are motivated to create and deliver value-added services that improve the quality of life for the present and future generations in our community. CPS Energy has already embraced the transition from traditional fuel sources to renewable energy, and we understand our role in helping our customers think about energy differently. As a matter of fact, we have been steadily controlling energy usage and reducing our carbon intensity for decades. An in-depth analysis of the costs related to increasing the penetration of renewables to supply 50% by 2040 and 100% by 2050 needs to be performed. It will need to include not only the cost of the renewables, but also the cost to reliably back them up, as well as the cost of phasing out fossil fuel generation over time. Importantly, the speed of generation matters. Further, it must be pointed out that, our traditional generation assets continue to be an important bridge to the future to ensure reliability to our customers. Managing the transition prudently will absolutely matter. Part of providing reliable power also means having resiliency during extreme weather events. They range from today’s storms to those that are projected to be more intense as global climate changes manifest. Without solid firming capacity, renewables by themselves will not be able to function well in any type of bad weather scenario.
For these reasons, the CAAP timeline needs to provide enough flexibility for the current undefined technology wedge to become more tangible and effective. As we decarbonize the grid and transition away from traditional fossil generation, we will need to thoroughly evaluate the benefits and risks associated with future technologies.
Every year going forward, we will therefore estimate actual costs, as they change. This will inherently pose challenges in making preliminary assumptions about those costs. Even so, these are challenges we can address, working together as a community."