LOS ANGELES—Community, labor, environmental and city government leaders gave expressed their support of Measure B, the solar energy and job creation program initiative that will come up for a vote next month in a citywide election. The initiative would mandate the Los Angeles Department of Water and Power (LADWP) to install and maintain solar panels on commercial, industrial, and government buildings in Los Angeles by 2014. These solar panels should be capable of generating 400 megawatts of electricity.
"Seventy-five percent of the energy in our monthly electricity bill comes from coal or fossil fuel, natural gas and other substances; and what this measure does—over the course of five years, if Measure B does not pass—is that the city would be spending over a billion dollars to get the equivalent of 400 megawatts of electricity," declared Michael Trujillo, campaign director of Measure B.
"If we don’t do anything, the price of coal is going to go up; if we don’t start investing in renewable energy now, our own (electricity) bills are going to go through the roof," Trujillo said.
Says Bill Corcoran, the Southern California senior regional representative of the environmental group, Sierra Club: "Measure B is an essential part of both reducing the impact of climate change by removing carbon from the air; it will also do something about job creation."
Measure B would reduce LADWP’s reliance on fossil fuels for electricity. Corcoran said that at present, at least three-quarters of the power that LADWP generates comes from fossil fuels. Nearly half of that comes from burning coals, the greatest contributor to climate change, air pollution and mercury pollution. Currently, the city of LA has solar panels capable of generating 13 megawatts. The entire state produces only 178 megawatts.
Measure B would require job training and the creation of outreach academies, and recruit unemployed workers, including those on underserved areas of the city, for new jobs installing and maintaining these solar facilities. "This will be a challenge to the LADWP to ramp up to 400 megawatts in five years," said Rev. Eric Lee, Chairman and President and CEO of the California Christian Leadership Conference. "The African-American community, traditionally, has unemployment rate that is four times higher than the (state) average. Black males between 18 and 30 experience unemployment rates as high as 40 per cent," Lee said.
"When you actually look at nearly 10 percent of unemployment in the city of LA is experiencing, we are faced with an unprecedented rate of job loss," opined Myung-Soo Seok, development director of the Los Angeles County Federation of Labor, AFL-CIO. "It is, in our opinion, that every single opportunity, every opportunity to create new jobs or save jobs, is our mission," Seok adds.
The program is estimated to cost about $1.5 billion and will be paid for with existing LADWP funds. Experts say that this is the lowest cost option available at present. "It’s going to be cheaper in the longer in the long run," said Trujillo. "Once they are up, they are good for 30 years. The sun doesn’t cost us anything."
The 400 megawatts mandated by Measure B would be more than twice as much as the total solar energy generated in the entire state of California. The city of Lplans to ramp that up to 1.3 giga-watts, which is worth around 1/6th of the total electricity needs of the city. The initial 400 megawatts are enough to power 100,000 homes.
"We are pretty positive that we have over 65 per cent of the votes in the city," Trujillo revealed. This measure only needs a 50-per cent vote. "I will go on record by stating right now, that if we lose Measure B, I will never work in a political campaign in my life," Trujillo promised. The media briefing was moderated by Julian Do, director of Southern California, New American Media.
( Published on February 18, 2009 in Asian Journal Los Angeles p. A3 )
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