Several mornings a week, I leave my home in sunny Oakland, board a Bay Area Rapid Transit train and shoot underwater to work at Greentech Media’s San Francisco bureau. In time, that commute to write about clean energy will be powered by clean energy as well.
The BART board of directors just passed an electrical portfolio policy that requires half of the organization’s power to come from renewables by 2025, and 100 percent by 2045. That has broader implications for the region, because the electric train system consumes roughly 400,000 megawatt-hours annually — equivalent to a small city like Alameda. And, due to a unique legislative carve-out, BART will procure this power itself.
“We’re doing this to advance clean energy, but we’re also doing this because we think it is cost effective,” said Sustainability Director Holly Gordon, who previously led legislative and regulatory affairs at Sunrun. “We feel as though we can purchase clean energy while maintaining low and stable costs for the district as well.”
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