Sustainable Fairfax

Bringing people together to support a vital environment and thriving community

Energy

Community Chats – Download materials on How to Electrify your Home!

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Did you know that 88% of residential natural gas use in CA if for water and space heating? Electrify Marin is a county-wide effort that encourages Marin residents to replace gas powered appliances with electric ones to reduce greenhouse gas emissions and improve indoor air quality! 
But when your hot water or space heater implodes,  you don’t have time to think so you need to have a plan in place!
Sustainable Fairfax hosted 4-educational chats that overviewed the steps you can take to electrify, including understanding the rebates available today!  Download all of the session materials below.
Inspiration — Learn about why a family in Oakland made the commitment

CHAT DOWNLOADS:

Sept 3rd – WHY electrify and understanding the critical steps to replacing gas appliances. Video Recording of Zoom Chat – Click here to watch!! Download copies of Presentations – Ann Edminster’s great presentation; Electrify Marin’s presentation [great overview of available rebates!]

Sept 10th – We learned some of the components of putting a plan in place to replace your hot water and space heating systems; the importance of making your home energy efficient, and the rebates available. Video Recording of Zoom Chat – Click here to watch!!  Download copies of Presentations – Electrify Marin Chat #2; BayRen.

Sept 17th – We learned about battery as a back-up energy storage; the role of solar in resiliency, and benefits of Induction stoves.  Video recording of Zoom chat – click here! Online Guidance for Home Batteries.  Electrify Marin presentation.

Sept 24th – We reviewed the importance of phasing out all gas appliances and discussed heat pump clothes dryers, spas&hot tubs.  We reviewed the new technologies around electric fireplaces.  Video recording of Zoom chat – click here!   Electrify Marin presentation.

Thank you to Mark Chhabria from Electrify Marin and all our other contributors for making this a fun and informative series! Let us know if you have any questions at info@sustainablefairfax.org.

FAIRFAX- Special Deal on MCE Deep Green!

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One of the top initiatives of the Fairfax Climate Action Committee is to increase the enrollment of Fairfax residents in Marin Clean Energy’s Deep Green 100% renewable energy service. The committee has determined that this is one of the most significant actions individuals can take to combat climate change and improve our collective carbon footprint.

Sign up below for the Deep Green service and receive a $5 credit/month from the Town of Fairfax on your electricity bill for an entire year (which covers what the typical home spends on the extra cost for the service). This deal is available to the first 100 Fairfax households only! For more details, see the link below.

Are you unsure what service you currently have?  The default service is the MCE Light Green program (50% renewable energy).  PG&E provides electricity to those customers that “opted-out” of the MCE service.

Why do MCE customers receive PG&E bills?  MCE provides its customers with electricity only. PG&E delivers the gas and maintains the transmission lines for electricity, so even if you are an MCE customer you will get a PG&E bill. The MCE portion of your service appears on your PGE bill.

SIGN UP FOR DEEP GREEN HERE!  Any questions?  Please contact FairfaxCAC@gmail.com.

–Jennifer Hammond,  Executive Director, Sustainable Fairfax; Committee Member, Fairfax Climate Action

Sign Up for Deep Green and Vote For Sustainable Fairfax

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Sign up for Marin Clean Energy’s Deep Green plan and
WRITE IN Sustainable Fairfax for a contest to win $1,000!  
Deep Green allows you to power your home or business with 100% renewable energy, paying only a penny more per kilowatt-hour to help combat Climate Change.  When Marin Clean Energy reaches 1,000 Deep Green customers, they will donate a $1,000 prize to the nonprofit with the most votes.
Fill out the registration form today!

Commonsense Coalition – Please Note Mailers from PG&E

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If you’re in Marin or San Francisco, you’ve got a wall of junkmail coming at you from PG&E. Oh, beg pardon. You have a wall of junk coming at you from “The Commonsense Coalition.” This is a coalition of one, and that one is PG&E. 

In teeny tiny letters, in ever more pale ink, you may be able to find the line on those mailers that says something about PacificGas&Electric. Or maybe you left your magnifying glass at home and you can’t find PG&E on there.
Regardless, these 100% PG&E mailers are everywhere, they’re expensive as heck, and they’re clearly meant to scare the pants off us. If we didn’t have brains in our heads, it might be hard to know what to do about it.
First, know that this is a straight out disinformation campaign. These mailers are packed with the same tired ol’ threats PG&E’s Joe Nation has been trotting out in council meetings (rebutted, again and again) since 2008. Some of them are the same threats (again, examined and rejected) used by PG&E to generate fear and confusion around San Joaquin’s CCA in a devastating disinformation campaign down there. As they’ve made clear to their shareholders, PG&E has one motive behind everything they throw at this: STOP the CCAs. Halt the threat to earnings.
 
It’s faux grassroots on a boardroom budget, with just that one simple goal: shut the competition down. PG&E knows Marin Clean Energy — if it can just survive PG&E’s onslaught — will succeed, and compete. And then replicate. Why else would they go to these extraordinary measures and $35 million dollar budgets to stop it?

Marin Clean Energy Action Needed

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Marin Clean Energy logo with tagline "My Community, My Choice"Marin Clean Energy is on it’s way to becoming a reality in 2010! Eight towns and the County voted last fall to join together to set up our community based clean energy system. Now we’re into the nitty-gritty details and you can help all of Marin get the best Marin Clean Energy System we can have.

   MCE has the potential to integrate energy efficiency and local power generation. Energy efficiency is the cheapest ‘clean energy’ available and we would create good local jobs. Public Goods Funds are available to Marin and we should make sure that we get the funding, because Marin Clean Energy can do better Energy Efficiency, Solar, and Low-income programs than PG&E.

Please email your MCE county representative and your MCE town councilor and say that we need to bring energy efficiency and local power generation front and center into all MCE proposals.