OUR MISSION: To provide our customers with high-quality, efficient and reliable water, power and sewer services in a manner that values environmental and community interests and sustains the resources entrusted to our care.
525 Golden Gate Avenue, 13th Floor
San Francisco, CA 94102
T 415.554.3155
F 415.554.3161
TTY 415.554.3488
November 4, 2024
To: President Kate H. Stacy
Vice President Joshua Arce
Commissioner Avni Jamdar
Commissioner Steve Leveroni
Through: Dennis J. Herrera, General Manager
From: David Behar, Climate Program Director
Re: Multi-Enterprise Climate Program Update
The following presents an update on activities underway at the SFPUC related to climate change mitigation, adaptation, and collaboration. This memorandum provides a high-level overview of key projects underway. It was developed by staff working on the initiatives described below. All these programs are led by teams at the SFPUC, often working across business units. Special thanks for their contributions to this memorandum go to Amod Dhakal, Anna Roche, Dan Fuchs, Daniela Brandao, Ellen Natesan, Joanne Yee, Kieran Yater, Margaret Hannaford, Nikolai Sklaroff, Ryan Batjiaka, and Sarah Minick.
Mitigation
(reducing greenhouse gas emissions to lessen global warming)
Direct Pay Provisions of the Inflation Reduction Act
The Inflation Reduction Act (IRA) signed into law by President Biden is the largest climate action investment in history. The Capital Finance team began the work of pursuing funding before final regulations were adopted.
• Starting to work with the City Attorney’s Office and Controllers Office and Finance leadership in late summer 2022, the Capital Finance Team has engaged municipal advisors, counsel and accountants to evaluate potential capital financing opportunities created by the Inflation Reduction Act (IRA) across all four of the rated entities managed by the SFPUC (Water, Wastewater, Power and CleanPowerSF).
Multi-Enterprise Climate Program Update November 4, 2024 Page 2 of 10 • Developed project screening tools and training sessions with the help of our consultants and conducted training sessions for not only finance staff, but also program and project managers with the hope that understanding the game-changing nature of the IRA funding would not only allow the SFPUC to take advantage of direct pay tax credits for work we are already undertaking, but the opportunity to rethink the strategy and nature of projects we are undertaking in the future.
• The SFPUC has led the rest of the City and been a national first adopter, registering its first projects in early July 2024 for such tax credits, including municipally owned solar projects and electric vehicles brought into service in calendar year 2023. Based on these preregistrations the SFPUC will file for direct pay tax refunds for the projects already undertaken in 2023.
• The SFPUC Capital Finance and External Affairs teams are working collaboratively with other City Departments to share the information we have already gleaned as other City departments also work to learn about the program.
• The biggest future opportunities of this program are ahead of us over the Act’s 10-year term, including potentially for the Biosolids Digester Facilities Project (BDFP), future solar projects and other projects that may yet be developed over the life of the program. The BDFP is a particularly complex project the balances the rules of tax- exempt financing, WIFIA financing and also now the rules associated with IRA tax credits. The legal and advisory teams have been providing guidance to ensure tax exemption is preserved and to help the project team potentially qualify for IRA tax credits.
Clean Power SF
CleanPowerSF is a community choice energy provider that began operating in 2016 with a mission to provide San Francisco customers with the choice of having their electricity supplied from clean, renewable sources at a competitive price. CleanPowerSF offers three options for cleaner energy: Green (at least 50% California renewable portfolio standards (RPS)-eligible renewable energy and low carbon energy supply), SuperGreen (100% California RPS-eligible renewable energy and zero carbon energy supply), and SuperGreen Saver (100% California RPS-eligible renewable energy and low carbon energy supply at a 20% discounted rate for eligible low-income customers). CleanPowerSF is now serving over 380,000 San Francisco customers. In 2023, all of the energy CleanPowerSF provided to its customers came from 100% RPS-eligible or greenhouse gas-free electricity.
Power Enterprise Customer Programs
The Power Enterprise provides numerous customer programs to both Hetch Hetchy Power and CleanPowerSF customers. Through rebates, specially designed rates and services, and other incentive structures, these programs help customers use energy as efficiently as possible, save money, and participate in San Francisco’s clean energy future. Customer programs are essential to achieving Power’s Business Plan objective to provide high-quality service to current customers and grow our customer base. Customer programs also promote local investment, equity in clean energy, and stewardship and conservation of our Hetch Hetchy and other resources.
Our customer programs strive to meet our customers’ needs, the business needs of the Enterprise, and environmental justice and City priorities like support for affordable housing and energy affordability. Power uses the following guiding principles when designing and implementing programs: advancing building efficiency and decarbonization; equity in access to clean energy services; helping customers manage their energy bills; improving utilization of
Multi-Enterprise Climate Program Update November 4, 2024 Page 3 of 10 electricity generating assets and reducing energy supply costs for ratepayers; local investment in clean energy technologies; and stewardship and conservation of Hetch Hetchy resources.
One key program Power runs is GoSolarSF. Launched in 2008, GoSolarSF provides monetary incentives to help CleanPowerSF and Hetch Hetchy residential and business electric customers install photovoltaic (PV) solar panels. With a focused emphasis on supporting low-income and non-profit customers, GoSolarSF has helped to reduce participants’ electricity bills and the City’s carbon footprint. Since the program’s inception, the SFPUC has supported the development of 24 MW of solar sited on San Franciscan’s rooftops and provided more than $30 million in solar rebates to help develop the local market for solar power. The SFPUC also offers an incentive program to help low-income GoSolarSF participants replace their inverters and thus increase the longevity of their solar systems.
Power also incentivizes transportation electrification and electric vehicle charging through the EV Charge SF Program, which provides rebates and technical assistance to customers considering installing electric vehicle charging in new construction. Additionally, new programs incentivizing building electrification, e-mobility, heat pump water heaters, and demand response see active participation among various customer groups. Power is continuing to develop more clean energy programs in support of the City’s climate and equity goals and plans to launch new incentives to encourage efficiency, distributed energy resources, load management, as well as transportation and building electrification in the coming years.
Distributed Energy Resources (DER) Projects
SFPUC Power has developed 8.6 megawatts (MW) of onsite solar power capacity on City-owned buildings and facilities. These projects provide power directly to their host buildings as part of the Hetch Hetchy Power program’s electricity service. In addition to managing solar installations, the SFPUC works with Hetch Hetchy Power customers to increase their energy efficiency with lighting and heating, ventilating, and air conditioning (HVAC) upgrade projects. As the City strives to decarbonize all buildings, the SFPUC’s DER team has also been developing fuel switching demonstration retrofits and providing engineering design and contracting services to replace natural gas heating systems with all-electric heat pump and/or variable refrigerant flow (VRF) systems.
Hetch Hetchy Power
For 100 years, the SFPUC has been generating greenhouse gas-free hydropower as the City’s full-service, publicly owned electric utility. This clean Hetch Hetchy Power energizes municipal services such as MUNI, public schools, and the San Francisco International Airport, and an increasing number of residents and businesses like The Shipyard housing development and tenants of Salesforce Transit Center. Hetch Hetchy Power currently provides 20% of San Francisco’s total electricity demand with clean power.
Biosolids carbon sequestration
SFPUC produces approximately 58,000 wet tons of biosolids per year. In part to comply with SB 1383, which limits the use of biosolids for alternative daily cover in landfills because of resultant methane emissions in the anaerobic landfill environment, and also in recognition of the value of biosolids as a resource that can improve soil fertility and sequester carbon, all SFPUC biosolids are now used as a fertilizer. The biosolids are land applied, composted, and converted into liquid fertilizer, used on Northern California ranches to improve soil health and combat climate change by storing carbon.
Utilization of biogas as a renewable energy source
Biogas is natural gas produced during the treatment of wastewater solids. This carbon-based energy was recently plant material that was consumed by humans as food. It differs from non-
Multi-Enterprise Climate Program Update November 4, 2024 Page 4 of 10 renewable fossil sources of carbon in that this carbon was recently pulled out of the atmosphere by plants. As humans are constantly consuming carbon and excreting it, biogas is a renewable source of gas and can be used to power vehicles, generate heat and electricity or injected into the gas grid. SFPUC is developing a project to upgrade the biogas produced at its Southeast Treatment Plant to natural gas quality and inject into the City’s gas grid. This will displace fossil fuel derived natural gas with renewable natural gas, also called biomethane. Additionally, the Ocean Side Treatment Plant is upgrading its biogas handling facility and installing three new 600 kW generators that will convert biogas into electricity and heat that will be used to offset energy demands at the treatment plant.
Adaptation
(maintaining resilience in the face of climate change)
Long Term Vulnerability Assessment (LTVA) for the Water Enterprise The Water Enterprise assessed long-term vulnerabilities of the Regional Water System to meet water supply through the year 2070 considering a variety of long-term uncertainties. The uncertainties included are climate change, demand, regulations, finance and infrastructure failures. This assessment was done in collaboration with the Water Research Foundation (WRF) and was carried out by the University of Massachusetts (UMass). The report was released in December 2021 by WRF and the Water Enterprise is continuing to work on integrating LTVA tools and methods for evaluating alternative water supply projects and has made progress in implementing the modeling platform within Microsoft’s Azure cloud environment.
Hetch Hetchy Water and Power Forecasting Advancements
The Hetch Hetchy Water and Power (HHWP) Division of Water Enterprise continues to make improvements to existing forecasting methods and tools used to plan reservoir and powerhouse operations. Processes have been developed for assimilation of Airborne Snow Observatory (ASO) estimates of distributed snow water equivalent into the USGS Precipitation-Runoff Modeling System (PRMS) hydrologic model. This assimilation has demonstrated consistent improvements to inflow forecast accuracy in terms of prediction of seasonal water supply volumes and streamflow timing. HHWP has begun a project to reconfigure and recalibrate the PRMS model, with the intention to produce a more comprehensive and high-resolution predictive model structure that is better able to capture variations in weather and climate input variables. Such improvements – along with continued cooperation and interaction with agencies like California Department of Water Resources, Scripps Center for Western Weather and Water Extremes, and California-Nevada River Forecast Center – will allow for more adaptive operational planning approaches for managing interrelated issues such as climate change, short- and long-term power generation planning, environmental release planning, and coordinated risk management with outside agencies.
Advanced Quantitative Precipitation Information (AQPI) System The SF Bay Advanced Quantitative Precipitation Information (AQPI) System was funded in 2016 by a grant from the California Department of Water Resources (DWR) and awarded to Sonoma Water and participating Bay Area agencies. The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) is building the AQPI System and delivering the AQPI end-product to these agencies. The AQPI system when completed will provide 4 X-Band and one C-Band radars and information systems that will increase the accuracy of weather forecasting and response systems throughout the Bay Area. The SFPUC is constructing one X-band radar in the Peninsula watershed. The radar system was expected to be operational in 2024. However, due to power supply issues, installation could not be completed in 2023. SFPUC is diligently working to resolve the issue, and the radar is now expected to be operational in 2025. With these radars in place, improved forecasting will assist water managers, reservoir operators, wastewater plant managers,
Multi-Enterprise Climate Program Update November 4, 2024 Page 5 of 10 and flood and emergency responders to respond to extreme water events in a timely fashion. SF Bay AQPI has formed a Local Partner Agency Committee (LPAC) to develop the framework for regional collaboration and agreement.
In addition to completing the construction and operation of the X-band radar the SFPUC is also preparing to utilize the data generated by the radar system. SFPUC is coordinating with the Scripps Institute of oceanography at UC San Diego on this effort. Scripps is working on providing precipitation forecast data for various locations within the SFPUC watersheds in the Bay area.
The radar data the SFPUC receives will be imported and merged with other existing sources of weather and hydrologic data for data processing. The SFPUC Water Enterprise is working on developing a modeling platform compatible with the existing hydrologic database and models that can ingest the new weather forecast data and produce inflow forecasts at reservoirs. This will allow development of a modern inflow forecasting and warning system.
Sea Level Rise and Flooding Working Group (City-wide)
SFPUC staff participate in the City’s Sea Level Rise Working Group which includes flooding in the list of climate change related issues that require City-wide coordination. The group meets on a bi- monthly basis and continues to track sea level rise related updates and how they may apply to San Francisco. The Working Group continues to coordinate activities across the City, including progress on the Waterfront Resilience Programs, discussed immediately below.
Waterfront Resilience Program, including Equity Working Group The Port’s Waterfront Resilience Program includes coordinated projects to ensure a resilient waterfront in the face of seismic and climate change related hazards. In 2024, SFPUC staff participated in the Waterfront Resilience Program at a number of levels. The Wastewater Enterprise participated in the regular “champions meetings” throughout the year as well as ClimateSF, reporting major issues and decision-points up through SFPUC management and engaging Water & Power when relevant. WWE also participated in working sessions with the US Army Corps of Engineers to analyze impacts of coastal defenses on our combined sewer system and seek mutually beneficial solutions. In the coming year, the team will collaborate with all participating city departments to finalize the Flood Study, a requirement toward obtaining a federal cost share for coastal protection in San Francisco. In addition, the City team will be initiating planning across all reaches of the plan to map out the future of infrastructure, utilities, transportation, maritime uses, and urban design of the future waterfront.
ClimateSF
Climate SF, formalized in February 2020, is a comprehensive multiagency effort to coordinate and oversee existing and future climate resilience projects. The Climate Resilience Program Charter and workplan is being updated. The charter is a commitment between its Core Agencies, of which the SFPUC is one, to support the City’s guiding vision for resilience through collective action. The charter provides programmatic structure in the form of program objectives, principles, roles and responsibilities, communications protocols, decision-making processes, and budgets to guide the development and implementation of a supporting workplan. ClimateSF activities help the city and the public understand what success looks like and how progress is tracked, promoting accountability and alignment across all activities. ClimateSF is led and coordinated from the Office of Resilience and Capital Planning. This group intends to deliver consistent messages about how the City is addressing climate impacts, and other shared products such as financing, responding to Civil Grand Jury reports, grant opportunities, legislative, and governance strategies, common communications materials, and a citywide framework for addressing climate resilience. Climate resilience involves both climate change mitigation and adaptation, as well as how we capitalize on the synergies between the two.
Multi-Enterprise Climate Program Update November 4, 2024 Page 6 of 10 ClimateSF has also been coordinating the City’s response to SB 272, which is a new state law that requires California coastal communities to develop strategies and recommend projects to address future sea level rise by 2034. To comply with this state mandate, ClimateSF is in the process of preparing an SB 1 grant application to the Ocean Protection Council to complete the required adaptation planning along our entire Bay Shoreline. The SF Planning Department will be the lead agency for this effort.
Ocean Beach Climate Change Adaptation Project
Starting in the late 1990’s the coastal area south of Sloat Boulevard, in front of the Oceanside Treatment Plant (Plant), began experiencing climate-induced erosion. The on-going erosion is threatening the most seaward component of the Plant’s infrastructure – the Lake Merced Tunnel, a fourteen-foot diameter wastewater conveyance and storage facility located under the Great Highway south of Sloat Boulevard.
In support of a comprehensive solution to the erosion problem, the SFPUC and several other CCSF agencies actively participated in the development of the 2012 Ocean Beach Master Plan (OBMP). The OBMP was an interagency effort to develop a sustainable long-term vision for Ocean Beach. The OBMP addresses public access, environmental protection, and infrastructure needs in the context of climate-induced erosion. The OBMP developed six key recommendations that are organized by geographical reaches along Ocean Beach and are designed to be implemented incrementally over a period of decades. The Ocean Beach Climate Change Adaptation Project (Project) is a CCSF project, being led by the SFPUC and addresses two of the six key actions:
1) Removal of the Great Highway between Sloat and Skyline Boulevard, and 2) The introduction of a multipurpose coastal protection/restoration/access system
To implement these two OBMP recommendations, the SFPUC established the Project which includes three phases: 1) Short-term Improvements, 2) Army Corps of Engineers (ACOE) Beach Nourishment, and 3) Long-term Improvements. While the Long-term Improvements phase is being developed, the Short-term Improvements which are on-going and ACOE Beach Nourishment, which is completed and placed nearly 400,000 CY of sand at the project location, provide coastal erosion mitigation and protection of critical wastewater treatment infrastructure at Ocean Beach south of Sloat Boulevard to Skyline Boulevard within CCSF.
The Project is one of the first large, cross-agency infrastructure projects being built in San Francisco to address the long-term physical changes needed to combat climate induced sea level rise at Ocean Beach. Recent milestones include passing legislation at the Board of Supervisors to allow closure of the Great Highway between Sloat and Skyline Boulevards. Just north of this project, Prop K proposes an ordinance to amend the Park Code to permanently close another section of the Great Highway just north of the project between Sloat Boulevard and Lincoln Way. Making the space a permanent park will contribute to dune restoration work which will help protect them from rising sea levels.
The project team is currently engaged with the California Coastal Commission on specific project details and conditions to be outlined in the Coastal Development Permit. The process will likely result in project refinements and schedule delays.
The Project is currently expected to go to construction in 2026.
CBI Certified and Green Bonds
Since 2015, the SFPUC has issued more than $5.3 billion in CBI Certified and self-certified green bonds to finance Water, Wastewater, and Power capital projects that advance climate change
Multi-Enterprise Climate Program Update November 4, 2024 Page 7 of 10 mitigation or adaptation, making the SFPUC one of the largest municipal issuers of green labeled bonds in the United States, according to S&P Global Ratings. The SFPUC was an early adopter of Green Bonds and issued its largest green bond to date in 2024 with the issuance of the $970.83 million 2024 Series A and 2024 Series C Wastewater Bonds. Green bonds are similar in all respects to the PUC’s other bonds except the proceeds must be earmarked for projects that specifically provide environmental benefits. All but $106M of the SFPUC’s green bonds have been certified under criteria developed by the Climate Bonds Initiative (CBI), a non-profit organization established to promote the issuance of green bonds. In 2017, the SFPUC was recognized at CBI’s Annual Conference for issuing the world’s first Water Infrastructure Bond certified under the Climate Bonds Standard, and the SFPUC was awarded Environmental Finance's US Municipal Green Bond of the Year award in 2019 and 2021. The CBI certification is regarded as the platinum standard for certification as it is fully aligned with the Green Bond Principles developed by the International Capital Markets Association (ICMA) and is consistent with achieving the goals of the Paris Climate Agreement. The CBI certification also requires ongoing reporting to maintain the certification of the bonds including a post-issuance report by a CBI approved verifier. In 2020, the SFPUC became the first US municipal agency to list a green bond on the London Stock Exchange.
In 2023 the SFPUC issued the most Green Bonds in its history when all three enterprises came to the bonds market in a single year. And this year, the Wastewater Enterprise’s 2024 Wastewater Revenue Bonds included the SFPUC’s largest issuance of Green Bonds to date. The team had the opportunity to tout the success of this program at the Morgan Stanley Sustainability Summit in New York in May 2024 and other municipal investor conferences.
Climate Resilience Programmatic WIFIA Wastewater Loan
In 2023. the Capital Finance and Loans and Grants divisions in Finance concluded a multi-year application and negotiation process with the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency to establish a programmatic loan program for six wastewater climate resilience projects. This programmatic Water Infrastructure Finance and Innovation Act (WIFIA) Loan Agreement was sized for $791 million of future loans and the first loan under the program was signed for a $369 million Loan.
The advantage of this program is that the finance team was able to set the rate for the loan in April based on U.S. Treasury rates, even though the loans proceeds may not be drawn upon for several years. Further loans under the remaining capacity will be locked in in the future.
Climate Finance Working Group
Members of the Capital Finance team participated in the Climate Finance Working Group. Initially convened by the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency in 2022, The Climate Finance Working Group as part of the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency’s Creating Resilient Water Utilities (CRWU) initiative to investigate the impacts of climate change on water utility bond ratings and credit worthiness and which is now focused on climate risk disclosure. The working group brings together subject matter experts from the financial and insurance industries, academia, and water sector utility managers to investigate the impacts of climate change on water utility bond ratings and credit worthiness.
The Working Group’s goals are to share information to foster a cross-disciplinary understanding of the effects of climate-related vulnerabilities, how water utilities manage associated risks, and how financial and insurance industries utilize this information when assessing water sector utility credit worthiness. The Working Group recognized that water sector utilities that effectively identify, manage, and disclose climate change risk and resiliency efforts in a responsible manner are more highly rated, broaden the investor base, improve insurance access and pricing, and gain more support from ratepayers. In March 2024, the Working Group published its first report to summarize its activity and identify opportunities for the future. https://www.epa.gov/system/files/documents/2024-02/final-workgroup-report_508-compliant.pdf
Multi-Enterprise Climate Program Update November 4, 2024 Page 8 of 10
Green Infrastructure
Green infrastructure projects divert stormwater from the sewer system while delivering multiple additional benefits to San Franciscans, including increased ecological function and urban habitat, increased bike and pedestrian safety, increased flood resilience, and improved public realm. The most commonly used green infrastructure technologies include rain gardens, permeable pavement, and rainwater harvesting systems. In 2008, the first grants for green infrastructure were developed. In 2010, the Stormwater Management Ordinance (SMO) was enacted. In 2012, the first green infrastructure capital projects began. These remain the three primary “buckets” of the Green Infrastructure program and each one has grown over time. In February of 2019 SFPUC launched a large Green Infrastructure Grant Program, aimed at transforming large impervious parcels into multi-benefit spaces that manage stormwater and improve San Francisco’s urban spaces. We have granted a total of over $23 million in the first 5years. Our long-standing Urban Watershed Stewardship Grant program has continued to lift up great stormwater management ideas from community members and their non-profit partners; we’ve granted over $2 million. In the regulatory space, the Stormwater Management Ordinance has continued to be our most effective catalyst for integrating green infrastructure into our city – over 460 projects subject to the SMO have received final approval. Together they will manage stormwater running off of over 500 acres of impervious surface totally over 260,000,000 gallons per year. And in the capital plan, green infrastructure has been integrated to help achieve both stormwater management and flood resilience goals and the agency has committed over $90 million over the next ten years to manage stormwater.
The current focus of the team is to scale up the implementation of green infrastructure through each of the above programs as well as City agency partnerships with the goal of managing 1 billion gallons of stormwater each year with green infrastructure by 2050, or 10% of all rain that falls on San Francisco each year.
The Wastewater Enterprise has increased our emphasis on flood resilience using programmatic strategies. For example, working with the Department of Building Inspection, the Planning Department, and the City Administrator’s Office, the SFPUC is leading an effort to incorporate requirements for new construction to build the finished floor above the elevation of the 100-year storm. This would harness the development cycle to ensure that the city becomes more and more flood resilient over time. While this is a standard requirement in FEMA flood zones, the SFPUC is going above and beyond by seeking this level of flood resilience in areas outside of the FEMA map that experience stormwater driven flooding.
WWE is also in the process of updating our Floodwater Grant Program to increase participation.
The WWE has also begun to incorporate nature-based solutions and watershed planning into our work on flood resilience, expanding outside of the traditional space of water quality protection and peak flow and management of smaller storms.
Collaboration
Water Utility Climate Alliance (WUCA)
In February 2007, recognizing that climate change represented a growing threat to water utilities, the SFPUC hosted the first national Water Utility Climate Change Summit. The Summit brought together over 200 utility, federal, state, NGO, and other interested parties and out of it WUCA was launched (www.wucaonline.org). WUCA now consists of 12 water utilities serving over 50 million Americans and shares information and plans work on adaptation in monthly conference calls, an active committee structure, and biannual planning meetings. WUCA continues to produce value for members and influence the developing climate change adaptation arena. This past year, activities and outputs included: 1) in partnership with US Water Alliance, developed a set of six
Multi-Enterprise Climate Program Update November 4, 2024 Page 9 of 10 case studies in the implementation of equitable climate solutions in the water sector and a road map for WUCA utilities to embed equity and environmental justice into climate work; 2) created an FAQ with outside experts about the outcomes and use value of the latest global climate modeling ensemble (CMIP6), continuing WUCA’s long tradition of translating climate science for use by society and 3) initiated a two year project to develop climate resilient design guidance strategies for capital programs and maintenance.
Bay Area Climate Adaptation Network
In 2018, the SFPUC helped lead the launch the Bay Area Climate Adaptation Network (BayCAN – www.baycanadapt.org) , a collaborative of local government and community-based organization leaders that promotes collaboration, networking, and co-planning across institutional boundaries on approaches to climate change adaptation. Part of a network of eight regional collaboratives across the state (https://arccacalifornia.org/about/), BayCAN has been chaired or co-chaired by the SFPUC since its inception. BayCAN continues to focus on sea level rise, wildfire and smoke, water and wastewater, public health, climate justice and frontline communities and other adaptation issues. The SFPUC has rotated out as chair but the City remains a member, and ClimateSF director Eric Vaughan has been elected to the BayCAN Steering Committee.
Science and Society, Research and Practice
Beginning with our efforts to launch and develop WUCA, the SFPUC has for years helped lead efforts to bridge the cultural and knowledge chasms between climate scientists and adaptation practitioners (“practitioners” is a term referring to those who are engaged in the practice of developing or implementing adaptation projects or programs). Better collaboration and communication between these communities is necessary as both science and practice evolve.
Over the past year, a number of SFPUC initiatives have produced valuable knowledge and relationships that can help break down barriers and contribute to
1) The SFPUC, working with Port of San Francisco and Office of Resilience and Capital Planning staff, led development of City and County comments on updated state Sea Level Rise Guidance (2024) released by the Ocean Protection Council in early 2024, Final comments, submitted by ClimateSF, sought to strengthen connectivity between climate science and planning guidance to ensure communities working under the guidance could right-size their adaptation investments. Comments also sought to strengthen discussion in the guidance of the importance of adaptive capacity and adaptive management in planning long term adaptation response under deep uncertainty. With final state guidance adopted, a working group including SFPUC is comparing the new guidance against the City’s own Sea Level Rise Guidance and recommending updates to ensure San Francisco is adequately preparing for rising seas.
2) This year, we built on a previous research partnership with sea level scientists to improve practitioner understanding of high end SLR projections (Van de Wal, R., Nicholls, R., Behar, D., et al. A High-End Estimate of Sea-level Rise for Practitioners. 2022. Earth’s Future) and a global survey revealing chaotic uptake of SLR projections in planning (Hirschfeld, D., Behar, D., Nicholls, R. et al. 2023. A Global Survey of the Application of Sea-Level Projections. Communications Earth and Environment). The current work, co-authored with an ice sheet modeler and science philosopher, draws from state-of-the-art Antarctic research (the biggest source of uncertainty related to global sea level rise) and historic approaches to knowledge development and dissemination to advance the definition of “actionable science,” the WUCA-created term widely adopted as an objective in federal and other strategic planning efforts but poorly implemented. The authors seek to better distinguish experimental science from projections supported by multiple lines of scientific evidence that can then be appropriately used to underpin adaptation action. This article uses a case study
Multi-Enterprise Climate Program Update November 4, 2024 Page 10 of 10 examining practitioner “whiplash” in decision guidance documents, including prominently in California, driven by confusion about the difference. (Lipscomb, W., Behar, D., and Morrison, M.A. Sea-level projections, adaptation planning, and actionable science,” The Cryosphere 2024 (in review).
Practitioner Exchange for Effective Response to Sea Level Rise (PEERS) Building on past collaborative and thought leadership work, the SFPUC helped lead the launch PEERS in October 2023 and currently serves as chair of the steering committee. The first global community of practice led by practitioners and focused on coastal resilience, PEERS (www.peerscoastal.org) seeks to support effective and timely coastal adaptation and resilience by connecting and supporting a global network of practitioners and partners. In its first year, PEERS attracted over 500 members in 59 countries, including nearly 200 in the United States. PEERS has regional staff working in North America, Latin American and the Caribbean, Oceania, Europe, and Asia. Projects underway include:
1) Practitioner Inundation Scenarios Mapping (PRISM): A co-production partnership with the NASA Sea Level Change Team to leverage 30 years of satellite data to provide high quality coastal inundation maps at no cost to communities that don’t have these critical planning tools;
2) Leading Practices in Coastal Adaptation: based on interviews with practitioners, PEERS is surveying approaches in five regions of the world – US, New Zealand/Australia, the Mediterranean region, Asia, and Latin America and Caribbean – to identify and produce a report on state-of-the-art coastal adaptation practices. This information will be shared with planners, including in the U.S., where PEERS is also visioning a training program for coastal managers that draws on local-to-global experience;
3) Actionable Science Working Group (ASWG): drawing from the literature indicating a chaotic environment in the use of sea level rise projections, the ASWG will bring leading scientists and practitioners together to co-produce and disseminate guidance to help practitioners identify actionable information for use in planning.