July 29, 2022
San Rafael City Council
1400 Fifth Avenue
San Rafael, CA 94901
RE: Response to Grand Jury on Electrification
Honorable Mayor and Council Members,
Sustainable San Rafael requests your strong response to the really excellent report from the Marin Grand Jury calling for Electrification of Marin's Buildings. Electrification is essential both to reduce risks to public health and safety and to eliminate over a quarter of the GHG emissions
that our city is contributing to increasingly deadly and costly climate change.
In framing your required response to the Grand Jury, we urge you to commit to its recommendations R1 and R2
to adopt a reach code requiring new buildings to be all electric and incentivizing electrification when renovating existing buildings. The countywide model ordinance now
being finalized by the County, San Rafael and other
jurisdictions enables these recommendations to be met
by the January 1, 2023 target set by the Grand Jury.
We also urge your continued participation with towns
and cities countywide to implement recommendation R3
to develop a comprehensive Countywide Building
Electrification Plan by January 1, 2024 in order to
achieve electrification of existing buildings as rapidly as possible. The report includes a number of economically
viable strategies for meeting that challenge, as does the letter submitted to you by Marin Conservation League,
which we wholeheartedly endorse.
All three recommendations align with your Climate
Change Action Plan 2022 priority actions, your findings adopting the EIR for General Plan 2040, and the General Plan itself--which calls for "electrification of building systems and appliances in new buildings and those that
currently use natural gas . . . by requiring new or
replacement furnaces and appliances to be electric . . ." We're out of time on climate. The Supreme Court, the
fossil fuel industry's ongoing misinformation, a fossilized political party, and entrenched denial of scientific fact BOARD OF DIRECTORS
William Carney, President
Linda Jackson, Vice President
Stuart Siegel, Secretary
Arlin Benavides
Greg Brockbank
Kay Karchevski
Kiki La Porta
Annika Osborn
Bob Spofford
415.457.7656
have all constrained the federal government's ability to deal with a global climate crisis spiraling out of control-- with intensifying impacts increasingly evident as heat
waves, drought, fire, smoke, unhealthy air, and coastal flooding here in San Rafael.
We look now to local government to lead us away from
the fossil fuels causing these damages, towards effective and feasible solutions like building electrification--a powerful climate solution largely within the purview of local government to regulate and to achieve.
Thank you for your leadership.
Sincerely,
William Carney
SSR President