My bill allowing people to use plug-in solar (“balcony solar”) just passed a key Assembly committee.
Plug-in solar is a low cost device that generates a limited amount of solar energy to power your home, reduce the amount of electricity you draw from the grid & thus lower your bill.
SB 868 clears away the needless red tape that currently makes it infeasible for people to use this technology.
Big win for lower utility bills & more clean energy.
Ridership on major Bay Area transit systems continues to go up. When we make transit better — more reliable, safer, cleaner — more people ride. It’s why I’ve worked so hard to fund & reform our transit systems — including authoring the law allowing the upcoming regional funding measure — & why I’ll continue to do so in Congress.
The Senate just passed my bill to ensure people can replace drafty windows with energy-efficient windows, without cities or HOAs obstructing them from doing so. Energy bills are through the roof & people should have the tools to lower their bills.
Right now, some cities & HOAs are banning people from weatherizing their windows for aesthetic reasons, or forcing them to pay dramatically more money to fabricate replica windows.
SB 908 puts a stop to this practice & gives people a tool to lower their cost of living.
Thank you, colleagues!
The Senate just passed my “Plug & Play Solar Act” — allowing people to install small plug-in solar devices, sometimes known as “balcony solar,” in order to lower electric bills.
SB 868 will make plug-in solar an option for millions of Californians who are now shut out from the benefits of solar energy.
Currently, plug-in solar is rarely used in California since you have to enter into a full interconnection agreement with your utility, which isn’t feasible.
Plug-in solar is a great solution for renters, who are largely excluded from the cost-reduction benefits of solar, & for homeowners who can’t afford the upfront costs of rooftop solar.
I’m grateful to our coalition & to my colleagues for passing the bill.
My ancestors buried half their children. All mine are alive. My ancestors' house had a dirt floor. Mine is wood. I have indoor plumbing, I have hot water, I have never in my life hauled a full bucket half a mile and I probably never will. Do you know how rare it is, in human history, for small children to wear shoes? Mine have multiple pairs. I can speak to my relatives who live thousands of miles away, for free, at any time. Video, if we want video. With machine translation, if we speak different languages.
The original Library of Congress had 740 books in it. I have more than that. If I run out of books in my home my local public library has 350,000. If I want to take a hundred books with me on vacation, they all fit on a device that fits in my purse.
I have heat in the winter and AC in the summer and a washing machine and I have never, ever, ever had to scrub a dress clean by hand in the stream. I can look up recipes from more than a hundred different countries and I've tried dozens of them. I ride a clean and modern train across my city for $4, or take a robot taxi if I'm out too late for the train. I donate $40,000 every year to the cause of getting healthcare to the world's poorest people and even after the donations I never have to think about whether I can afford a book, or a pair of shoes, or a cup of coffee.
There is a great deal more to fight for, of course. I hope that our descendants will look back on our lives and list a thousand ways they're richer. Maybe we ourselves will do that, if some of the crazier stuff comes true.
But the abundance is all around you and to a significant degree you aren't feeling it only because fish don't notice water.
@AttilaTheLund@Noahpinion@elonmusk Second, it turns out that marketing EVs as fast and cool (Tesla) grew the market perhaps more than by them being green (Nissan Leaf, which came out at the same time as the Model S, but was half the price, slow, and only an 80 mile range).
@AttilaTheLund@Noahpinion@elonmusk I think there's 2 things going on here in your comment. First, the tax credit helped jumpstart the market, even if we were subsidizing luxury cars. Maybe we could have put an income limit or MSRP limit on the credit? Some places have done this.
Because America treated EVs as hippie-dippy climate bullshit, we are now in danger of losing every single technological race at the same time.
Because increasingly, everything is an EV.
We should have listened to @elonmusk on this.
https://t.co/uF08OtZWEF
@elonmusk Can you help support outlawing all gerrymandering, from both sides? One example is the The Fair Representation Act (H.R. 4632), which was introduced last month.
@drgurner@rohindhar There's lots of CSA options around SF, I'm a member of one of them. In general it's ~the same price as buying the organic options at WF. I'm doing it to get more interesting produce and support local farms. Is the price different in other areas?
So much of "Abundance" is about failures of government in California specifically. So I was pretty damn interested to hear what @GavinNewsom thought of it, and how he'd answer some of those critiques...
Then he invited me on his podcast.
@nickgraynews What problem are you trying to solve by getting away from grass? Sounds like "convenience"? ie not having to water and cut and apply chemicals etc?
Is there some third option? In LA zeroscaping or xeriscaping was catching on. Is there some similar thing for Texas?
@Stan_3s@nickgraynews I'm surprised there's no superchargers on Maui! Looks like there's been one in development for almost 2 years, way too long. Whoever rented that car to you shouldn't be renting them without the infra in place. Like Nick says, charging at home is the real game changer.