ON BEING GREEN
The CCM^® Green Awards
January/February 2008

View the nominees

In the pursuit of a healthy environment and viable future, it is often difficult to gauge whether we are improving the situation or if hysteria and green gimmicks give us the illusion of a greater global consciousness. On the Central Coast, a region known for its individualists, it can be especially hard to determine where “we” stand; but it is precisely that individualism—that inclination to set standards rather than follow them—that promises a bright green future.

While it’s always wise to be wary of government agendas and marketing ploys, while it’s smart to measure gain with a grain of salt, the optimism and sincerity expressed by the many legitimate efforts, policies, and people answering the call to action deserve our faith and support.

Even our governor has turned out to be a trendsetting green go-getter. He recently sued the Environmental Protection Agency for slowing us down—not the other way around. After blowing the country out of the water with AB32 (the first statewide program in the U.S. to cap greenhouse gas emissions from major industries to 1990 levels by 2020) Schwarzenegger raised the stakes with the nation’s first Low Carbon Fuel Standard, which other states have already begun to mimic.

If the EPA gets with the program, the measure (which requires that the transportation fuels sold in California reduce their carbon by at least 10 percent by 2020) should help with what Mary Byrd, Air Quality Information Specialist for Santa Barbara County Air Pollution Control District, says is a premier contributor to air pollution. Large ships passing through the Santa Barbara Channel and intense wildfire seasons in the past two years have also contributed recently to the highest particle levels in the air in history.

As another way to counteract these carbon emissions, Schwarzenegger began the Million Solar Roofs Initiative, which requires home developers to offer solar, and creates incentives to increase the already screaming demand (growing at about 40 percent a year) for the clean and renewable power. Morgan Rafferty, Executive Director of the Environmental Center of San Luis Obispo (ECOSLO), looks to the sun as well. “Solar power is something that we have a lot of potential for here,” she says, mentioning a specific solar-thermal facility that is going to be built in the Carrizo Plains by Ozra Energy. Meanwhile, back in Santa Barbara, a proposal for the first commercial wind energy generation facility of the Central Coast was filed last year by Pacific Renewable Energy Generation. The proposed $120 million Lompoc Wind Energy Project would produce as much as 120 megawatts of electricity—and if Tam Hunt, Energy Director of Santa Barbara’s Community Environmental Council (CEC), gets his way, this will be just the beginning for clean energy on the Central Coast. The CEC recently launced a “Fossil free by 2033” campaign for Santa Barbara that would eliminate dependence on oil and coal through alternate sources and simply conservation.

The Architecture 2030 Coalition, also led by the CEC, passed an Energy Ordinance last year to acknowledge and resolve the fact that buildings are responsible for about 40 percent of all energy use in our region. The 2030 plan, also promoted by SLO Green Build, requires new commercial construction to be 10 percent more efficient than current California Title 24 standards (already ahead of the rest of the country) and new residential construction to improve by 20 percent.

California is also leading the way in watching its waste products. “In California in particular, we have higher requirements [for recycling],” claims Rafferty, “and in this county we are meeting huge high standards for the percentage of waste that goes into recycling,” she says. Rafferty also commended local requirements to capture methane from the landfill for energy production uses—a tactic that the whole state will soon adopt as part of AB32.

Though waste management is ahead, wasted water remains as one of our biggest challenges on the Central Coast. Rafferty reminds us that some cities are under Level of Severity 3, which means they can’t build new houses—sustainably designed or not. Los Osos has seawater intrusion. Paso Robles found a 90 foot drop in their groundwater basin due to increased well-extraction. Nipomo is looking at building an $85 million desalination plant. In spite of this drought, she says there are many places in San Luis Obispo County where we use 60 percent of our water outdoors. “We have this idea that everything is unlimited,” Rafferty exclaims.

Farmland is among our precious resources to be conserved. “Given the rural character of the county, we have an amazing opportunity to meet many of our food needs sustainably. Preservation of remaining ag land should be a high priority, as should the concept of SMART growth,” Hunter Francis, co-founder and Program Associate for the Sustainable Agriculture Resource Consortium (SARC) at Cal Poly, claims. He praises the Central Coast Vineyard Team in Paso Robles whose leadership has helped wine-grape growers, and growers in general, in California to adopt practices for sustainability.

From air pollution to wind power, from conserved energy to wasted water, from wise building to SMART growth, it seems the Central Coast is on the right track thanks to what Francis calls our “leading voices and thinkers in sustainability”—but has a long road ahead. The businesses on the following pages were nominated by readers and voted by judges as the leaders in their field in driving us down that path to the greener side. Representing our biggest economical powerhouses on the Central Coast—Agriculture, Energy, Building, and Retail—they are victors symbolic of a growing movement that is sure to preserve the beauty and richness of the region for all posterity. More (clean) power to them.