Saturday, September 23, 2017

Connected and Getting Green

Greetings!

At this point in my life, I have the ability to design a way of living which walks my talk.  So my goal in the future is zero emissions, and as much reuse as possible.

I'm getting rid of my gasoline-fueled car, and have bought a 2017 BOLT.  Capable of 230 miles on a charge, it's charged every few days at night from a dedicated circuit at the front of my garage supported by the 24 solar panels on my roof.  The panels supply more than enough to charge our cars, and during most of the year reduce our demand for external electricity from Sonoma Clean Power to very little.  The City of Santa Rosa treats our 160,000 gallons of wastewater, and sends it to the Geysers up in the hills east of us to CalPine to generate electricity which it sells back to Sonoma Clean Power.

So our wastewater and the sun on our roof fuel our cars.  The Bolt is a mobile hotspot, so a wifi-accessible handheld substitutes for a cell phone.  All my computer devices access our email and the internet through it.   Hardly anything I consume isn't readily available whereever I am.  I'm finding myself moving as seemlessly through my community as I have been through the house.

So how could my community help more of us take actions like this?  Encourage the use of, and the affordability of electric cars.  The City should designate and equip more of its parking lots and structures with charging devices powered by the solar panels recently installed on City building roofs.  Electric car-charging parking spaces should be free (but time-limited), and subsidized by higher rates for gasoline-fueled car parking spaces.

Waste from portable toilets should be allowed to be deposited into the City's wastewater treatment intake for free, and the reduced costs of their operation used to expand the number of free portable toilets at parks and in other public areas.

Let's all work together to help us walk our talk.