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San Francisco Is Requiring Solar Panels on All New Buildings
- davidw 11y agoSimply allowing more density would be a greener plan: http://www.vox.com/2016/4/20/11467110/san-francisco-solar-density http://www.vox.com/2016/4/20/11467110/san-francisco-solar-de...
- saosebastiao 11y agoEven the most progressive cities will not go after the big progressive wins, preferring token measures. Hence, huge advertising campaigns promoting earth hour, but never ever ever in a million years will they touch the gas tax or increase allowable density or stop subsidizing parking.
- rm_-rf_slash 11y agoPaul Krugman once called elevators "the most efficient mass-transit system ever designed."
- rsync 11y agoRelated: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Central%E2%80%93Mid-Levels_escalator_and_walkway_system https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Central%E2%80%93Mid-Levels_esc...
- morgante 11y agoThat was my immediate thought as well. Just one of the many things which makes HK my favorite city in the world.
- djschnei 11y agoThis is very true, he's still an idiot though.
- unethical_ban 11y agoAnd when the power goes out for a few days, and Grandma needs to walk her dog from 60 floors up?
- toby 11y agoScott Wiener, the Supervisor who introduced the bill, also is far more in favor of density than many of the other supes. It's a harder sell here.
- cbhl 11y agoPolitics is more about greenwashing, because a "worse" but popular plan that actually gets enacted is more useful than a "better" but controversial plan that gets stuck in red tape.
- bluthru 11y agoYes, but they aren't mutually exclusive.
- moultano 11y agoNew buildings? In San Francisco?
- cven714 11y agoIt's more likely than you think.
- 6stringmerc 11y agoNot to belittle the catastrophic potential outcome, but the city is quite in a precarious spot vis-a-vis tectonic plates, which may result in new construction opportunities in time.
- davidw 11y agoA lot of stuff not up to standard got knocked down in 1989.
- sbov 11y agoOnly the most vulnerable. The 1989 epicenter was around Santa Cruz. Something similar to the 1906 earthquake would be probably be very bad.
- 6stringmerc 11y agoThat's more what I had in mind. I'm not into reading historical events as absolute predictors - but when I came across a mention that both Ecuador and Japan had seismic events before the 1906 quake in SF...that got my attention up. Over a decade ago I took an absolutely fascinating Earthquakes and Volcanoes course from an 'industry pro' who was doing Adjunct work between gigs - he specialized in diamond and oil/gas deposit work. As in, seismic events would enable him to study new developments and discover pockets for potential recovery operations. His love of his science was contagious and I've held his fearful respect for the Earh's tectonic system ever since.
- mahyarm 11y agoWe have the technology to build high rises that can withstand very strong earthquakes, and they have been proven multiple times in such earthquakes. "Earthquake" zone is not a reason to stop building. SF could improve greatly if they made the minimum height limit to some standard european city size, such as 6-8 stories vs. 4 stories. 2000sqft Apartments on top with stores and large sidewalks & trees on the ground floor replacing the current 2 story standard 1940 sunset district house. It's very pleasant.
- akerro 11y agoWhich senator has some shares in a business?
- tanderson92 11y agoOnly the Feinest?
- geebee 11y agoFor the cost of these solar panels, what else could we be doing to reduce carbon emissions? Here in SF or internationally? I do think that carbon reduction is pretty essential, but it's so essential that I don't think we can waste our money on low yield actions. I'm not saying this strictly is, I'd have to read about it more, but I'm not optimistic that mandating very specific technologies will be a good approach.
- Eric_WVGG 11y agoReduce or eliminate subsidized parking. http://usa.streetsblog.org/2014/11/18/the-parking-tax-benefit-a-7-3-billion-subsidy-for-traffic-congestion/ http://usa.streetsblog.org/2014/11/18/the-parking-tax-benefi...
- superuser2 11y agoYou have to also build good public transit infrastructure, and time it so the parking spots go away when the new transit systems go online (i.e. several decades after they are planned), or you're just making the city less livable and creating more incentive to live in sprawl.
- thescriptkiddie 11y agoThe solar panels are effectively free, because they will pay for themselves in energy savings long before the building owners have paid off their mortgage/recouped their investment. However, increasing the cost of streetside parking would be actually free (to those that don't own cars) and have a much greater impact on local air quality. Nothing is stopping the city from doing both.
- geebee 11y agoKind of odd, though - if the panels will so clearly pay for themselves, why did they have to be mandated? Just to be clear, it isn't a purely rhetorical question - I suppose there's a chance that the people who have to pay the upfront costs don't get to realize the savings (buyers don't always factor in the savings, so construction companies may be reluctant to pay for them). Alternatively, people will sometimes just stick with a very inefficient system for a long time, never really getting around to it until they're prompted (by a mandate or tax incentive). Sometimes this is because people are just unable or reluctant to eat large upfront costs, other times it's something they've intended to get around to for a long time but haven't taken the first step. That said, I do think that if the cost of carbon emissions were genuinely reflected in the price, all these specific technology mandates wouldn't be necessary. I do understand that a single municipality is in no position to make that happen, though.
- guimarin 11y agoThis is pretty typical of SF. Try and solve a problem they are not well suited to solve at the city level. SF has a ton of Fog, building solar panels would not be as beneficial to the city as increasing density and allowing people to have roof-decks. Another great example is homelessness. Homelessness is actually something which should be addressed at the Federal (for Veterans) and State (for people who should receive medical help) levels, not the city. Oh well. The end result of this solar initiative will be to increase costs for the poor. The 'real' solution is for CA gov't to stipulate that all dwellings of X and Y quality that receive Z amounts of sunlight are required to offset A% of their annual energy consumption with Solar/wind energy. You can either build it on your own home or buy a share in a solar/wind farm.
- Eric_WVGG 11y agoWhile I agree that this is perhaps a symbolic gesture at best, one can’t claim that costs are being “increased for the poor” when this will only apply to new buildings which are certainly not being built by or rented to “the poor”
- bryanlarsen 11y agoNew buildings for rich people lower prices for everybody. Apartments are fairly fungible: if nice apartments aren't available, rich people rent not-so-nice apartments, pushing up the prices of those.
- eecsninja 11y agoSee here for an example of this concept, although this is about buying rather than renting: http://sf.curbed.com/2015/10/8/9913302/victorian-disemboweled-by-flippers-takes-a-big-700k-chop http://sf.curbed.com/2015/10/8/9913302/victorian-disembowele...
- rm_-rf_slash 11y agoMy favorite misconception! Here in Ithaca NY, Collegetown used to be a sleepy neighborhood of large divided houses rented to Cornell students. About 20 years ago they began densifying like crazy. 2-3 story houses for 8 people became 8-floor apartments and studios. And you know what? Rent is higher than ever! Everywhere! Once you build up you can charge higher rents, which means the landlord next door can charge slightly higher rents, and so on. Building housing almost never lowers rents for the non-rich, unless there is a massive recession (Florida), or an equivalent rise in wages. People build dense housing because they expect people to keep coming...
- eldavido 11y agoPartner is an architect in SF (works on 2nd St.) She's currently dealing with two overlapping regulations, one from the state, the other from the city: (1) All electrical outlets must be placed less than 18 inches from the edge of a countertop, to make them accessible to people in wheelchairs (2) A countertop must have an outlet every 18 inches, or less. They're getting held up in permitting because there is a no constructible L-shaped countertop that satisfies both of these constraints. The best part, nobody on either side seems to care much, they're "just doing their job"...and housing isn't getting built. I'm not sure what to make of this, other than that it's the newest brilliant "innovation" from the place that banned happy meal toys, and outlawed plastic bags.
- Analemma_ 11y agoSurely state regulations supersede local ones if there's a direct conflict, or they would if the city every complained and the matter were ever brought in front of a judge?
- eldavido 11y agoLocal government doesn't give a damn; they're perfectly content to refuse permit issuance if you don't comply with their regulations. In theory you're correct, but, courts aren't known for their speed. EDIT: IANAL but I think the issue here is more complex, because the regulations don't "conflict", they create a situation where a bad outcome occurs only because both of them are in place. Does anyone know if there are other "emergent phenomenon" effects in law and how they're handled?
- Guvante 11y agoThe rules don't even conflict that way, there are legitimate ways to satisfy both requirements. All of them just have side effects that aren't desirable. Thus there is no way to challenge the lower law as superseding as it doesn't technically. It instead supersedes most reasonable designs.
- mikeash 11y ago
- jkot 11y agoSerious question: how many new buildings are started in SF per year?
- dkopi 11y agoSemi serious answer: clearly not enough to meet the demand.
- nkrisc 11y agoOh, I get it. People can live on top of the solar panels.
- eldavido 11y agoAnother thing: this is why we (tech) need to engage with politics. If there's one thing we really understand, it's complexity: why it sucks, how to avoid it, and how piling on rule after rule can make the legal code "unmaintainable" (sound familiar?)
- stcredzero 11y agoCalifornia once had a "Legislative Data Center" whose entire purpose was to ensure that California laws do not conflict. Not sure if they still do. They wrote their own search software.
- specialist 11y agoMy state has that too. I think that's the norm.
- matt4077 11y agoIt's also the reason why tech people shouldn't be so dismissive of politicians, lawyers or the social sciences: they've been wrangling this shit for hundreds of years.
- quanticle 11y agoYet somehow despite wrangling with it for hundreds of years, they manage to do a worse job than most entry-level programmers.
- phinnaeus 11y agoThe nice thing about programming is it usually doesn't require a literal vote to change each line of it.
- MaulingMonkey 11y agoYou don't have mandatory code reviews...?
- matt_wulfeck 11y agoAt first I liked the idea, but then I remembered what a beuacratic and hostile nightmare it is to build in San Francisco (and CA in genera) and quickly turned against it. Would it not have been sufficient to offer tax incentive carrots instead of making it a requirement?
- henvic 11y agoSttatism.
- haha1234 11y agoSan Francisco why would anyone want to live there ... trashy, ridiculously expensive, smell of homeless & downtrodden everywhere, the mentally ill with megaphones shouting their crazy on the streets. I've lived in many US cities and WoW San Fran is a shock to the system!
- randyrand 11y agoBecause that's where a lot of jobs are. Its next to this part of the country called silicon valley. A lot of the tech industry is there. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Silicon_Valley https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Silicon_Valley
- deleted 11y ago[deleted]
- tizzdogg 11y agoAlso there are a lot of really nice parts that you wouldn't typically see on a brief visit, both in the city and surrounding area. The homeless are definitely a real problem but in my day to day life I somehow manage to avoid it almost always. We don't all live south of market or in the mission.
- bcheung 11y agoNot that San Francisco has any room for new buildings but this smells like crony capitalism. Which solar panel company lobbied to have this become law? And which politician is getting the kickback?
- sebringj 11y agoIsn't this good news for Tesla's giga factory?
- blisterpeanuts 11y agoSeems like a good idea to have solar on every building, but I have to ask: how many new buildings go up in SF in a year? I thought the problem was that they have a lot of architecture preservation and not enough new office and residential construction. Similar to Boston and Manhattan, mature cities where there isn't that much new construction, so this kind of ordinance seems more symbolic than practical.
- pascalxus 11y agoJust wonderful. Another housing regulation which will further disencentivize a greater housing supply.
- djschnei 11y agoDefinitely within the reasonable bounds of what local government can demand with the threat of violence. How progressive of them.
- arrty88 11y agogreat for my solr stocks
- wrsh07 11y agoIt only applies to buildings with 10 or fewer floors. Do you think this will just encourage new ~10 story buildings to instead be >= 11 stories?
- deleted 11y ago[deleted]
- mc32 11y agoScott is pretty reasonable, but in this case I think the whole supes went overboard. I would have preferred a stipulation to make them solar ready,but not outright installed. I feel that sometimes excitement and wanting to be "leaders in x" gets the better of them, from time to time. When I plan to buy a house I'll seriously consider installing solar, but id almost want to tear down any installation forced on by the city. If it's your property it should be up to you to consider what you want to add to your domicile. Maybe I don't want the upfront cost of solar, or maybe I planned on other renewables. Put solar on all your city buses, put solar on all city buildings, etc. Don't force solar on homeowners who never wanted it.
- maxschumacher91 11y agolucky for them that nobody is building in SF.
- anxman 11y agoI live in SF and I'm active in the real estate businesses too. While on the surface, this seems like great news it comes with hidden negative externalities. Specifically, this law benefits existing owners who will be grandfathered out of this requirement. Any new builder will see her housing development costs go up, and given the short supply of housing, will then cause RE prices to go up on all new housing. This system therefore benefits existing landowners who were able to reap higher gains on existing buildings and helps create a moat on new housing development by making it less financially lucrative. Also, just in case anybody is curious, most solar panels are not a good economic investment for an investor. In an optimistic case, they may pay for themselves in 7-10 years but the value of the asset itself depreciates so quickly that it isn't worth the risk financially or in on-going maintenance costs.
- rconti 11y agoTrue, but 15% of the roof in PV is a trivial cost, particularly on a multi-story building in SF.
- resonanttoe 11y agoSo... no new solar panels for SF then?
- beaud 11y agoIf you're interested in solar and our renewable energy future, we're hiring full-stack engineers at Wunder Capital (TS'14) Learn more here: https://www.wundercapital.com/ https://www.wundercapital.com/
- almost_usual 11y agoMakes sense in a place like San Francisco. One good hail storm in the Midwest and you'd have a lot of broken solar panels.
- erehweb 11y agoGoogling "Does hail break solar panels" casts doubt on that.
- almost_usual 11y agoHail comes in a lot of sizes.
- ZoF 11y agoAgreed, I can barely stand those churlish wasteful Americans and their unwillingness to offer our environment it's well deserved 'amenities'. Nevermind that the parent poster wasn't saying anything negative about this policy besides that it detracts interest/investment in rectifying issues that would have a far larger environmental impact for a lower price. The relevant facts here: America is bad and Americans hate the environment. Let's invest in the basic environmental amenities guys! 25 years ago? Lets go even further into the past with our nationality shaming. Let's draw some other parallels from Germany's wonderful past actions. Americans have a lot to learn.
- ZoF 11y agoAnyone care to substantiate these downvotes? It's ok for the parent commenter to say all American's are anti-environmental and have 'issues defending the environment' but it's not ok for me to defend the original opine that this wasn't a 'pro-plastic-bag' argument but rather a 'pro-efficacious-solutions' argument? Why. Please elucidate me. This has nothing to do with America or Germany. This is about what is best for this planet and I strongly disagree with the parent posters anti-nationalism. This isn't an issue with 'America' alone.
- askldfhjkasfhd 11y agoI believe your content added nothing to the discussion except drive-by sarcasm, and thus met the HN quality guidelines for downvotes. Your combative tone is what provided the impetus for people to downvote you. Then aggressively challenging the downvoters earned you additional downvotes on this comment.
- plandis 11y agoYou're getting downvoted because you're not contributing to the discussion and nobody is commenting because (I'm guessing here) everything thinks that this is a troll post. Just in case it isn't here is some stuff to keep in mind for the future: > Agreed, I can barely stand those churlish wasteful Americans and their unwillingness to offer our environment it's well deserved 'amenities'. The relevant facts here: America is bad and Americans hate the environment. Let's invest in the basic environmental amenities guys! Insulting 300+ million people without any substantiated data is not the way to influence others or to contribute. Insulting others simply makes people want to disengage in conversation with you. This is especially true since this post and this side conversation are about how SF has adopted plastic-bag policies and solar panel policies. Insulting people for not caring about the environment in the same discussion where the topic is a discussion about how a major city trying to do something about the problem really has no benefit. Even in the face of conflicting definitive data you still choose to stereotype everyone. It's unclear how you are hoping to advance the conversation. I'd recommend the following if you really do want people to listen to what you're trying to say (if that truly was your point): 1.) Never just attack a person/group/whatever you will never win people over by doing so. Attacking someone simply shows others that you are not interested in hearing what they have to say. 2.) If you're trying to make an argument then before you say anything you should figure out why people hold the beliefs they do. Until you can understand (however appropriate or misguided it may be) the other side, you should not say a thing. 3.) If you're trying to make an argument then provide compelling data to back up your claims. You must provide this data in a way that the other side can understand and how it relates to their own beliefs. You cannot successfully do this until you have accomplished 2.
- im_down_w_otp 11y agoWouldn't that first require San Francisco to allow building new buildings? Bad-um-tsch! :-D ;-)
- No1 11y agoA link to the actual legislation: https://sfgov.legistar.com/View.ashx?M=F&ID=4399794&GUID=FE220DFF-2C3F-4F0B-8C9B-39F1A61039F2 https://sfgov.legistar.com/View.ashx?M=F&ID=4399794&GUID=FE2...
- No1 11y agoThe article makes it sound like the SF decided to set a goal of "100 percent renewable energy by 2020" without a clue of how to achieve that goal - but gee does it sound nice. Realizing that the city is not going to be able to fund such an endeavor, they mandate the cost of deploying solar panels be passed on to new development, completely disregarding the practicality of solar panels on city buildings. Forget spending the money on better insulation, windows, living roofs, wind power, heat pumps, grey water reclamation, etc. or just making more badly-needed housing - the city needs solar because the word gives people tingles and they have this arbitrary goal-without-a-plan.
- cavisne 11y agoSo how does this work for apartments? Normally apartments dont bother as the homeowners get almost no benefit (small roof relative to the power usage), and net metering shared solar panels is tricky, way to tricky for a utility to care. So who bears the cost of this? That said might be a huge opportunity for a microgrid company to set up panels, smart meters and batteries in buildings, and then just have a single meter at the perimeter.
- pmyjavec 11y agoIt makes me laugh the US Government is doing so little on climate change that local Goverments now have to protect their own cities. Remember when Calirofrnia sued the US Government over climate change? They've been doing a whole lot of not much for some time.