Meg Whitman penned an op-ed last week stating she’d suspend California’s landmark climate-change legislation, AB32, on her first day if elected governor. This is backwards thinking, and I disagree.

Experts estimate that the four largest clean-energy industries (solar, wind, biofuels, and fuel-cell) will have combined annual revenues of $255 billion by the middle of the next decade. The question isn’t whether the world will move towards cleaner living – the question is how soon this trend will take hold.

There is no better, more fertile place in the United States for green technology and green-collar jobs to take shape than California.

California’s challenge is competitiveness, grasping as much of the share of these markets as possible by being the industry leader in greenhouse gas abatement technology. To date, we’ve done a great job – California captured $6.6 billion in green capital between 2006-2008. And all these start-ups need workers; so green jobs have the potential to be for California what the defense industry was in 1980s.

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Air travel is a major contributor to climate change. Offsets are a small part of a larger solution.

Today at San Francisco International Airport (SFO) we are launching the Climate Passport program allowing travelers to offset the impact of their air travel through an airport kiosk. This will be the world’s first airport kiosk—giving people the opportunity to calculate the environmental impact of their flights and purchase carbon offsets to address that impact while at the airport.

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In the quest to create new green jobs, we have the opportunity to take existing jobs and make them green.

Every city has architects, engineers and construction divisions. In conventional circumstances the activities these employees undertake can burn considerable natural resources. But in San Francisco, we’re working to turn these traditional municipal positions into environmental champions.

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Last month, we launched our first iPhone app based on a city feed to help San Franciscans recycle 75 percent of the materials that would otherwise go to the landfill by 2010. Today, we are kicking off a new online effort (www.RecyclingMoments.org) to get us over this green goal line and help our city save resources, energy, and reduce pollution.

In San Francisco, we have led the country in creating ambitious yet achievable programs to help residents and businesses decrease the amount of waste going into our landfill. Our modern curbside program began back in the 80s with the crazy idea that people could recycle their newspapers.

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Last July, the City & County of San Francisco launched the first local solar energy incentive program in the nation, The results are in, and, the program is an unequivocal success.

In the year since our solar energy incentive program GoSolarSF launched, we have seen a 450% increase in applications for solar installations in San Francisco over the previous year, from 200 to 850. And despite the current recession, 56 applicants met our low-income standards and will receive incentive payments.

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Editor’s note: This post is a contribution by San Francisco Mayor Gavin Newsom. See his last post on electric vehicle charging infrastructure or all of his previous posts here. A companion piece was also posted on RedGreenandBlue.org earlier today.

San Francisco is a city that knows how to recycle. We work hard to give new life to our paper, bottles, cans and other waste.

New statistics released today show we are keeping 72 percent of all discards from going to the landfill – up from 70 percent the year before.

That’s a big leap for one year. The most significant gains came from the recycling of material from building sites – due in large part to our 2006 mandatory Construction and Demolition Debris Recovery Ordinance.

By requiring builders to recycle debris from construction projects, we were able to divert tens of thousands of new tons of material away from the landfill. This ordinance is unique in that it doesn’t require deposits or bonds, making it small business-friendly and limiting the amount of bureaucracy needed to implement the program.

When it comes to our recycling programs, we’re always in the development phase. In order to meet our ambitious goal of 75 percent recycling by 2010 and zero waste by 2020, we are constantly looking for additional materials to recycle, and for emerging markets to make use of our recyclables.

• » See Also: Consumer solar energy aggregation project launched in San Diego
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Editors Note: This is a guest post by San Francisco Mayor Gavin Newsom. His last post covered wave energy generation of the coast of California. Watch a live press conference for this event at 10 AM today.

Every day more San Francisco residents and businesses are signing up for two San Francisco programs that will cut monthly utility bills and help the City meet its greenhouse gas reduction goals. One is SF Energy Watch, which provides technical assistance and financial incentives that pays over half the cost of energy efficiency upgrades to commercial and multifamily properties. The other is GoSolarSF, which, when combined with federal tax credits and state incentives, can reduce the cost of installing a residential solar power system by more than 50 percent.

In the past 2 years, 1,500 businesses and multifamily properties have saved over $5.7 million in energy bills through SF Energy Watch. The program has also delivered 6 megawatts (MW) of energy efficiency savings, which in turn reduces the amount of energy generation we need from polluting power plants.  

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Editors Note: This is a guest post by San Francisco Mayor Gavin Newsom. See his last post for us on EV charging stations on Gas 2.0.

Today, San Francisco took a meaningful step toward turning the promise of renewable ocean energy into reality. We submitted a preliminary permit application to the federal government to develop a wave power project off our coast that we believe can generate between 10 to 30 megawatts of energy, with potential of up to 100 megawatts. When this project is fully operational, upwards of 100 jobs could be created in San Francisco.

Ocean power is a true “game changer” in the area of renewable energy. When wave and tidal power technologies reach commercial scale, they are expected to be able to provide thousands of megawatts of power to our coastal communities, dramatically green our energy portfolios and create thousands of new American jobs. In San Francisco, we’ve been doing our part to spur these technologies by aggressively advancing tidal and wave power pilot projects.  We are 100% committed to this challenge.

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