From the floor of West Coast Green

October 2, 12:02 AMSilicon Valley Environmental Policy ExaminerFloyd Earl Smith

Previous Next

1 comment Print Email RSS Subscribe

Subscribe

Get alerts when there is a new article from the Silicon Valley Environmental Policy Examiner. Read Examiner.com's terms of use.

Email Address   Include other special offers from Examiner.com Terms of Use

Bauer's IT bus shuttled visitors

The West Coast Green conference, focused on the built environment, opened strongly today in San Francisco's Fort Mason. A sunny first day of October greeted attendees - including a host of solar power vendors, and not a few of their customers.

A few highlights from Day 1:

• Mayor Gavin Newsom and UC Berkeley professor Dan Kammen gave the opening keynote. In a message to attendees, Newsom highlighted how "building green can help to stabilize our changing climate".
• Dave Nielsen of the CloudCamp cloud computing "un-conference" led an Energy Solutions Summit. Attendees were challenged to pose and solve problems relating to clean energy.
• Lead sponsors PG&E discussed their 30 years of efficiency efforts, and how they've accelerated in the last two years with new state and federal leadership. PG&E's efforts have contributed to California's electricity usage per person staying roughly flat over three decades, while the rest of the US and Europe saw steady increases over the same period.
• Ethos, a green lender, announced their first loan in a new program - $300,000 for solar installations in the LA area. The program, rolling out initially in California and other states in the US West, uses new government incentives, paid on project completion, and the value of the new infrastructure as security for up-front funding for green energy investments.
• Bauer's Intelligent Transportation celebrated its 20th anniversary by offering free shuttle service for show attendees on one of its distinctive black, chauffer-driven, Wi-Fi-equipped buses. Already used by Silicon Valley companies like Google and Facebook, each Bauer IT bus trip can replace dozens of individual car trips. "Some customers even give up their cars", said founder Gary Bauer. The service will be expanding in the coming weeks - north on Highway 101 to Healdsburg, out on Interstate 80 to Sacramento and elsewhere.

West Coast Green continues Friday and concludes Saturday. Sessions still to come feature green jobs, green branding and live pitches by green entrepreneurs to a panel of investors.