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,r Ms. Hosterman presented the following letter from Deborah Bachrach and Ralph Cavenaugh, National Resource Defense Council: "We applaud the Pleasanton Energy Advisory Group for drafting the city of Pleasant on's Draft Energy Plan, to actively engage the City and its residents in energy issues. We endorse the plan's goal to pursue 'measures that help create clean, reliable, economical, and energy efficient systems. NRDC actively supports efforts to capture cost-effective energy efficiency opportunities, develop renewable sources of energy, and support clean distributed generation." r- She noted that they described points of the Energy Plan that they considered to be particularly important, including locally distributed generation technologies. They suggested that the Energy Advisory Group modify the document to favor only clean distributed generation technologies, meeting the goals of California Air Resources Board's new regulations for distributed technology, effective 2007. The Plan highlights Pleasanton's praiseworthy conservative efforts during 200 I, and suggested that the following sentence, "Due to conscious conservation efforts, the reductions in use were not totally at the expense of basic personal necessities or mission critical business operations" be rephrased to more closely capture what they believed to be the intent of the authors: "The conservation efforts over the past year reduced Pleasanton residents' and businesses' energy bills without compromising quality of life or critical business operations. In fact, many of these efforts have improved quality of life and increased business profitability for customers who installed energy efficient technologies that provided improved service, while simultaneously lowering energy bills." Ms. Hosterman noted that the following letter outlined Adam Browning and David Hochchild of Vote Solar's support of the City's efforts to develop the Energy Plan. "Dear Mayor Pico and City Council Members: Weare writing in support of elements in the Draft Pleasanton Energy Plan. the Vote Solar initiative is a new non-profit organization borne out of the successful campaign last fall to pass a $100 million solar revenue bond measure in San Francisco. We are now working to help other cities implement solar bonds on their own because we believe that local government victories like this offer the most promising opportunity to jumpstart this nation's transition to renewable energy, preventing toxic emissions, and making progress in the fight against global warming. The Draft Pleasanton Energy Plan envisions a city that seeks to reduce its energy related environmental footprint. Element 4.g. of the Plan specifically calls for a feasibility study to evaluate the potential for revenue bond funding for renewable energy projects. Should the city go forward with such a plan, it will find itself in good company, as cities from San Diego to New York are looking at solar bonds as a way of cost effectively increasing their energy independence. ,--. PLANNING COMMISSION MINUTES October 23, 2002 Page 8