interviews
Water and the American West
by Richard Frank
October 25, 2021
This interview with Richard Frank, professor of environmental practice at the UC Davis School of Law and Director of the California Environmental Law and Policy Center, was conducted and condensed by franknews.
frank | Can you tell me a little bit about the story of water and how it's tied to the West, and to California in particular?
Richard | A friend of mine who's a Court of Appeals Justice here in California wrote an opinion on a water law dispute and started it with the quote, "the history of California is written on its waters." And I think that the point is true of the entire American West.
Water policy and legal issues are inextricably tied to the development of the Western United States; water is the limiting factor in so many ways to settlement, to economic development, to prosperity, and to the environment and environmental preservation.
Can you talk about the difference between groundwater and surface water– and the policies that regulate each?
There are really two types of water when it comes to human consumption. There's surface water: that is the water that is transmitted by lakes, rivers, and streams. Then there is groundwater, and a substantial amount of water that Americans and the American West rely on is groundwater. That is water that is stored in groundwater aquifers, which are naturally occurring groundwater basins. Both groundwater and surface water are critical to the American West and its economy and its culture.
Traditionally a couple of things are important to note, first of all, water is finite. Second, water gets allocated in the Western United States generally at the state level. There's a limited federal role. Primarily, policy decisions about who gets how much water for what purpose are made state by state.
I think allocation is really interesting in that it's more state-level than federal. How was water and the allocation of water in California designed? Is it a public-private combination? What goes on in terms of the infrastructure of water?
Another very good question. The answer is it depends. Most of our water infrastructure is public in nature.
Again, in the American West, the regulation of water rights is generally done at the state level, but the federal government, historically, has a major water footprint in the American West because it has been federal dollars and federal design and management that really controlled much of the major water infrastructure in the American West — you know, Hoover Dam, and the complex system of dams and reservoirs on the Colorado River in California, with the Central Valley Project that was built and managed by the federal government with Shasta Dam on the upper Sacramento River as the centerpiece of that project. But we also have a California State Water Project, the key facility being the Oroville Dam and reservoir on the Southern River that is managed by state water managers. If we were starting over, that kind of parallel system would make no particular engineering or operational sense.
But, we are captive to our history.
And then you have these massive systems of aqueducts and canals that move water from one place to another throughout the American West. They are particularly responsible for moving water from surface water storage facilities to population centers. In the last 50 to 75 years, these population centers have really expanded dramatically, so you need massive infrastructure to deliver water from those storage facilities, the dams, and reservoirs, which generally are located in remote areas to the population centers. So it takes a lot of time and energy to transport the water, from where it is captured and stored to where it is needed for human use.
California has faced continuous drought – what measures is the state taking now to manage water?
Just to frame the issue a little bit — we have, as I mentioned, a growing population in the American Southwest at a time when the amount of available water is shrinking due to drought and due to the impacts of climate change. We have growing human demand for residential and commercial purposes and at the same time, we have a shrinking water supply. That is a huge looming crisis.
And it is beginning to play out in real-time. You see that playing out in real-time. For example, several different states and Mexico rely on Colorado River flows based on an allocation system that was created in the 1920s, which is overly optimistic about the amount of available water. From the 1920s until now, that water supply has decreased, and decreased, and decreased. Now you have interstate agreements, and in the case of Mexico, international agreements that allocate the finite Colorado river water supplies based on faulty, now obsolete, information. It is a real problem.
What measures do you take now, knowing this information?
If you look at the US Drought Monitor, it is obvious the problem is not limited to the Colorado River. We are in a mega-drought, so cutbacks are being imposed by federal and state water agencies to encourage agricultural, urban, and commercial water users to cut their water use and, and stretch finite supplies as much as possible through conservation efforts.
In California, we have the State Water Resources Control Board, the state water regulator in California, and they have issued curtailment orders. Meaning, they have told water rights holders, many of whom have had those water rights for over a hundred years, that, for the first time, the water that they feel they are entitled to, is not available. Local water districts are also issuing water conservation mandates; the San Francisco water department is doing that, in Los Angeles, the metropolitan water district, is urging urban users to curtail their efforts.
And then agriculture. Agricultural users — farmers and ranchers — have had to get water rights in many cases through the federal government, as the federal government is the operator of these water projects. They have contracts with water users, individual farmers, ranchers, or districts, and they are now issuing curtailment orders. They're saying, we know you contracted for X amount of water for this calendar year, but we are telling you because of the drought shortages we don't have that water to supply. Our reservoirs are low at Lake Shasta or at the Oroville Dam.
When you drive from San Francisco to LA on the five, you see a lot of signage from the agricultural farming community about water. There's apparently some frustration about this. What are the other options for them?
About 80% of all human consumed water goes to agriculture. That is by far the biggest component of water use, as opposed to 20% used for urban and commercial, and industrial purposes.
Over the years, ranchers and farmers, and agricultural water districts assumed that the water would always be there — as we all do.
And the farmers and ranchers have, in hindsight, exacerbated the problem by bringing more and more land into production. You see on those drives between San Francisco and Los Angeles, particularly in the San Joaquin Valley, all these orchards are being planted. Orchards are more lucrative crops than row crops — cotton, alfalfa, and rice. But, if you are growing a row crop, you can leave the land fallow in times of drought.
We don't have to plant. If the water stopped there, or if it's too expensive to get, it may make economic sense, but if you have an orchard or a vineyard it's a high value, those are high value crops, you don't have that operational flexibility and they need to be irrigated in wet years and in dry years. Now, you see these orchards, which were only planted a few years ago, are now being uprooted because the farmers realized that they don't have the water necessary to keep those vineyards and orchards alive. For ranchers, the same thing is true with their herds. They don’t have enough water for their livestock.
The water shortage has never been drier than it is right now. Farmers and ranchers are being deprived of water that they traditionally believed was theirs and they're very understandably, very unhappy about it. They see it as a threat to their livelihood and to the livelihood of the folks who work for them. Their anger and frustration are to be expected, but it's nobody's fault.
To say, as some farmers do, that it is mismanagement by state and federal government officials, I think is overly simplistic and misplaced in the face of a mega-drought. Everybody's going to have to sacrifice. Everybody's going to have to be more efficient in how they use water. All sectors are going to need to be more efficient with the water that does exist.
Looking at this percentage breakdown of water use – is it actually important for individual users to change their water habits?
Well, every little bit helps. When you're talking about homeowners, about 70% of urban water use is for outdoor irrigation. So we're talking parks and cemeteries and golf courses and folks' yards. You know, that used to be considered part of that American dream and the California dream — you would have a big lawn in front of your house and behind your house. Truth be told, that has never made much sense in an arid environment. That's where the water savings in urban areas is critical in the way it really involves aesthetics rather than critical human needs, like water for drinking and bathing and sanitation purposes. There is a growing movement away from big lawns, and away from the type of landscaping that you see in the Eastern US — there is no drought in the Eastern United States. As Hurricane Ida and other recent storms have shown, the problem is too much water, or rather than too little in most of the Eastern United States. So it really is a tale of two countries.
We just need to recognize that the American West is an arid region. It has always been an arid region, we can't make the desert bloom with water that doesn't exist. We need to be more efficient in how we allocate those water supplies. And it seems to me in an urban area, the best way to conserve and most effective way is to reduce urban landscaping, which is the major component of urban water use.
You also write about water markets and making them better – for those who don’t know, what is the water market?
Water markets, that is, the voluntary transfer of water between water users, is more robust in some other Western states. Again Arizona and New Mexico come to mind. California somewhat surprisingly is behind the curve. We are in the dark ages compared to other states. Water markets are kind of anecdotal. There is not much of a statewide system. It is done at the local level, through individual transactions without much oversight and without much transparency. And I have concerns about all of those things.
I believe conceptually watermarks are a way to stretch scarce, finite water resources to make water use more efficient. I can, for example, allow farmers or ranchers to sell water to urban uses or commercial usage or factories in times of drought.
Farmers sometimes can make more money by farming water, than they can by farming crops.
There are efficiencies to be gained here.
The problem in my view is really one of transparency. The water markets are not publicly regulated, and some of the people who are engaging in water transactions like it that way, frankly, they want to operate under the radar.
In my opinion, water markets need to be overseen by a public entity rather than private or nonprofit entities. We need oversight and transparency, so that folks like you and myself can follow the markets to see who's selling water to whom, for what purpose, and make sure that those water transfers serve the public interests and not just the private interests.
There have been a number of stories in the New York Times and the Wall Street Journal and the Salt Lake City Tribune about efforts in some parts to privatize water transfer. Hedge fund managers are buying and selling water, as a means of profiting. And it strikes me that when you're talking about an essential public resource — and in California, it is embedded in the law that public water is an inherently public resource, that water is owned by the public and it can be used for private purposes, but it is an inherently public resource — the idea of commoditizing water through the private, opaque markets is very troublesome to me. I think it represents a very dangerous trend and one that needs to be corrected and avoided.
Why is California so behind?
There's no good reason for it. It's largely inexplicable that since the state was created on September 9th, 1860, we've been fighting over water. In the 19th century, it was miners versus farmers ranchers. In the 20th century, with the growth of urban communities, the evolution of California into one of the most populous states with 40 million Californians, it has been a struggle between urban and agricultural uses of water.
In the second half of the 20th century, there was a recognition that some component of water had to be left in streams to protect ecosystems, landscape, and wildlife, including the threatened and endangered wildlife. That suggestion has made agricultural users in California angry. You will see those signs that allude to the idea that food and farming are more important than environmental values. I don't happen to believe that's true. I believe both are critically important to our society. But the advocates for the environment have a proverbial seat at the water table. So that's another demand for water allocation that exists.
Do you maintain optimism?
Yes. I think it's human nature to look on the bright side. I try to do that through research scholarships and teaching. There are models for how we can do this better in the United States. Israel and Saudi Arabia and Singapore are far more efficient with their water policies and efforts. Australia went through a severe megadrought. They came out of it a few years ago, but they used that opportunity to dramatically reform their water allocation systems. That's an additional model. I think most people would agree in hindsight that their previous system was antiquated, and not able to meet the challenges of climate change and the growing water shortage in some parts of the world.
Here in the United States, we can learn from those efforts. There are also some ways to expand the water supply. Desalination for one. Again, Singapore and Saudi Arabia have led the world in terms of removing the salt content from ocean water and increasing water supply that way. In Carlsbad, California, north of San Diego, we have the biggest desalination plant in the United States right now, and that is currently satisfying a significant component of the San Diego metropolitan areas’ water needs. It's more expensive than other water supplies, but the technology is getting more refined, so the cost of desalinated water is coming down at a time when other water supplies, due to shortages and the workings of the free market are going up.
At some point, they're going to meet or get closer. Unlike some of my environmental colleagues, I think desalination is an important part of the equation.
In a proposal that came up in the recall election, one of the candidates was talking about how we just need to build a canal from the Mississippi River to California to take care of all our problems. That ignores political problems associated with that effort, as well as the massive infrastructure costs that would be required to build and maintain a major aqueduct for 2000 miles from the Mississippi to California. That's just not going to happen. Some of those pie in the sky thoughts of how we expand the water supply, I think, are unrealistic.
interviews
In Conversation with Harvey Michaels
by Harvey Michael
February 28, 2019
Harvey Michaels is an MIT Sloan Lecturer on the emerging Energy and Climate Solution Economy for the Sloan Sustainability Initiative, in collaboration with the International Urban and Regional Studies Program (SPURS). Harvey also directs the Energy Democracy Project in affiliation with MIT’s Climate CoLab, Media Lab, and Energy Initiative, where he served on the faculty team for The Future of the Grid research study.
frank’s goal is to introduce our audience to new themes and nuanced ways of approaching those themes. In looking at some of your work and collaborators, I see a few names we’ve already featured, which is nice! I would love to start by hearing your definition of energy democracy.
There are a few key definitions for energy democracy. The one I really focus on is that there are opportunities wealthy people and companies have, related to energy, that people who are lower income, and have less personal power, don't have. Part of it is to be able to find ways to open the provision of support in the energy field – and that differs by person, differs by circumstance, and where you are in the world. It opens options you would have if you had personal power to people of less power.
To me, that's the overall definition. Having democratic access to the good things some people have related to energy. That differs depending on the environment you're looking at. I see three particular directions for that. One of them is energy access among people who don't otherwise have it, and providing them with light, accoutrements of comfort, and access to television, where currently they may have no grid at all. Which is what you're really seeing with Shazia.
That, to me, is a distributed task to access. The idea of energy democracy is you don't really need to wait for the government to do it for you, and the utilities to do it for you. In some way, you can do it yourself.
Then, you've got the Isaac Baker view, which is prevalent among more developed, but low income areas in the United States. If you really want solar as a low income person, it's hard to get. You tend to pay more for energy than high income people do. There's less opportunity to get involved in the sophisticated energy management opportunities big businesses and wealthy people have. To get paid when they use energy, and get credits for working around utility system peaks to charge up their Teslas at low-cost kilowatt hours. Things like that are less commonly available to low income people. You spoke with Solstice, you spoke with Isaac Baker, so you've heard some of those messages. Essentially, equitable access to solar, but there's also equitable access to other elements of it.
We touched on two of the three. The first one being access in areas that are off-grid. The second one being access to solar and low-cost kilowatt hours, and other benefits by people who are low income but on grid. Then, there's a third one, which is the original use of the term energy democracy, which is that there's some community management of the energy system that's focused on community values, local jobs, and more equitable treatment of people in the community.
Rural neighborhoods in Puerto Rico are now creating their own energy systems, and the National Rural Electrical Cooperative Association, which covers a lot of the United States, has actually composed a system that was built by farmers to serve their local communities. It's supported by a federal program that started during the depression for them to meet their own needs in a way that serves them best.
A lot of the energy democracy initial conversation, which is now about a decade old, began with the Recovery Act during the Stimulus Program, after the 2009 almost depression we had. Where money became available for cities and states to fund local green jobs. One of the objectives of the energy democracy movement was to have this thing done at a local level, that trained and created career paths for people at the local level who needed jobs.
Is there a specific way you approach bringing new people in to this idea?
It's circumstantial – maybe that’s a catch phrase for all of these things. The example which is extremely current, deals with the objective that a lot of cities have, this includes New York and Boston, and many other cities in the United States, to become carbon-free cities.
They are basically saying that you have to stop using natural gas for your hot water, and you have to stop using gasoline for cars.
But consider the implications of it, particularly on low income people in old homes of limited means. To say, "Well, if you want to drive, you're going to have to get an electric car.", and number two, the natural gas line that serves your triple-decker in Boston, is going to, within a few decades, get shut down, creates an equity issue. If you're a wealthy person in the city of Boston, you live in a million dollar condo, and the city of Boston puts those restrictions on you, it's no big deal. If you're someone of limited means in a low income neighborhood of Boston, the Carbon Free Boston plan sounds really scary.
Part of it is finding ways to improve the ability of people of limited means to be able to deal with those coming restrictions. I was involved with lobbying the Carbon Free Boston plan, finding ways to make this work for people, and make it so they have equitable opportunities to switch to electric sources. It is one of the challenges of energy democracy that is very real. They get concerned, and this minority groups, labor unions, public housing authorities...
That's one place where the conversation related to energy democracy is very rich.
In a scenario where you're trying to create equity where it doesn't already exist, how does government, whether that's local, state, or national, need to be involved? Or, how can they be involved in creating that equity?
That's a great question. There are lots of really long answers to that question, so let me give you some of the top thumbnails. One of them is that electric utilities actually collect a lot of money for the purpose of inducing energy efficiency in the customers that they serve. I don't know if you've heard of that before, but the utilities in many states, and this isn't only the obvious candidates, like Massachusetts, California, and New York, but in 32 states, they have programs where utilities are actually charging more for their electricity to collect money, which then they use on energy efficiency programs.
One characteristic of those programs, is a lot of that money goes to suburban single family homes, and to MIT, and industrial companies, and doesn't go to serve the needs of the community, where everybody is paying for these programs on their electric bills. As principle of energy democracy is saying that the community should be strongly engaged in deciding how that money will be spent in their community. If you're in the Codmen Square neighborhood of Boston, which I'm involved with, which are 100 to 120 year old triple-decker framed buildings that didn't have insulation, and generally have two renters and an owner on the three floors of the building – there's nothing in those programs that are really well suited for who they are, and what their building is, and what their financial circumstances are. What they need is extremely different than what a large suburban home in the Boston area may want, which is help with getting a charging device for their Tesla.
They are different worlds, there's no differentiation, and there's no real support. Energy democracy says the first and primary focus of these things should be equity, and providing equitable and necessary support to the people, based on their ability to purchase things.
So, you say, "Well, why does anybody want these things?" The people who live in these triple-deckers in Boston have very large energy bills, particularly heating bills, in relation to their income. In many cases, they may be getting a gas bill that, for a single month in the winter, is $500 or more. Being able to pay those bills is burdensome to them. This creates a crisis. Having something that serves them, first and foremost, ends up being an important thing, that a local management of local values and needs would be able to address.
That's a general area of energy democracy, which is essentially local participation in how programs that are administered on a federal, state-wide, or utility-wide program, serve the needs of a local community.
Another is that energy democracy should mean you can pay less for your electricity the way wealthier people and big businesses pay less for their electricity per unit, per kilowatt hour, than lower income people do. Sometimes there's tiered pricing. As you use more, you pay less per unit. But the bigger reason is that there's special ways to avoid the high costs of electricity, and lower income people don't have access to it.
At MIT, and in a large business, you can regulate when you use electricity, and you pay a lot less if you regulate when you use electricity. At the home level, you don't have those signals, you don't have those opportunities. To give you range on it, almost all the time electricity cost on a time-based measurement is a lot less than what we pay. A few hours of the year, it costs 10 times more than the average price that you pay. If you don't have any way to manage that, you pay a mix of the two, which is a lot, as compared with what a more sophisticated, larger, wealthier organization would be able to do – control when they use their electricity and pay less.
One of the problems with this, is that if you're not able to get access to those low-cost kilowatt hours, electric heat and hot water are very burdensome, and if the case is that you'll eventually have to move to electric heat and hot water, that $500 gas bill will go up, and it's already too high.
The other thing is, we have to move from our gasoline cars to hybrid or electric cars, and one way to make that affordable is to make the electricity less expensive. It's easy with an electrical car, if you have a way to get it properly priced and measured, because there's only a few hours a day and only some days of the year when electricity is really expensive. But people don't know, and they don't have the ability to avoid those hours and charge up during low-cost hours, off-peak hours, which are much cheaper.
The fact that there are communities that don't have the power to have the programs for energy efficiency, and solar energy work for them is a problem.
The Green New Deal is the big push towards addressing climate change right now. Do you feel like they're using the right language to incentivize the elements you’re outlining?
I have some concerns. I love the political energy the Green New Deal is generating. I think I do, so that's a really good thing. One aspect of the Green New Deal is that it mixes in a lot of the Bernie Sanders agenda with climate change. That might be polarizing and pushing large segments of American society away from supporting something, which I think in their hearts they support, which is climate agenda.
One of the things we managed to do, almost in a bipartisan way, is have substantial incentives for solar energy. We have substantial incentives for electric vehicles that were bipartisan. They became state and national laws because they didn't align themselves entirely with a place in the political spectrum.
Right.
To me, I think climate change is a bipartisan, cross-cutting, national issue, and I'll talk to that a little bit more in a minute. But, even if climate change is something that a segment of the US is not going to support by name, support for the things that are related to it, like high efficiency standards for automobiles, incentives for solar energy, tax incentives for solar energy and wind energy, and electric vehicles, are things that are supported broadly by the American public.
My biggest concern with the Green New Deal, is we basically say, "If you're for those things, then you have to also be for things like Medicare for all, free college education." Without making an opinion about those, my concern is that we we're losing climate votes, potentially, by doing that. We're losing support for policies we already have, and need to sustain by doing that. That's my concern.
Some of my students have been involved in the Sunrise Movement, which created the Green New Deal. I love that they're activists. I wasn't allowed to go to the meetings because I'm over 30. They started with their own segments here, and they generated this thing, and it's gotten a remarkable degree of traction. It's all good, in that the conversation is good. My concern, my message to them, when they're willing to listen, is that there actually is consensus around climate change, and it's important to speak in a way that doesn't push anyone away. That's my concern.
Do you think we move towards renewables through the grid? Or do we separate from the grid?
I think they can combine. If you're in a place that doesn't have access to the grid, that's a different thing. The thing that is interesting from an energy democracy standpoint is whether or not we can create technical and business models to allow the micro-grid, mini-grid community based projects to essentially become community utilities that never needs an essential grid. That are working with the neighborhoods by themselves, maybe supported by things like blockchain, and peer to peer systems, so that there can be sharing of my neighborhood with your neighborhood when I have excess power and you need it, I'll sell you some. When you have excess power in your battery and I need it, you'll sell me some. And have a world that works like that, rather than the world that is autocratic, and top-down.
The thing that's interesting is that with new technology that actually can work, and it may be better in a lot of ways: it may be less expensive, it may create more local jobs, it may make it easier for people to deal with shortages when it's a problem that's discussed locally and the decisions are decided about whether or not, when there's a shortage, they're going to keep electricity going to the hospital, or air conditioning at the wealthy person's house.
Those things can then happen locally. A place where there's a real sharp point on that is rural Puerto Rico, now that the system has been destroyed. In rural areas there's a lack of local power, that Puerto Ricans feel generally. They feel like they have no say over their lives to a great extent.
Having this local approach to actually build up grids that work within themselves for the most part, and do some trading at the margins with other grids that are nearby, is a very workable change from the typical system that we have for the grid now.
The real question is, where billions of people in the world are, is the system when they grow up something different than just local renewable business going away and the wire showing up? They may say, "Well, we care a lot that it's solar. We don't really want it to be replaced with these natural gas power plant-centered grid." Those are the kind of decisions they'll make, and I think it's important to recognize that it's not only possible that that will be the case in places where there is no grid now. It's possible that they'll be islanding off of these micro-grids, as examined and discussed within Boston, and New York, where there is plenty of grid service now. Having something which is more autonomously managed and managed locally.
In places where there is an established grid, how do you see it moving forward?
Historically there's been two models. There's been one where there's a large electric utility system, and the city is just some of the customers for that system. And, there have been models where the city actually owns and manages the electric utility system that serves that municipality.
There are thousands of municipal utilities around the United States. As I mentioned, there are these things which are sort of like municipal utilities, called rural electric cooperatives, which serve the needs without being part of a large central utility. What these organizations typically do, is produce some of their own power, but mainly they buy power wholesale, in competitive markets, then manage the local wires, pipes and distribution systems. They're accountable to the people they serve. This is called municipal utilities, but that's always been there. That's been there for a long time, and if you look into municipal utilities, for the most part, they are viewed as doing a better job to their customers than non- municipal utilities.
The thing that is now practical, that was less practical before, is something where there is community involvement without it actually being a community managed utility. One of the examples is communities running the energy efficiency program, or choosing the nuances of the energy efficiency programs that are being offered to the customers in their area.
For example, Eversource, a big utility in a few states up here, was approached by the entirety of Cape Cod. They said, "We want to run our own energy efficiency programs for Cape Cod, so we'd like you to give us the money you collect from the Cape Cod electric rate players, and let us run the programs instead of you. We're going to make programs that are more useful for the people of Cape Cod." That's a big area.
I had a student practicum in environmental policy and planning that designed a program with Eversource's agreement. An actual support to my class, to create a program for the typical student housing in Cambridge, of which there was nothing. Eversource offered nothing to help a typical low level grad student apartment in Cambridge improve energy efficiency and reduce the carbon footprint.
They designed something and Eversource ended up doing a specialized program for Cambridge that was partially managed by the city of Cambridge. Getting this local involvement in things that had been administered at the state or utility level is an important part of doing energy democracy.
How does the US speed this process up? How do we move towards energy democracy quickly to achieve the goals we've set for ourselves as a country?
There's really two major things that need to happen to stop burning fossil fuels, thus putting carbon in the atmosphere. It's not only that, but it's mostly that we burn stuff and that's the reason we have a climate problem. We don't even have to stop burning all of it, but we have to stop burning about 80- 90% of it. We can still use some of it, at least for another 50 years or so, but the issue is how do we use so much less?
It's just the best deal in town. Coal isn't going away because of some politics, coal is going away because you can't dig up coal and burn it, and produce electricity for as little as you can with solar and wind energy. The good news, is that one is just going to happen. We are going to stop using fossil fuels for our electricity. That's taken care of. Secondary though, which is much harder, we have to stop using natural gas and gasoline. That's natural gas for our heat and hot water, gasoline for our cars, and diesel for our buses. Those things are much harder to do, and the economics are more challenging.
How are we going to get from here to there? You can make these things work when you have a very energy efficient building, and when you have access to low-cost electricity, the way wealthier people do. Making it easier for people to make their buildings efficient, and making their electricity cheaper per kilowatt hour.
The real question is whether or not they're going to do this because they want to do it, or there's real good value in doing it, or whether they're going to do it because they have to do it. For a lot of people, they're going to do it because they have to do it. If you're in China and you want to drive a car, it has to be electric. It's not a choice that you have. You could have no car, or you can have an electric car. While we don't do that here, Boston's proposing doing that eventually. To drive inside the city limits of Boston, you need to have an electric car.
In California, they put some pretty major restrictions on people who sell cars, to say they have to be selling a lot of electric cars. There are these things that are happening by force, and then that means, what do you do? There's things in the Carbon Free Boston report which are also part of energy democracy, which is to make MassTransit better, have electric buses, make it easier to ride bikes, do things like that so people don't need cars, and don't need to drive as much. Giving people good options.
This is the one that's kind of news. When you print this, you might not have seen it in a lot of places yet. It's inevitable that the gas lines in a lot of cities are going to go dark. There will be no natural gas in the pipes. This is because as we make some progress towards these goals, and we start using less gas in the pipes, the cost to maintain those pipes with the limited amount of gas flowing through those pipes, is going to be too high. You may have heard some news about gas lines exploding in Northern Massachusetts. The typical amount people pay for natural gas is a large portion sustaining the gas pipes themselves.
Anyone who looks at this realizes it's inevitable that the world’s going to come out and say, you know what, we can't afford to come out and do the replacement that our gas pipe system needs: they've rusted, they're leaky, they're putting dangerous natural gas into people's basements, they're leaking methane into the atmosphere, and they will announce that the gas lines turn off.
The necessity of energy democracy is to create affordable ways that don't raise, and hopefully lower the cost of energy for people of limited means. That can be done by properly applying efficiency, creating new technology, having smart homes so you control when you use your electricity, and pay less that way. Having policies that make it easier for people to do this, having community involvement so the programs that are offered locally make sense for the kinds of people and the kinds of buildings that are in that locality.
Those are the elements of having energy democracy turn into an equitable climate solution.