The desire to own a dog came long before my desire to own an electric vehicle (EV), but I never would have guessed that they both would be satisfied on exactly the same day. I mostly have the magic of fate to thank for that — but I can proudly say that research and persistence also played a large role. While the time and effort put into finding the right dog has paid off tremendously in companionship and unconditional love, the time and effort put into leasing an EV has paid off in a net gain of $620.

Yes, I did indeed say a net gain of $620.

I was shocked myself when I first started adding together the California grants and rebate funds that I could receive when purchasing or leasing an EV. I will transparently state that this was the case because I met certain income requirements and reside in California. I was also guided by the Community Environmental Council’s electricdrive805 website, which helps you understand whether you qualify for a free or low-cost leased or used electric vehicle in eight simple steps.

Mis deseos de tener un perro llegaron mucho antes que mis ganas de tener un vehículo eléctrico (VE), pero nunca me hubiera imaginado que ambos se cumplirían exactamente el mismo día. Más que nada tengo que agradecer a la magia del destino, pero puedo decir con orgullo que mi búsqueda y perseverancia también fueron importantes. Mientras que el tiempo y el esfuerzo dedicados a encontrar al perro perfecto han valido la pena enormemente por la compañía y el amor incondicional que él me da, el tiempo y el esfuerzo dedicados a arrendar un vehículo eléctrico han dado resultados en una ganancia neta de $620.

Sí, he dicho una ganancia neta de $620.

Yo mismo me sorprendí cuando comencé a sumar las subvenciones y los reembolsos de California que podía recibir al comprar o arrendar un vehículo eléctrico. Declararé de manera transparente que esto fue así porque cumplí con ciertos requisitos de ingresos y porque resido en California. También me guió el sitio web electricdrive805 del Consejo Comunitario del Medio Ambiente, que ayuda a saber si calificas para el arrendamiento gratis o de bajo costo de un vehículo eléctrico en ocho simples pasos.

Con mi nuevo cachorro, Quest, y mi nuevo Chevy Bolt LT.

Details of the three-year lease cost breakdown:

• $8,880: Single-payment lease
• $5,000: Clean Vehicle Assistance Program (CVAP) grant applied directly at the dealership, reducing the single-payment lease to $3,880
• $4,500: Clean Vehicle Rebate Project (CVRP) rebate, received two to three months after purchase or lease of EV
• Net positive +$620, with an additional $1,000 – $2,000 in EV charging credits or the purchase and installation of a Level 2 EV charging station for my home provided by CVAP and GRID Alternatives

2020 Chevy Bolt LT specs:

• Range: 259 miles on battery only
• MSRP: From $36,620
• MPGe: 127 city / 108 highway
• Curb weight: 3,563 lbs
• Horsepower: 200 hp
• Tire size: P215/50R17
• Dimensions: 164″ L x 70″ W x 63″ H
• Total seating capacity: 5

I kicked off the process with my application for grant funds from the Clean Vehicle Assistance Program (CVAP). The CVAP provides grants and affordable financing to help income-qualified Californians purchase or lease a new or used hybrid or electric vehicle. It is funded by California Climate Investments, a statewide initiative that puts billions of Cap-and-Trade dollars to work reducing greenhouse gas emissions, strengthening the economy, and improving public health and the environment — particularly in disadvantaged communities.

Once you receive your approval letter, the grant funds can then be applied at the dealership — unlike rebates, which you have to apply for after you purchase or lease the vehicle.

You can even check your eligibility by answering three simple questions on the eligibility page of the CVAP website. Because I was in graduate school and working only part time during the 2019 tax season, I was able to show that my income met the eligibility requirements, qualifying me for the following grant amounts:

• $5,000 for a Battery Electric Vehicle (BEV)
• $4,500 for a Plug-in Hybrid (PHEV)
• $1,500 for a Hybrid (HEV)

According to the CVAP website, the entire application process, once you have submitted your application, can take anywhere from three weeks to three months, with an average of around six weeks. I received my approval letter on 14 January 2021, nine weeks after submitting my application on 11 November 2020.

The approval packet came with instructions, tips, a vehicle requirements checklist, a list of qualified dealers, and a grant confirmation page that both the dealership and I needed to fill out. I was also given 90 days to use the grant, but due to the impacts of COVID-19, the CVAP increased that time to 125 days. In addition, I could choose between a $1,000 EV charging card to be used at  ChargePoint and EVgo charging stations, or $2,000 for the purchase and installation of a Level 2 EV charger at my residence. Either choice can only be redeemed 30 days after the purchase or lease date, but must be redeemed no later than 90 days after the purchase or lease date.

Detalles del desglose de costo de arrendamiento de tres años:

• $8,880: Arrendamiento de un solo pago
• $5,000: Subvención del Programa de Asistencia para Vehículos Limpios (CVAP, por sus siglas en inglés) se aplicó directamente en el concesionario, lo que redujo el primer y único pago a $ 3,880
• $4,500: Proyecto Reembolso de Vehículos Limpios (CVRP, por sus siglas en inglés), recibido dos o tres meses después de la compra o arrendamiento del VE
•     Neto positivo + $ 620, con $ 1,000 – $ 2,000 adicionales en créditos de carga de VE o la compra e instalación de una estación de carga de VE de nivel 2 para mi hogar proporcionada por CVAP y GRID Alternatives

Especificaciones del Chevy Bolt LT 2020:

• Rendimiento: 259 millas solo en la batería
• MSRP Desde $36,620
• Millas por e-galón 127 en ciudad / 108 en carretera
• Peso en vacío: 3,563 libras
• Caballos de fuerza: 200 hp
• Tamaño de llanta: P215/50R17
• Dimensiones: 164″ de largo x 70″ de ancho x 63″ de altura
•     Capacidad total de asientos: 5

Inicié el proceso con mi solicitud a la subvención del Programa de Asistencia para Vehículos Limpios (CVAP). El CVAP proporciona subvenciones y financiamiento asequible para ayudar a los californianos con ingresos calificados a comprar o arrendar un vehículo eléctrico o híbrido nuevo o usado. Está financiado por California Climate Investments, una iniciativa estatal que destina miles de millones de dólares en programas de tipo «tope y canje» para reducir las emisiones de gases de efecto invernadero, fortalecer la economía y mejorar la salud pública y el medio ambiente, particularmente en comunidades desfavorecidas.

Una vez que recibes tu carta de aprobación, la subvención se puede aplicar en el concesionario, a diferencia de los reembolsos, a  los cuales debes solicitar después de comprar o arrendar el vehículo.

Esta tabla muestra los requisitos de ingreso de la subvención del CVAP:

Incluso puedes verificar tu elegibilidad respondiendo tres preguntas simples en la página de elegibilidad del sitio web de CVAP. Debido a que estaba en mi posgrado y trabajaba solo a tiempo parcial durante la temporada de impuestos del 2019, pude demostrar que mis ingresos cumplían con los requisitos de elegibilidad, lo que me calificó para los siguientes montos de subvención:

• $ 5,000 por un vehículo eléctrico a batería (VEB)
• $ 4,500 por un híbrido enchufable (PHEV)
•     $ 1,500 por un híbrido (HEV)

Según el sitio web de CVAP, todo el proceso de solicitud, una vez que haya enviado su solicitud, puede demorar entre tres semanas a tres meses, con un promedio de alrededor de seis semanas. Recibí mi carta de aprobación el 14 de enero del 2021, nueve semanas después de presentar mi solicitud el 11 de noviembre del 2020.

El paquete de aprobación venía con instrucciones, sugerencias, una lista de verificación de requisitos del vehículo, una lista de concesionarios calificados y una página de confirmación de la subvención que tanto el concesionario como yo teníamos que completar. También me dieron 90 días para usar la subvención, pero debido a los impactos de COVID-19, el CVAP aumentó ese tiempo a 125 días. Además, podía elegir entre una tarjeta de carga VE de $1,000 para usar en las estaciones de carga ChargePoint y EVgo, o $2,000 para la compra e instalación de un cargador EV de nivel 2 en mi residencia. Cualquiera de las opciones solo se puede canjear 30 días después de la fecha de compra o arrendamiento, pero debe canjearse a más tardar 90 días después de la fecha de compra o arrendamiento.

At this point, I dove head first into reaching out to each of the dealerships listed on the qualified dealer’s page, starting with the dealerships closest to me and working outward. I kept track of the dealerships I reached out to, the vehicle colors and comfort and convenience packages included in their available versions of the Chevy Bolt LT (heated driver and front passenger seats, automatic heated leather-wrapped steering wheel, and auto-dimming inside rearview mirror), and the single-payment lease that they quoted me. The salespeople I spoke with took 3-48 hours to call me back after checking with their managers about a quote and I never told the dealerships that I would be using the CVAP grant or CVRP rebate, as I didn’t want this to interfere with the quote they were going to provide me.

Over the course of about four weeks, I spoke with 13 Chevrolet dealers and received verbal quotes from all of them. While I did attempt to acquire written quotes, none of the dealerships would provide me with one. The number of incentives that I qualified for did have a large impact on the quotes I was provided. I was asked the following questions by the dealerships to see if I qualified for certain incentives:

• Are you a recent graduate?
• Are you or anyone in your household currently leasing a vehicle?
• Do you or anyone in your household own a vehicle that is 2007 or newer?
• Are you a Costco member?
• How many years and how many miles are you interested in this lease for?

It is common for incentives to change on a monthly basis, which can affect the quote that you receive for a single-payment lease. I qualified for the recent graduate incentive, as well as some standard incentives that were being offered by Chevrolet that anyone would qualify for. The average of the 13 quotes that I received for a single-payment, three-year, 10,000-mile-per-year, 2020 Chevy Bolt LT lease was $11,131. The lowest single-payment lease quote I received was from a Chevrolet dealership in Elk Grove, California, near Sacramento, for $8,880.

While I could have called many other dealerships closer to where I live in Santa Barbara, I was also focusing on dealerships near Sacramento because I was already planning on taking a trip there to adopt a puppy. And the Chevrolet dealership that was offering me $8,880 for a single-payment lease had a black 2020 Chevy Bolt available. So I decided to rent a car in Santa Barbara and drive up to Elk Grove the night before, sign the lease in the morning the next day, drop off the rental car in Elk Grove, and then drive my new Chevy Bolt to a small town nearby to pick up my new dog, Quest, in the afternoon, before heading back to Santa Barbara.

En este punto, me lancé de cabeza llamando a cada uno de los concesionarios enumerados en la página de concesionarios calificados, comenzando con los concesionarios más cercanos a mí y luego hacia más lejos. Mantuve un registro de los concesionarios a los que contacté, los colores de vehículos y los paquetes de conveniencia incluidos en sus modelos disponibles del Chevy Bolt LT (asientos con calefacción para el conductor y el copiloto, volante forrado en cuero con calefacción automática y atenuación automática en el espejo retrovisor interior), y el contrato de arrendamiento de pago único que me cotizaron. Los vendedores con los que hablé tardaron entre 3 y 48 horas en devolverme la llamada después de consultar con sus gerentes sobre una cotización y nunca les dije a los concesionarios que usaría la subvención CVAP o el reembolso CVRP, ya que no quería que esto interfiriera con la cotización que me iban a dar.

En el transcurso de unas cuatro semanas, hablé con 13 concesionarios Chevrolet y recibí cotizaciones verbales de todos ellos. Si bien intenté adquirir cotizaciones escritas, ninguno de los concesionarios me dio una. La cantidad de incentivos para los que califiqué tuvo un gran impacto en las cotizaciones que me dieron. Los concesionarios me hicieron las siguientes preguntas para ver si calificaba para ciertos incentivos:

• ¿Es usted un recién graduado?
• ¿Está usted o alguien de su hogar alquilando un vehículo actualmente?
• ¿Tiene usted o alguien en su hogar un vehículo del 2007 o más nuevo?
• ¿Eres miembro de Costco?
•     ¿De cuántos años y cuántas millas quieres el contrato de arrendamiento?

Es común que los incentivos cambien de mes a mes, lo que puede afectar la cotización que reciba por un contrato de arrendamiento de pago único. Califiqué para el incentivo para graduados recientes, así como para algunos incentivos estándar que ofrecía Chevrolet para los que cualquiera calificaría. El promedio de las 13 cotizaciones que recibí para un arrendamiento del Chevy Bolt LT 2020 de pago único, tres años y 10,000 millas por año fue de $11,131. La cotización de arrendamiento de pago único más baja que recibí fue de un concesionario Chevrolet en Elk Grove, California, cerca de Sacramento, por $8,880.

Si bien podría haber llamado a muchos otros concesionarios más cercanos a donde vivo en Santa Bárbara, también me estaba enfocando en los concesionarios cerca de Sacramento porque ya estaba planeando hacer un viaje allí para adoptar a un cachorro. Y el concesionario Chevrolet que me estaba ofreciendo los $8,880 por un contrato de arrendamiento de pago único tenía disponible un Chevy Bolt 2020 negro. Así que decidí alquilar un auto en Santa Bárbara y conducir hasta Elk Grove la noche anterior, firmar el contrato de arrendamiento a la mañana siguiente, entregar el auto de alquiler en Elk Grove y luego conducir mi nuevo Chevy Bolt a una pueblito cerca para recoger a mi nuevo perro, Quest, por la tarde, antes de regresar a Santa Bárbara.

The day after signing the lease for my new 2020 Chevy Bolt, I submitted my application for the CVRP rebate.

Income eligibility requirements apply to rebate applications for vehicles purchased or leased on or after March 29, 2016.

• To be eligible for CVRP rebates, applicants’ gross annual incomes must not be above the following thresholds: $150,000 for single filers, $204,000 for head-of-household filers, or $300,000 for joint filers. The income cap applies to all eligible vehicle types except fuel-cell electric vehicles.
• Applicants with household incomes less than or equal to 400% of the federal poverty level are eligible for an increased rebate amount of $2,500. Applicants who are claimed as dependents are not eligible for increased rebates regardless of their income. Increased rebate amounts are available for fuel-cell electric vehicles, battery electric vehicles, and plug-in hybrid electric vehicles.

Application processing times vary depending on the volume of applications that the CVRP has to process. At press time for this blog post, the CVRP processing times web page states:

• Applications not selected for income verification: 69 calendar days.
• Applications selected for income verification: 138 calendar days.

El día después de firmar el contrato de arrendamiento de mi nuevo Chevy Bolt 2020, presenté mi solicitud para el reembolso del CVRP.

Los requisitos de elegibilidad de ingresos se aplican a las solicitudes de reembolso para vehículos comprados o arrendados a partir del 29 de marzo del 2016.

• Para ser elegible para los reembolsos del CVRP, los ingresos anuales brutos de los solicitantes no deben sobrepasar los siguientes límites: $150,000 para contribuyentes solteros, $204,000 para contribuyentes jefes de familia o $300,000 para contribuyentes conjuntos. El límite de ingresos se aplica a todos los tipos de vehículos elegibles, excepto a los vehículos eléctricos de pila combustible.
•     Los solicitantes con ingresos familiares menores o iguales al 400% del nivel de pobreza federal son elegibles para un monto de reembolso aumentado de $2,500. Los solicitantes que se declaran impuestos como dependientes no son elegibles para mayores reembolsos independientemente de sus ingresos. Hay mayores cantidades de reembolso para vehículos eléctricos de pila combustible, vehículos eléctricos a batería y vehículos eléctricos híbridos enchufables.

Los tiempos de procesamiento de las solicitudes varían según el volumen de solicitudes que tiene para procesar el CVRP. En el momento de la publicación del blog, la página web de tiempos de procesamiento del CVRP dice:

• Aplicaciones no seleccionadas para verificación de ingresos: 69 días naturales.

●      Aplicaciones seleccionadas para verificación de ingresos: 138 días naturales.

I am currently waiting to receive the CVRP funds of $4,500, which I expect to arrive in the next two to four weeks. Given this, it will have taken approximately 127 days from the day I received the CVAP approval letter to complete the process of leasing a Chevy Bolt and receiving the rebate funds, to come out to a net gain of $620.

I found that the most time-consuming portion of this process was calling each of the qualified dealerships and asking for a quote. This also required me to share my phone number and email, which often put me on the dealership’s list of interested customers. For several weeks after I signed the lease, I was still receiving calls from other dealerships trying to offer me their business. In some cases, these dealerships even lowered the price from their previous offer — but they took me off their list once they heard I had already found a Chevy Bolt.

Overall, the time spent filtering through dealerships was completely worth getting paid $620 and leasing a car for free. I also chose to go with the $1,000 in charging credits, because I am unable to install a Level 2 charger at my current residence. Having $1,000 in charging credits will greatly help cut costs; the cost to fully charge my Chevy Bolt can range anywhere from $0 to $30. Currently, I find myself charging biweekly at Level 3 (DC fast) charging stations located in grocery store parking lots and sometimes at Level 2 charging stations scattered across the City of Santa Barbara, the City of Goleta, and the rest of Santa Barbara County.

If you meet certain income requirements, you can either significantly reduce the cost of a lease or get paid a net-positive amount. This can be a huge deal for people in need of a low-cost way to secure transportation. However, the process should still be approached with caution, because you are signing a legal contract when you complete the lease paperwork at the dealership. To further help anyone who is interested in following in my footsteps, I have included some tips, tricks, and helpful websites below.

Actualmente estoy esperando recibir los fondos del CVRP de $4,500, que espero llegarán en las próximas dos a cuatro semanas. Dado esto, habrán tomado aproximadamente 127 días desde el día en que recibí la carta de aprobación del CVAP para completar el proceso de arrendamiento de un Chevy Bolt y recibir los fondos del reembolso, para obtener una ganancia neta de $620.

Descubrí que la parte más lenta de este proceso era llamar a cada uno de los concesionarios calificados y pedir una cotización. Esto también requería que compartiera mi número de teléfono y correo electrónico, lo que muchas veces me colocaba en la lista de clientes interesados del concesionario. Durante varias semanas después de firmar el contrato de arrendamiento, seguía recibiendo llamadas de otros concesionarios que intentaban hacerme ofertas. En algunos casos, estos concesionarios incluso bajaron el precio de su primera oferta, pero me sacaron de su lista una vez que se enteraron de que ya había encontrado un Chevy Bolt.

Después de todo, el tiempo dedicado a filtrar los concesionarios valió la pena para recibir los $620 y alquilar un automóvil gratis. También elegí los $1,000 en créditos de carga, porque no puedo instalar un cargador de Nivel 2 en mi residencia actual. Tener $1,000 en créditos de carga ayudará enormemente a reducir costos; el costo de cargar mi Chevy Bolt por completo puede costar entre $0 y $30. Actualmente, cargo cada dos semanas en las estaciones de carga de Nivel 3 (DC rápido) ubicadas en los estacionamientos de los supermercados y, a veces, en las estaciones de carga de Nivel 2 dispersas por la ciudad de Santa Bárbara, la ciudad de Goleta y el resto del condado de Santa Bárbara.

Si cumples con ciertos requisitos de ingreso, puedes reducir significativamente el costo de un arrendamiento o recibir un pago neto positivo. Esto puede llegar a ser muy importante para las personas que necesitan un medio de transporte seguro a bajo costo. Sin embargo, el proceso aún debe hacerse con precaución, porque se firma un contrato legal cuando completas el papeleo de arrendamiento en el concesionario. Para ayudar aún más a cualquiera que esté interesado en seguir mis pasos, he incluido algunos consejos, trucos y sitios web útiles a continuación.

• Even if you are unsure about engaging in this process, I highly recommend that you apply for the CVAP grant. If you receive an approval letter, there is nothing tying you to using it. If you don’t use it in the 90-125 day timeframe, then you can simply apply again.
• At the dealership, I recommend that you request a copy of the CVAP grant confirmation page after the dealership has filled out their portion. They will keep the CVAP grant confirmation page in order to process it on their end after you leave the dealership, and it is important that you have a copy for your own records.
• Incentives that dealerships offer change on a monthly basis, so their lease prices may change frequently. Check with qualified dealerships often for the best price.
• When requesting quotes, don’t mention anything about your plans to use the CVAP or CVRP funds to pay for the vehicle. You want the dealership to give you the most honest price without thinking that you could afford more.
• When you return your vehicle at the end of the lease, expect that you may have to pay a disposition fee of around $300 or $400, which covers some of the costs for the dealership to resell the car you were leasing. If you return your leased car in poor condition or if you exceed the mileage limits laid out in your lease terms, you may also be charged extra fees.
• Check with your Community Choice Aggregator (CCA) or utility for extra rebates, which some are providing. For example, MCE is currently providing an additional $3,500 for customers in their service territory. However, rebates from CCAs are quickly being depleted.

• Electricdrive805: A website that walks you through the process of determining whether you qualify for a free EV.
• Clean Vehicle Assistance Program (CVAP): Grant funds for battery electric vehicles, plug-in hybrid electric vehicles, and hybrid electric vehicles that can be applied at the dealership.
• Clean Vehicle Rebate Project (CVRP): Rebates for hydrogen fuel cell vehicles, battery electric vehicles, plug-in hybrid electric vehicles, and zero-emission motorcycles that can be applied for after the purchase or lease of the vehicle.
• EV blogspot: Up-to-date lease pricing of EVs and which dealerships stock them.
• Plugshare app and website: Critical for finding charging stations.

• Incluso si no estás seguro de participar en este proceso, recomiendo que solicites la subvención CVAP. Si recibes una carta de aprobación, no hay nada que te obligue a usarla. Si no lo usas en el plazo de 90-125 días, simplemente puedes volver a solicitarlo.
• En el concesionario, les recomiendo que soliciten una copia de la hoja de confirmación de subvención del CVAP después de que el concesionario haya completado su parte. Ellos mantendrán la hoja de confirmación de la subvención del CVAP para procesarla después de que te vayas del concesionario, y es importante que tengas una copia para tus propios registros.
• Los incentivos que ofrecen los concesionarios cambian de mes a mes, por lo que sus precios de arrendamiento pueden cambiar con frecuencia. Consulta con los concesionarios calificados a menudo para obtener el mejor precio.
• Cuando pidas cotizaciones, no menciones nada sobre tus planes de usar los fondos del CVAP o CVRP para pagar el vehículo. Quieres que el concesionario te ofrezca el precio más honesto sin pensar que podrías pagar más.
• Cuando devuelvas tu vehículo al final del contrato de arrendamiento, espera pagar una tarifa de disposición de alrededor de $300 o $400, que cubre algunos de los costos del concesionario para revender el automóvil que estabas alquilando. Si devuelves tu automóvil arrendado en malas condiciones o si excede los límites de millaje establecidos en los términos de tu arrendamiento, también te pueden cobrar tarifas adicionales.

●      Consulta con tu Community Choice Aggregator (CCA) o compañía de servicios públicos para obtener reembolsos adicionales, lo cual algunos ofrecen. Por ejemplo, MCE actualmente está proporcionando $3,500 adicionales para los clientes en su área de servicio. Sin embargo, los reembolsos de las CCAs se están agotando rápidamente.

• Electricdrive805 : Un sitio web que te guía durante el proceso para determinar si calificas para un VE gratuito.
• Programa de asistencia para vehículos limpios (CVAP) : Otorga fondos para vehículos eléctricos de batería, vehículos eléctricos híbridos enchufables y vehículos eléctricos híbridos que se pueden aplicar en el concesionario.
• Proyecto de reembolso de vehículos limpios (CVRP) : Reembolsos para vehículos de pila combustible de hidrógeno, vehículos eléctricos a batería, vehículos eléctricos híbridos enchufables y motocicletas de emisión cero que se pueden solicitar después de la compra o arrendamiento del vehículo.
• Blogspot de VE : Precios de arrendamiento de vehículos eléctricos actualizados y qué concesionarios los almacenan.

●      Aplicación y sitio web Plugshare : Importante para encontrar estaciones de carga.

• Read our press release for more details about CEC’s March 23 Affordable Electric Vehicle Clinic.
• Read CEC’s Energy and Climate Programs Director Michael Chiacos’ blog Electric Vehicles Are For Everyone: Everything You Wanted to Learn About Affordable EVs, and More for a basic guide to EVs.
• Visit our ElectricDrive805 website to learn more about the program and how CEC is working to reduce emissions from the largest source of pollution in the 805 region: the cars we drive.
• Find answers to commonly asked questions about EVs on our website.
• Join CEC’s ElectricDrive805 Facebook group, a space for people interested in electric vehicles to share ideas, ask questions, and learn more about the latest in electric vehicles.
• Read CEC’s Renewable Energy Programs Senior Manager April Price’s blog Finding Solar Joy – and Savings – During the Pandemic to hear how CEC’s Solarize Program can help you add solar, a battery system, or both, to your home or nonprofit for maximum savings.

• Lea nuestro comunicado de prensa para obtener más detalles sobre el taller de vehículos eléctricos asequibles de CEC del 23 de marzo.
• Lea el blog del Director de Programas de Energía y Clima de CEC, Michael Chiacos, Los vehículos eléctricos son para todos: Todo lo que querías saber sobre los vehículos eléctricos asequibles, y más (escrito solo en inglés), para obtener una guía básica sobre los vehículos eléctricos.
• Visite nuestra página web ElectricDrive805 para obtener más información sobre el programa y sobre cómo CEC está trabajando para reducir las emisiones de la mayor fuente de contaminación en la región 805: los coches que conducimos.
• Encuentre respuestas a las preguntas más frecuentes acerca de VEs en nuestro sitio web.
• Únase al grupo de Facebook ElectricDrive805 de CEC, un espacio para que las personas interesadas en los vehículos eléctricos compartan ideas, hagan preguntas y aprendan más sobre lo último en vehículos eléctricos.
• Lea el blog de April Price, Directora de Programas de Energías Renovables de la CEC, Encontrar la alegría solar -y el ahorro- durante la pandemia para saber cómo el Programa Solarize de CEC  puede ayudarle a añadir energía solar, un sistema de baterías, o ambos, a su casa o a su organización sin ánimo de lucro para conseguir el máximo ahorro.

Gregory Young, Program Manager for Clean Coalition

Universalizing local renewable energy resources has been an ongoing passion for Gregory, especially as more of the world’s population transitions to urban environments. Gregory has collaborated with several nonprofits and community-based organizations in developing planning processes to help build resilience and agency for disadvantaged populations. Gregory received his BA in Psychology from the University of Colorado Boulder and his MA in Urban Sustainability from Antioch University Los Angeles, focusing heavily on the world’s dual challenges of climate change and inequality. Along with his MA, Gregory received an Integrated GIS Certificate and created an ArcGIS model that improves the planning processes for locating optimal regions for Community Microgrid development. He hopes to improve upon this model and establish other planning procedures to decentralize and modernize the electric grid.

Michael Chiacos, Community Environmental Council (CEC): While people are looking at the poll, we’ll just go ahead and start. My name is Michael Chiacos. I’m the director of energy and climate programs at the Community Environmental Council. 

Welcome, everybody. We’re very excited to hear talking about one of my favorite topics. I’ll be joined with Barry Rands from the SLO Climate Coalition. Here’s Barry. And Barry will be sharing with us his personal story about electric vehicles a little later in the presentation. We’ll have about 40 minutes for me and Barry to speak and then about 20 minutes for live question answers at the end. In the meantime, though, if you have a burning question, and you want to put it in the chat, while I’m giving the presentation, very, we’ll be able to answer those, so feel free to wait. 

And for everybody who – looks like we have the first poll results – about 44% of people say their next vehicle will definitely be an EV. 36% are considering an EV if it meets their needs, 5% need to learn more and 15% already have an EV. So great to know our audience, thank you. 

And for those of you many of you probably know us at the Community Environmental Council. We’re an environmental group that was formed 50 years ago in 1970. We were founded based here in Santa Barbara. We work throughout the central coast on energy and climate solutions. Even though we’re based in Santa Barbara, and welcome, everyone from Santa Barbara, we know this has been advertised heavily up in San Luis Obispo County as well as Ventura County. So welcome to everyone who’s joining us from other regions and across the state. 

We were formed in 1970. And have been working on environmental solutions. And then in the last 15 years we refocused entirely on clean energy and climate solutions. And our programs work on everything from renewable electricity and energy efficiency to electric vehicles and clean transportation, driving less over to our food program, which is working to reduce food waste, to encourage and pilot regenerative agriculture to sequester carbon. And then we have folks working in plastic and waste reduction, as well as climate resilience. 

So we’re really excited to have you all here today. This presentation is being filmed. And also we will have a PDF in both the webinar recording and the PDF we will email to you, along with questions and answers a few days after this presentation. So feel free to take notes, but also know that you’re going to be getting all the great info and links that we have here as well.

So electric vehicles, these are one of my favorite topics. I’ve been an electric vehicle driver myself since 2012. I also have solar so we’re gonna be talking about driving on sunshine, one of my favorite ways to get around. I also really love biking on burritos, though. And there’s over 40 electric vehicles on the market in California. So vehicles, these are just some of them in all different sizes from small to large sedans, SUVs, even minivans. 

And we’ll be going into some of the different types of electric vehicles. But I just wanted to point out this website here: plugincars.com is an amazing resource for looking at all the different electric vehicles that are out there.

And so why electric vehicles? They’re becoming very popular in California. That’s because, you know, driving has a huge impact. 

The EPA rates electric vehicles at over 100 miles per gallon equivalent. So you see these amazing mpg stickers like this with a lot of money in fuel cost savings. And this is because EVs are about three to even four times more efficient than internal combustion engines. As you can imagine driving an electric vehicle you don’t have all that sound, you don’t have the pollution spewing out the tailpipe. You don’t even have as much heat. All of that is wasted energy that in an electric drive trading gets to move you down the road. 

They have zero tailpipe emissions. So this is one reason to clean air that the air pollution control districts are the primary sponsors and collaborators for our electric vehicle readiness team here on the Central Coast. In electric vehicle because it’s so efficient reduces greenhouse gas emissions by about 75%, if you just plug it into Edison, or PG&E is grid to as much as 100% with increasing amount of hundred percent clean and renewable electricity mandates that people are being delivered or if you go solar, your own house and can generate that electricity, right on your rooftop. 

So California’s electricity is getting increasingly green. So EVs actually will get greener as they age, which is pretty amazing to think that in 10 years, they’ll get greener. Our central coast community energy or CCA has a 100% renewable electricity goal by 2030 and the state of California has that same goal by 2045. So EVs get greener as you drive them, whereas gasoline cars actually get dirtier. And that’s because emission components fail, as well as our oil is getting dirtier. Long time ago, you could pump oil out of the ground very easily. But now we’re having to do cyclic steaming, and fracking, you know, in our own backyards here in California, as well as tar sands in Canada and all kinds of really bad hard to get oil that’s getting dirtier and dirtier. We’ll also be talking about how easy it is to drive on sunshine and how EVs and solar are synergistic technologies that enable you to pay back both quicker. And it feels really great to be

But it’s not just the environmental issues. I know that may attract a lot of people, but they’re also just really fun to drive. It’s a totally better experience. Anyone who’s been driving an electric vehicle for a while, when they go back to a gasoline car just feels really archaic. And part of that is because of this torque curve that you see here. The electric motor has this spaceship-like acceleration that just goes. And it’s much different than revving up into first and then our second gear and third gear with an internal combustion engine. 

Another great thing beyond the fun is that you can save a lot of money. If you power your vehicle up at home you can save about – the cost is about half or even less than gasoline. As well as you can save a lot of money on maintenance. The County of Alameda did a study and found it was about half on their electric vehicles. And just last week, Consumer Reports came out with a huge study of hundreds and thousands of car members. And it showed the EV and plug in hybrid drivers pay half as much to repair and maintain their vehicles. And they found that at $4600 in repair and maintenance costs over the life of the vehicle. So really great to see this in depth analysis from Consumer Reports.

Before we get into the cars, I’m just gonna hammer you a little bit more on the transportation emissions and the big carbon impact from driving. As you can see here, this is California’s greenhouse gas emissions and 41% are from transportation. But it’s actually about 50% because a lot of these industrial emissions come from refining the oil, as well as extracting oil from the ground. So half of our emissions come from transportation. An average gasoline car is equal to about five metric tons of carbon, which may be about half of your household’s impact. And so we really say that by driving an electric car, you can do as much as pretty much everything else in your life put together. And some common things: we’ve all heard that eating cheeseburgers and beef has a lot of carbon emissions, that’s about equivalent to 10 miles of driving a gasoline car. Manufacturing an iPhone is about 200 miles. And then the easiest way to use a lot of oil and carbon in one bang is you know a long flight; about 3800 miles. You can really see how driving an electric car day in and day out is the largest environmental decision that you can make. And I want to point out that you should also be reducing your driving that you can do biking, taking the bus, carpooling, all of those other great things.

Because of all these reasons that I’ve laid out, EV sales are increasing dramatically. In the US we have about 1.6 million electric vehicles. And about half of those almost three quarters of a million EVs are already in California. You may have heard the news that Governor Newsome just put the first ban on gas cars in the United States by 2035 there’s going to be no new sales of gasoline vehicles. Still going to be able to buy used ones or bring them in from out of state but this is really putting the hammer down. I think that we can definitely get there as we’ll see how affordable electric vehicles are and easy to use they’re getting. And in the last couple years we’ve had EV sales already have 8 to 9% of new vehicle sales. So we’re really on the glide path to get there. 

I want to point out that other places already have these bans and globally, Europe and China are really leading with electric vehicles. There’s already 8 million electric cars on the road globally. Some places like Norway have a net gas car ban by 2025. It is already above 60% of vehicle sales being electric and many European countries are quickly catching up to them. 

Here on the Central Coast, we have 1000 electric vehicles in Ventura, Santa Barbara, San Luis Obispo counties. And we’re adding about 100 a month.

Now we’re getting to the vehicles. I know that’s why you all are here. That’s how we advertise this webinar. 

And oh, here we have our next poll: Do you think your next vehicle might be used or you’re not sure. We can think about that for a moment. 

While you’re thinking about that, and voting, you know, we advertise this webinar is saying that you can get an electric vehicle for as low as $5,000, which is pretty amazing. And these are the ones that are around $5000. The used older electric vehicles, maybe four to nine years old. Most of them are kind of the first generation of electric fields. 

Oh, and here’s the poll results, we have 28%, buying a used vehicle 46% think they’ll buy a new one and 26% are not sure, so good to know. 

Most of these used electric vehicles that are under $10,000 are the first generation of electric vehicles, they often have a range of 70 to 100 miles. So it might not work if you just have one car and it is your primary car. But for anyone who’s in a household with two or more cars, picking up one of these use electric vehicles and using it to do all you know your commuting, or all your around town errands you could put a lot of miles and save a lot of money on one of these older electric vehicles. Here we have the Fiat 500. Electric, the Nissan LEAF, these are the most affordable and there’s a lot of them out there. The Ford Focus Electric, and the VW electric vehicle. 

So we’re taking some feedback from the first webinar we did back in June. Someone said, Well, I want to see an actual case study. And so last week, we emailed everyone who came to that first webinar in June, asking who had bought electric vehicles and a bunch of people got back to us and this is John. He attended the EV webinar in June. He’s a County of Santa Barbara employee who lives in Lompoc, but he works in Santa Barbara, and he has a long commute of 100 miles each time he has to go into the office. And just a few weeks ago, he bought this 2017 Volt. This is him with his son here and he paid 52 or $14,500 and it had 52,000 miles on it so someone was really driving and saving a lot with that Volt. But he was able to luckily get it as a second owner for a really good deal. He had a 2016 Acura that he was spending $400 a month on gasoline for it. So he’s a super commuter. And for Super commuters, you’ll really be saving the most amount of money and an electric vehicle because they’re so efficient. He doesn’t have a full month yet of his electricity. But he’s thinking that’s going to be about $50 to $100 because you can charge up pretty cheap at the County Calle Real campus. Sometimes he’ll go to work and come back and then his wife who sometimes has to work at night, then she’ll take it to Santa Maria, where she actually works across the street from Lowe’s, where they just added 13 free chargers. So if you live in Santa Maria, check out the Lowe’s free charging. Doesn’t get better than that. 13 free chargers.

So now we’ll move on to some of the new electric vehicles. These are often after incentives $20,000 to $40,000 or more. These new electric vehicles include the Chevy Volt, that same one that you saw John just bought. The Nissan Leaf, this one after the incentives and in the manufacturer discounts you can often get for in the low 20,000s. So it could be a similar price as a Toyota Corolla, but you get much better mileage and can drive electric. This vehicle here the blue one is the Toyota plugin prime is a plug- in hybrid. And these three vehicles are some of the vehicles from Tesla, which are some of the most advanced electric vehicles. And amazingly, you’ve all heard that Tesla’s can be pretty expensive, but this is the Tesla Model three. After incentives, you can purchase this vehicle for around $35,000, which is actually cheaper than average a new car of $38,000 in this car will actually drive itself on the freeway as well as can go anywhere in the US on the Tesla supercharger network, as we’ll talk about in in a little bit. 

So new electric vehicles, there’s 40 different ones on the market.

All different shapes and sizes, including some larger trucks and SUVs that are coming later this year. And next year, people are really excited about this. As you know, Californians are buying more and more crossover vehicles. So this is the rav4 plug in hybrid that’s out on the market now and being built in larger quantities. This is Ford’s new crossover as well as Volvo’s new crossover that will be on the market later this year. 

We have a new SUV coming from Rivian who is closest to Tesla. They’re a startup – they have billions of dollars invested with Amazon and Ford. These guys really look like they’re going to be making it and are following on Tesla’s heels as a new American automaker. 

Of course, we see Tesla’s polarizing Cybertruck down here for $40,000. It’s going to be a pretty interesting vehicle. I can’t wait to see one of those on the road for the first time. 

And then GM is actually relaunching their Hummer brand. Can you believe it or not – it’s all electric trucks. So these are just a small amount of all the different electric vehicles that are coming soon. 

I also wanted to talk a little bit about hydrogen fuel cell vehicles you may have heard about. They also are zero emissions, they have a higher range than many of the electric vehicles on the market. Most of the long range electric vehicles that I showed you have maybe two to 300 miles of range, hydrogen fuel cell vehicles may have 350 or more, you can also refuel them faster, it’s more like a gasoline experience. But the supercharging and the fast charging for electric vehicles is really catching up. The one limitation is that there’s only 41 hydrogen stations in California. Luckily, we do have one here in Santa Barbara, as well as there’s another one in Thousand Oaks, and then many more in Los Angeles, in the Bay Area, Sacramento all throughout the state. So it’s a pretty usable vehicle for using mostly around town, or going on longer trips throughout the state might not want to go on a road trip to Utah or other places with them. And you also can’t charge them at home, which is as you’ll see one of the big benefits of driving an electric vehicle, it’s actually more convenient than using a gas station for a lot of people. 

They’re also a little more expensive. But there are some pretty amazing lease deals that are out there, many of which include all the fuel. So you might want to look into it if you don’t have access to home charging and drive a lot and can use that free fuel and live close to a hydrogen station. There’s been a little over 8000 sold in California, which is about, you know, a little over 1% of the electric vehicle so you can really see that electric vehicles are taking off. And then the other thing is that they’re actually less efficient than the electric vehicle. You can see 67 miles per gallon equivalent, very efficient, still twice as efficient as a gasoline car, but maybe a little more, more than half as efficient as an electric vehicle because you have to make the hydrogen. And rather than using electricity directly in an electric car, if you use hydrolysis to make the hydrogen, it’s not quite as efficient. Definitely encourage people, probably electric vehicles are the top choice. But if you don’t have access to home charging or interested in hydrogen vehicles, it could be another great zero emission choice as well.

Alright, so get into the incentives. Iris, do you want to run the next poll? 

This poll is a little bit more complicated, because I’m going to ask you to really think about your eligibility for some of these heightened rebates that you can get. So I’ll just let you read them.

And I see that something got a little left off the first answer, but if you have a family of four, it would be around $104,000. So if you make under that $104,000, for a family of four, you could get up to a $5,000 grant towards a new or used EV, or plug in hybrid. There’s another incentive, that’s the clean vehicle rebate program, it’s about $2,000. And you can make up to $150,000, or $300,000 if you’re a joint filer, take that one. And then if you make more than 150, single 300, joint filer – lucky you, you may not get the rebates, but you’ll still be eligible for carpool stickers. And then if you prefer not to state, you can do that as well. But this is all confidential, where we have a grant that’s aimed at helping low to moderate income people get into electric vehicles. We really want to be able to understand our audience here. 

While people are thinking through that, I’ll just give you another couple seconds. 

And the answers are in, Iris. You might want to just keep that until you see some good answers. 

Oh, here we go. So we had about 20% of people that may be eligible for the $5,000 grant, 54% that can get the clean vehicle rebate program, and then 8% that are only eligible for the carpool stickers. 17% are not sure or prefer not to state. So I hope that you’ve been able to think a little bit about which of the incentives that you can actually qualify for. 

Now I’ll talk about the incentives, the Federal Tax Credit is the biggest one, it’s up to $7500. It’s a credit on the taxes that you owe. So you have to have this much tax liability, and you take it on next year’s taxes. So if you went out and bought an electric car this month, you could actually change your withholding for the next few months so that you could see the money sooner and not have to wait till next April or whenever you do your taxes. 

Tesla and GM do not qualify for this federal tax credit anymore, because they’ve sold more than 200,000 electric vehicles. All the other manufacturers do. And it’s a great way to lower the cost of an electric vehicle, we’re going to be talking a little bit about leasing, which is amazing. They’re the best lease deals that I’ve ever seen. And I was gonna say this at the beginning, you may think that pandemic is a weird time to be talking about purchasing a new electric vehicle. But if you are in the position to do so, the deals that you can get right now, because of the impacts of the auto industry, are amazing and we’ll cover them. But by leasing a vehicle to you don’t have to have all that tax liability, the manufacturer can take that and pass you on a really good lease price. 

And there’s also $1,000 to Edison and $800 through pg&e. pg&e’s is only for new vehicles but Edisons can actually be used up to two times on used vehicles as well. So it’s a nice extra rebate to be able to get particularly if you’ve bought one of those five or $10,000 used EVs and you knock another thousand dollars off. 

And then there’s also the California rebate, most people will get this $2,000 for an EV or $1,000 for a plug in hybrid. But if you’re a low to moderate income, and this is a little different designation than the other program I told you about, you can get an extra $2,500. So if you make under $77,000, for a family of four, you could get $4,500 for that electric vehicle. 

There’s also the clean vehicle Assistance Program, which I told you about the limit of $104K for the family of four. It’s a $5,000 grant. You can learn all about these incentives at electricdrive805.org, that’s our EV readiness website. I know it’s a little bit complicated, but basically you buy the vehicle and then you can apply for these different rebates. I’ve done it twice on my two different EVs that I’ve owned, it was pretty easy to do. And we’re really looking, if you go through the clean vehicle Assistance Program, it’s a newer program, and get this grant, please let us know so that we can learn a little bit more about how people are using those, I really want to get the word out about it, because it’s a new program.

All right, so now onto charging. So there’s three types of charging: level one, two, and three. 

Level one is just a regular outlet, you may have this already in your garage or in your driveway. And you get about three to five miles per hour, which sounds really slow, right? A lot of people are like, why would I drive somewhere and then only charge up that slow, but really what most people do is charge their electric vehicles overnight using that trickle charge. 

I had a Chevy Volt as I told you about for six years. And I just use a level one plug like this. If you drive a plug in hybrid, that’s all you really need. It’s a very affordable option, it might already be at your house for free, or pay 500 bucks for an electrician to install one. And if you drive less than 50 miles a day in an all electric car or a plug in hybrid, it could work just great for you. Charge up overnight and then you wake up with a full battery and can do all your driving. 

The next level is level two, and you get 10 to 30 miles. Most electric cars get around 25 to 30 miles per hour. These are like all the public ones you see around the Central Coast as well as most people would put one of these into their house to be able to charge their vehicle faster. Then if you have a 300 mile range electric vehicle you could charge it up overnight. And oftentimes, many electric vehicles come with a level two charger and you just need an outlet kind of like a dryer plug. You may already have a dryer plug in your garage, or you can have an electrician install one. Mine at my house was a pretty simple installation. It was about $800 to put that plug in. And then I use the charger that came with the car but you may already have on your house. There’s around 1000 charging stations on the Central Coast now that are public, including some free ones, and I’m going to go into those in a minute. 

The last is fast charging: level three. There’s 172 plus of these in the Central Coast. And even the old Nissan Leafs that are nine years old, some of them can fast charge, they charge about 50 kilowatts. You can get about 60 miles of range in 20 or 30 minutes. So if you had one of those older Nissan leafs, this would enable you to rather than just be using it locally, say to be able to drive a longer distance maybe if you live in Santa Barbara to Thousand Oaks and charged up and come back or down to Los Angeles and come back. Most of the second generation in the newer electric vehicles have longer ranges of 150 to 300 miles. And they also are starting to charge faster. So you could get even faster of a charge on this network that is expanding very quickly throughout the whole country. 

There’s also very fast charging. Tesla’s is called a supercharger. These charge 250 kilowatts, so that’s about five times faster than the chargers that were just out, you know, five, eight years ago. And that means that you can hit up to 1000 miles per hour, which is very fast. It’s as fast as you’re really going to need even for a road trip, as we’ll talk about in a moment. And really, electric vehicles have been improving faster than anyone ever thought.

I’ve been in this for a while. So it’s pretty amazing to see that now you can take an electric vehicle on a road trip. This is me and my wife. So I got rid of the Chevy Volt and sold it to someone a couple years ago and we got one of the more affordable Teslas: the model three. And this is us on a 2500 mile electric road trip that summer. You can see we’re in a very remote area of Utah. And it worked great using the Tesla supercharger network, just right in the navigation system of the car. You can just say hey, I’m going to Utah and they tell you where to stop for how long and the different superchargers. 

Oh, actually Iris, can you put up the charging poll? I realize we forgot to do that. I want people to think a little bit about if they have access to charging at home now, home possible with upgrades, at work, or maybe you’re relying on public charging. 

So while people are answering that – it looks like 50% of you already have access to charging at home, 38% home possible with upgrades, 20% at work (that’s really great to hear), then 21% are reliant on public charging. 

Speaking of the fast charging, it’s becoming more and more capable if you had a Chevy Bolt or a Tesla to be able to, if you live in an apartment and don’t have access to charging at home,  to just use the fast chargers or some level three chargers while you’re at work or out in public. 

Going back to the road trip, we did 2500 miles in 12 days. And we’ve also done a lot of trips to Yosemite to backpacking in the Eastern Sierras. 

You know, when people are first considering an electric vehicle, they’re really nervous about the charging, but anyone who’s used one, after a month or so, you get really comfortable with it, and you realize that it’s actually quite easy and convenient. If you have access to charging at home, it’s more convenient than going to a gas station because, just maybe once or twice a week, we charge up the vehicle. It takes about 20 seconds to plug it in at home. Way more convenient than going to find any gas station and sitting there smelling the gas as you pump it up. 

On a road trip it’s not quite as convenient as a gas car. But it is pretty easy in that you know, you start out with a full charge, maybe drive three hours, stop somewhere with a fast charger for a lunch break for 30 or 40 minutes, drive another couple hours, stop somewhere for a bathroom break for you know 10 or 15 minutes and get to your destination. Usually most people don’t like to drive more than 6,7,8 hours in a day. So makes it quite easy to actually go on a road trip. And it can be very affordable to do so as well because you’re saving a lot of money on gasoline. 

One last thing I just want to say about road tripping and EVs is that you do have to stop at certain places. But we’ve found all these great places that we otherwise wouldn’t have gone to including really cool little towns when you’re going through Arizona. And then in Santa Clarita, we found this amazing international grocery store with the most phenomenal falafel and hummus and now we try to try to plan our trips so that we can stop for lunch or dinner at this place in Santa Clarita on our way home because we like it so much. So it’s part of the road trip experience, right?

All right, just real briefly, I’m going to just show you some of the charging stations. You can see how many are in Ventura County. Over 100 fast chargers and this is just the city of interest. So you can see how many chargers out there are public ones.

This is Santa Barbara, and apologies to people who don’t live in the namesake city of each county. There’re many chargers in your community as well, I just couldn’t put them all up here.

Here’s San Luis Obispo. If you go to this site plugshare.com and look at all the chargers in your city or in your neighboring cities, or places you like to go, you can see where a lot of these chargers are.

I wanted to emphasize a little bit about charging at home. You can get on these very affordable rates to charge up your vehicle. 

This is Edison’s time-of-use prime. So when you have an EV, its load may be as much as your entire house, so you want to switch to one of these rates that charge you very cheap, 14 cents a kilowatt hour. So this is equivalent to paying about $1.40 per gallon gas. And you can use this rule of thumb at public charging stations. If it’s 25 cents per kilowatt hour to charge, that’s equivalent to $2.50 a gallon gas. But yeah, for 19 hours out of the day, you can charge very cheaply, just don’t charge your car during four to 9pm. And you can save a lot of money on gas. 

Most cars, you can also set them to start charging at 12:30. So even if I plug it in at 7pm, then it will start charging at 12:30 at night when it’s very cheap or you could charge it up during the day as well.

I’m just wanting to also talk – we’re kind of getting to the end of my part of the presentation – about solar plus electric vehicles; synergistic technologies.

This is Jeff and Mandy. He had an auto loan of $475 per month and was spending $300 a month to drive from Santa Barbara to Ventura every day. And then he had a very small utility bill of only $30 a month and he wanted to go solar but he had a really small bill so it didn’t make financial sense. He ended up leasing an electric vehicle. He drove a lot, as you know, so the deal at the time was $200 a month after putting the California incentive down, but he upgraded to 18,000 miles a year for $260 a month. And then he was using more electricity so he could go solar about $300 a month for a five year solar loan. And turned out he was saving about $245 a month and while he leased a vehicle and went own it and he was going to own his solar array after five years. So it’s very similar to the auto loan he had before, except that he owned his solar, which is an appreciating asset rather than the car, the depreciating asset. So he was really excited to make such a huge change and have it make total economic sense.

Another guy, Tim Forker, is a financial advisor, a real numbers guy, we profiled him a while back. And to drive about 12,000 miles a year in your electric vehicle, you need about two kilowatts of solar, which could be $6,000, maybe even $5,000 now. And that basically provides you with 25 years of free electricity for your electric car. 

I bought my own solar array seven years ago, and it’s totally paid off now. And so now I can drive for free for the next 20 years, which is a pretty awesome feeling, as well as to look at your solar panels and smile to just know that you’re generating your own clean electricity for your house and your car. 

So the cost of gas over 25 years might be $50,000 or more. So you can see going solar and EV is a really great return.

We have our Solarize program. It’s a group purchasing program. It’s Solarize Santa Barbara and Ventura County. They are open right now. I really encourage you to go to one of these websites to learn more. So the group purchasing program aggregates people to all go solar at the same time. It makes it more affordable and easier to go solar through our vetted installers. So check it out.

All right, I’ve been talking a lot. I have a lot to say sorry, excuse me. But now we’re gonna get to Barry. He’s going to talk with us for three to four minutes about his own personal story. So Barry, come on on and join us.

Barry Rands: Hey there. Thank you, Michael. And glad to be on this with you. 

Yeah, my name is Barry Rands, I have been in San Luis Obispo and have been the code coordinator of the Drive Electric events here in San Luis Obispo for the last three years, and I’m a member of the San Luis Obispo Climate Coalition. 

And my journey through the EV pilgrimage started in 2013 when I was working for the city of Morro Bay, and they asked me to supervise the installation of an electric vehicle charger in the parking lot behind our city hall building where I worked. So we had a grant on that and got it installed. And I thought, you know, we’ve got an EV charging station here, why don’t I go ahead and look into getting an EV. So I did. I leased a 2013 Nissan Leaf, had it for three years and it worked out great. I didn’t have to hardly ever charge at home, I never had to buy an electric vehicle charger or anything at home. And I was able to charge it at work, and that got me back and forth. 

And I should interject right here. If you have workplace charging, this is a no brainer, get an electric vehicle. Your commuting costs will go way, way down and you’ll improve your carbon footprint greatly. So if you do have workplace charging, it’s usually offered free by your employer, get an EV. 

Moving back to my Nissan Leaf. So a lease came up towards 2016. And I got a postcard in the mail that said, Hey, if you want to buy this back from us, we’ll give you a $5,000 discount more than what you agreed on when you sign the lease. So I got it down to about $10,000. I bought it, used it for another I think two or three years, sold it for $6,000 and bought myself a new Kia Nero, which you see in the picture there. So I’ve had this Kia Niro for a little bit over a year. And the range on the Kia Niro is about four times, well three times, that of the Nissan Leaf. So I’m a happy camper with my Kia Nero. The only trouble is I had to go all the way up to San Jose to buy this thing. So that’s a little bit difficult for servicing and stuff but on the good, good end of it. You know I can get tire changes and new wiper blades at my local auto shop. Anyway, that’s my journey through EV – my EV pilgrimage – and I’ll turn it back to you Michael.

Michael Chiacos, CEC: Great, thank you Barry for sharing your story with us.

All right, so I just have a few more slides and then we’ll get into some of the Q and As. 

I just wanted to point out electricdrive805.org is your really best resource. It’s been put together by our EV readiness coalition, which is us at CEC along with air pollution control districts for Ventura, San Luis Obispo and Santa Barbara, Ventura County Regional Energy Alliance, and C5. And there’s a huge amount of resources here. We’ll also have this webinar available on demand on that website. I really encourage you to check it out.

Our EV readiness team has done all kinds of things such as large events with thousands of rides and drives and tens of thousands of people annually exposed to EVs. We’ve received California Energy Commission funds to do EV readiness plans, where we’ve worked with hundreds of local workplaces, cities’ condo associations to make it easier to drive electric vehicles, put in charging infrastructure, bringing new grants and resources to our region. So we’re working behind the scenes to make it easier and easier to drive an electric vehicle in our region. 

And to kind of summarize some of the wrap up, you know, challenges and drawbacks that five, eight years ago, I heard: a lot of people are really concerned about that longer recharge time. And it’s just a different mindset. As I mentioned, you know, you charge at night or while you’re at work, 90% of that charging might happen at home while you’re sleeping. And so I personally think it’s much more convenient if you charge an EV. Particularly, if you have access to home charging, you have to charge up at work, it could also be pretty convenient. If you only have access to charging, public charging, might not be quite as convenient. But you can save a lot of money as well as be able to at least drive an electric vehicle with all the fast charging and in public level two charging that’s being put in place. 

People also back in the days when an EV only went 70 to 100 miles had a lot of issue with limited range. But that’s not an issue at all with a plug in hybrid because you have that gasoline backup. And, you know, the more affordable used EVs can work great in a two car household. And then the longer range battery electric vehicles get 200 to 300 miles they can work for someone who only has one car in their household. 

And then cost was also a big issue early on. As you can see, with all of these incentives, you can get a new EV for the price of a Toyota Corolla. You get a Tesla now for cheaper than the average new car in California. And I really think that the cost issues are much smaller than the early days, particularly when you also consider the huge savings on gasoline and maintenance which are both about half the cost of a gasoline vehicle.

So all in all, you know, it’s a really great value proposition. I’m actually going to talk about leasing in a minute because the lease deals I’ve seen are amazing right now. 

But traditionally, you could effectively get about zero down if you put the $2,000 California rebate as your down payment. You can get about $200 a month. I helped my mom buy her first electric vehicle – a Nissan Leaf in 2012. She put the rebate down, paid $206 including taxes a month for her lease. And then she got, a few years ago, a VW electric Golf and put the $2000 down and then got I think $186 a month including tax early so you can really get them. And now you could get a lease for around $100 a month, as I’ll show you in a minute. 

The cost of ownership is much cheaper with the gas savings. And with maintenance savings, you reduce your greenhouse gas emissions a huge amount. 

There’s so much more public charging infrastructure out there now. The City of Santa Barbara just put 30 charging stations on top of the Granada garage a block away from me right now. Big installs like this are happening all around. 

And then it’s just really fun to drive an electric vehicle. Drive past a gasoline station knowing that you’re part of the solution, not feeding the oil companies anymore. 

So now right now is really the time to get the word out about the EV era. I hope you all will consider one for your next vehicle as well as tell all your friends so we can send them this presentation when we email it to you in a few days.

These are the top four resources, I talked about all of them: link to drive805 for everything, Plug In Cars to see all the 40 EVs available, plugshare.com to see where the charging is. And then this last one is where all the different lease deals are and I just took a screenshot of it because I looked at it this morning and was just blown away. During the pandemic, car sales in general are really low.

And this is a very busy slide but what you can basically see is you need to get a 36 month lease to be able to get the car for any rebate. 

Honestly, right now, I would encourage almost everybody if they’re thinking about an EV, to lease one, because you can get a price much cheaper than buying them. Because of the car markdowns right now on a Bolt or a Leaf, you can see that the average per month is less than $200. And so if you put down that $2,000 rebate, as well as the thousand dollars from Edison, you know, your monthly payment could be around $100 a month. If you’re a low to moderate income person, it could be under $100 a month, as we saw. It could conceivably even be free, which I really want to see someone do that and be able to lease that EV for free taking advantage of those two programs. So this is the best lease deals that I’ve ever seen my entire life looking at these every few months. So a really great opportunity  right now to get into a Bolt or a Leaf. And this is just the top of the page. If you go to that website, it keeps going down further for some of the other electric cars that are out there. 

So feel free to continue the conversation by joining our Facebook group. And then we’ll have a survey that’s going to pop up at the end of this presentation.

And so we’re getting to the end, we’re going to go into Q & A. But I did just want to mention really quickly that we really appreciate having all of you tune in for this webinar. Special thanks to our partners at SLO Climate Coalition and our guest speaker Barry Rands for sharing his insights today. 

Look for an email in a few days with a follow up with the recording as well as a PDF of all these great resources. 

I’m really proud to have served for over 10 years at the Community Environmental Council. We’ve consistently gotten some of the top marks from these independent charity rating services. And we’re just recently named 2020 California Nonprofit of the Year. We’re very proud about that. Free events like this are just some of the ways that we work to advance rapid and equitable solutions to the climate crisis. So you can support CEC’s work by going to this website here, or texting give to this number. Really appreciate if you feel like you’ve learned something here. Or if you’re saving all that money when you go with EV to help support our work. 

We’re going to go into the Q & A now. But when the webinar ends, there’ll be a pop up that will ask you to just do a one or two minute survey. And if you could do that, that would be very helpful so that we can know what’s valuable and what we can work on for the next one.

So this is me back in 2012 when I got my first electric vehicle, and it’s been an amazing ride, I never would never go back to buying a gasoline vehicle. Hope you all will join me on that ride. 

And now we’ll pull up the Q & A. I know a lot of people have been answering them. Other attendees. So really appreciate that. And I’ll just go through and pick some of these. And Barry, why don’t you come back up here with me? And we’ll have you answer some, some questions, were you able to answer some of these questions? Or did you have some that you wanted to answer live?

Barry Rands: Yeah, I was able to answer about half of them but I’m not a fast typer. Some of them require a little bit of research but there’s still about 20-some open questions out there. 

One of the questions that I would like to answer live is tips for charging cheaply on a road trip. And I would say number one if your road trip is multiple nights, definitely look into and do your research ahead of time. Find a hotel that has EV charging. More and more hotels have that, but make sure your destination hotel for your first night or your multiple nights, make sure they have EV charging. It’s almost always free and that’ll save a lot of money right there. 

You have any further tips on on charging inexpensively on the road, Mike?

Michael Chiacos, CEC: Yeah. Definitely the hotel is a good one. I’ve used that one myself. There’s also a lot of campgrounds if you’re on a road trip and camping that have the NEMA 1450 plugs. Any campground that has RVs will have those plugs there where you might be able to charge up for free if you’re buying a campsite there. Another one is that many of the new EVs like I know VW offers three years of free charging on their network when you buy the vehicle so then you could just fast charge on all their stations for free. With Tesla, you know if you refer a friend and they give you 1000 free supercharger miles, so I’ve actually had a couple friends buy vehicles with my referral link. So I’ve never had to pay any of the Tesla superchargers. And, you know, if a friend or two a year buys an EV, then you may never have to pay for road trips as well. So, those are some tips. 

Katherine Dunham is also asking did Michael just say it cost him $800 to install a charger at home? And yes, that was a cost to install the charger. I use the level two Tesla charger that came with the vehicle so the $800 was just for the plug. And it was I think it was $500 for the labor and a couple hundred for the permit and less than a hundred dollars for the materials. So that was $800. 

Barry, do you have a charger at home? Mine was very low cost. I had room on my panel. Sometimes it can be a little bit more if you don’t have a new electrical or enough electrical service. Barry did you put a charger in at home and how much was yours?

Barry Rands: Yes, I did. The  electrical installation of the NEMA 1450 plug cost about 800 bucks. $700 and change. And then I bought a charger. I got one online through Amazon and it works fine. And then last year I won through national drive electric I won a free charger from Cooper Creek. So maybe I could sell one of those.

Michael Chiacos, CEC: The one you bought online? Was it like under 500 bucks? Around?

Barry Rands: Yeah, as I recall, it was about three to $400.

Michael Chiacos, CEC: Yeah, so I would say that’s pretty typical if you don’t have any problems with your electrical system. Barry and I both paid $800 for the install for $400 for the charger. Yeah, the Teslas and I think some other vehicles come with level two portable chargers that you can just use, you don’t have to buy one. All electric vehicles come with at least a level one charger, if you just have an outlet that you want to use, which is the most affordable way. 

Someone’s asking: Can low to moderate income households get the additional $2500 California rebate if they get a plug in hybrid? 

Yes. So you can get $1,000 for the plug in hybrid plus $2500 for the rebate. So that’s $3500 total or $4500 if you’re getting a pure EV. 

Christopher is asking: Is long term battery life extended/ maximized by typically charging above one versus level two. Also, will Tesla ever consider non Tesla cars or their chargers? 

My understanding is that Tesla isn’t allowing other cars. They have a proprietary standard. There’s a lot of Teslas out there. It’s amazing to show up to charging bay stalls with 24 of them and have 20 of them in use. 

Barry, do you have any thoughts on the long term battery life? Or do you want me to answer that one?

Barry Rands: I’ve heard that most important is not draining it if completely empty, and not charging it to 100% and leaving it in the garage. Those are more important for maximizing battery life. So try and charge between 20 and 80%. And if you charge between 20 and 80%, I don’t think it really matters that much. If you’re doing you know 110 or 220. Maybe if you’re doing a lot of fast charges that might not be so good. But the difference between 110 and 220 is probably insignificant.

Michael Chiacos, CEC: Yeah, I would agree with that. Some manufacturers have it built into their vehicle that they don’t really, they have a buffer like my old Chevy Volt had a buffer so that you could charge it to 100% all the time. And that didn’t use the battery. In fact, I recently heard that out of the 120,000 Volts on the road that none of them have ever needed a battery replacement. And that gets to some of the warranties people often have questions about. Most electric vehicles have an eight year 100,000 mile warranty. The Volt is up to 150,000 miles. The batteries are warrantied to last the life of the vehicle and most of them do. But if you’re really concerned about the battery, you know maybe leasing would be the best option or buying a used one that still has a lot of years or miles left on it because the battery warranty is transferable. 

Let’s see, someone’s asking, do you know if you can charge a Volt with fast charging capabilities at a Tesla supercharging station? 

So no, unfortunately, you can’t charge the Volt there. But you can charge the Volt at all the fast chargers that are being built all across the country now. In fact, I got married last year and one of my friends drove his Volt from Bellingham, Washington, which is up near the Canada border, all the way to Santa Barbara. And he was down here for a few weeks, so wanted to go on a big road trip. And he said it was just fine using the Volt, fast charging. 

All electric cars can use the same fast chargers –  there’s two standards, and most of the charging stations come with a CHAdeMO in the combo fast chargers. But you can go on the plugshare website and see where all the fast chargers are. 

So Brad is asking: I have a solar system I own and generate about 2500 kilowatt hours excess per year. How would I determine if this is enough for EV to charge at home? 

Well, Brad, you should definitely get an EV because you can charge about 10,000 miles of driving for free now on your excess. So most EVs get about three to four miles per kilowatt hour and you have 2500 kilowatt hours excess. So that would be like for a Tesla Model 3, about 10,000 miles of extra driving. So if anyone has excess solar, yeah, you should definitely go electric. You’ll love it. 

Oh, someone’s asking where can I find the total carbon footprint of an EV? Which includes manufacturing? 

Okay, great. This is a great question because I actually have a slide on it. So this is one that I often get asked. In other questions people ask is, I’ve been driving this car for 10 years, and I really want to get an electric vehicle. But isn’t it bad to get rid of my car? And my answer would be if you’re in the position to get an electric vehicle and you’re just driving your old one because you you feel bad about getting rid of it, you should definitely get the electric car, it’s not like it’s just going to go and get crushed, you know, you’re going to sell that to someone who’s going to be very happy to have your used vehicle, they’re going to sell their vehicle and on down the line. The one that will get crushed is probably a really old polluting one that’s leaking oil and is only worth 500 bucks, and, you know isn’t going to pass smog anyways. 

And so basically what this is is a lifecycle analysis from the Union of Concerned Scientists. They found a small electric vehicle like a Nissan Leaf adds about 15% to the manufacturing impacts. 

So for a normal gas car, when you look at the life cycle analysis, manufacturing is only 10 to 15% of that lifecycle analysis. The other 85 to 90% is that 15 years of driving it. So an EV does have a little bit of a higher increase in the manufacturing, you can see 15% for a small EV and 68% for the largest EVs (this would be like a large battery Tesla). Because they’re so clean and you’re reducing your emissions each year you drive it, that extra emissions gets repaid in six to 16 months of driving on the national network. Even faster here in California because we’re so clean with our electricity, you can see. You can check out the UCS report by googling it. 

California is really one of the cleanest places to drive an electric vehicle. But everywhere is getting cleaner and cleaner. There’s pretty much no coal left in California created –  it’s reducing everywhere in the country. 

So yes, I would encourage you to trade up to that electric vehicle because you’ll be putting less carbon pollution every year into the air and you know that carbon is building up and building up. If you are in the position to go electric you should definitely do it sooner. 

Go back to those questions. 

Barry if you see any good ones that you want to answer, go for it. 

Oh, actually, I see that we’re getting out of time. Maybe we can answer more Barry. Do you see any or should I just pick one?

Barry Rands: Go ahead and pick one, Michael.

Michael Chiacos, CEC: Well, someone’s in Cambria. Katie in Cambria wants to install solar panels and then lease a longer range EV, where do I start? Who to call for solar install? How long does that take? 

Well, we have our Solarize Santa Barbara and Ventura programs. So that’s a great place to start if you live in the southern part of our region. Up in San Luis Obispo, I would encourage you to just call a local solar installer. There are local ones that can give you a really great service and you’re helping the local economy. 

You might want to start with just leasing your EV first so that you know how much extra electricity you are using. So, you know, go out and lease and EV, use it for a few months, go solar, when you know how much electricity you use. Or if you know you drive 10,000 miles a year, you could have the solar installer estimate that for you. And driving on sunshine, EV plus PV, is a really great synergistic technologies, it will save you a lot of money and highly reduce your carbon footprint. So definitely encourage you to look into both of those.

So thank you so much everybody. We’re at 1:02. We’re running out of time. And we’ll see if we can try to get to some of the rest of these questions and answer them and put them out when we send out info. But you can also go on our Electric Drive 805 website that may have some of the answers or, you know, these days out on the internet, you can find all kinds of answers to a lot of these questions. So, really appreciate all our attendees that are answering questions as we go. For everybody that attended the webinar, please share it with your friends and anyone else you think that might be interested in going electric. 

So we’re gonna wrap it up and Iris if you can put out the survey. And thank you everyone so much for joining us. 

Good luck with your EV journey.

Sigrid Wright, Community Environmental Council: So welcome to CEC’s first webinar for the year. This is part of a webinar series focusing on climate. Those of you who know us know that we are a 50-year-old, nonprofit environmental group based in Santa Barbara that serves Ventura, Santa Barbara County, and San Luis Obispo counties and that we were recognized last year as a 2020 nonprofit of the Year by the state of California. Our mission is to advance rapid and equitable solutions to the climate crisis.

Nayra Pacheco, Interpreter: My name is Nayra Pacheco and I’m gonna jump with a quick interpretation announcement so we can get settled in and listen to what you’re sharing in both languages.

Voy a comenzar con un anuncio interpretación para que podamos conectarnos en ambos idiomas. Hola buenas tardes mi nombre es Nayra Pacheco yo soy la interpretora de Ingles al Espanol por esta parte.

Hello everyone. My name is Nayra Pacheco and I will be the interpreter today for English and Spanish. CEC has a strong commitment to creating a multilingual language justice spaces so that more of our community can engage. For this reason this meeting will be interpreted simultaneously in English and Spanish so please listen and participate in the language you are most comfortable.

El consejo comunitario de medio ambiente mantiene un poco promiso fuerte a la creación de espacios de justicio de lenguaje para que más de nuestra comunidad pueda participar. Por este motivo esta reunión será interpretada simultáneamente en Inglés y español, así favor de escuchar y hablar en el idioma en que se sienta más cómodo.

The PowerPoint presentation will be available in both languages.

La presentación de positivas está disponible en ambos idiomas. En unos minutos cuando termine de dar las instrucciones activaremos la función de interpretación. Si usted está en su computadora verá aparecer un icono de globo al fondo y a la derecha de su pantalla. Y si está en su teléfono verá tres puntitos en la parte de abajo. Haga clic aquí y haga clic en interpretación de idiomas y seleccione el idioma en el que quiere escuchar. Si por algún motivo el audio original suene mas fuerte que la voz de intérprete en cualquier momento puede silenciar el audio original.

In just a minute after I finished giving these instructions we will activate the interpretation feature. If you are on a computer you will see a globe pop up on the bottom of the screen. If you are on your phone, you will see three dots on the bottom right hand side of your screen. Click on these and select the language you speak. If for some reason that original speaker sounds louder than the interpreter you are listening to, you can mute the original audio at any moment.

Usted tendrá que seleccionar un canal de idioma si no es bilingüe en español y en Inglés.

You will have to select a language channel if you are not bilingual in English and Spanish. We welcome contributions into the q&a section in both languages.

Damos la bienvenida a la participación en la sección de preguntas y respuestas en ambos idiomas.

And finally, we create these spaces with everyone’s support. So please communicate any issues by chat.

Y por último creamos estos espacios con el apoyo de todos. Favor de comunicar cualquier problema en el chat.

Thank you, we may now activate the interpretation feature.

Gracias, podemos activar la función de interpretación.

Sigrid Wright, Community Environmental Council: Right, thank you Nayra. Alright, so on the bottom of your screen, if you would like to enact the feature, you’ll see a little globe that says interpretation. Pretty good. And if you have any issues, just post them in the chat, please. And Iris and team will take care of it. Thank you again, Nayra. Right, I want to let everybody know, we’re really happy to be here today with you. This webinar is being recorded, you will receive a link to the recording and other resources after the event. And also all of these resources will be made available at CECSB.org. So if you’re registered for this, you should get a follow-up email but you can also find the resources on our website. 

This is an active session and your engagement is welcome. We invite you to ask questions and in the q&a during the presentations or after the presentation we’ll answer them as we are able. We apologize in advance if we’re not able to respond to every question. We’ll do our best. Please use the chat for any other comments or resources you may want to share. We have a full support team here to help us including Iris, who you’ll see is one of the panelists, Alhan and Katie. It’s a little bit past noon right now. So we should be wrapping up around one o’clock. Okay. All right, great. So we are going to begin. And I have the first piece, actually. 

So I want to just talk a bit about why start by sharing, you know why we’re here.

And before we get into CEC’s solutions around climate change, I think it’s really important that we just kind of set the stage and anyone working in this field, just know some basic facts. The first is that there has been a 350% increase in extreme weather catastrophes in the last 40 years. Or to give a more nuanced perspective. Since 1980, the US has averaged six events a year that have topped over $1 billion in damages. And in the last five years, the annual average is closer to 12 events. So about double in just in the last few years, so it doesn’t just feel like things are getting more intense, they are getting more intense. And this is why CEC does this work. Next slide, please.

This isn’t just about data points, at this point, each one of us has a very personal climate story, whether it be extreme heat, or wildfires, or the rain bomb that led to the Montecito debris flow. Personally, even as a climate activist for a long time, I considered some of these things wildfire and heat, for example, just to be things that we lived with in Southern California like earthquakes. But over the last five years, I’ve had my property, my family’s property, or even my life threatened multiple times by dozens of fires over a dozen fires. And in fact, I was staying out at Mount Calvary, the night that the T fire erupted and burned Mount Calvary to the ground. 

Even with those experiences, I do want to share a personal story that over the last summer I had an experience with I was spending a few weeks in Oregon, visiting quietly with some family and I had to quickly flee to rapidly approaching fires exploded due to hurricane force winds. They were coming at me from both directions. It ended up taking me over two days to wind my way back through California to get home to Santa Barbara, by making a giant figure eight, basically out to the ocean and back out to the ocean and back criss crossing mountains with roads and highways that were frequently shutting in front of me or right behind me. And for two days I lived in a respirator and didn’t see the sun. The smoke was so dark that there were points where I could hear crickets chirping at noon. And it was the first time that I experienced a feeling of nowhere being safe. I recall during this time period having a conversation with CEC board member Pat McElroy who’s the former fire chief for the city of Santa Barbara, in which I could just hear the horror in his voice as he talked about how emergency responders were now measuring the advancement of fires in acres per second. And here’s how he put it: he said the Thomas fire became the largest fire in California history in 2018. Two and a half years later, it is the seventh, seven of the 10 largest fires in California history occurred in August and September of last year.

So that is the kind of impetus and the personal story behind the data. And why we do the work that we do to put California on track for an equitable climate safe future by 2030. Today, we’re going to be talking about that: CEC’s mission to reverse repair and recover. And we’re going to talk about how this is really the moment where we have to lean in. Many of you have been hearing me say this for years that we have this narrow window of time. And that that window is closing. And that we’re really globally in the position now where we have to do twice as much twice as fast. We have a little over a decade to get to net zero to avoid the worst case scenarios. And, you know, I’ll remind you that it took us a decade just to get the first wind farm in Santa Barbara County. So this is a major lift. But there are three things that give me hope. And I’m going to run through those really, really quickly. 

The first is that we know what we need to do. We know why the carbon cycle is disrupted and we know what needs to happen to repair it. So essentially, it’s science but it’s not rocket science. Next slide, please.

So here’s what I mean. The crux of the problem is that we’re emitting too many green house gases, carbon dioxide, methane, etc. This graph puts all the different types of greenhouse gases into carbon dioxide equivalent, measuring it in million metric tons. You don’t have to know all of the kind of all the data here, but you’ll get the gist of it on the left, you’ll see what’s contributing to those emissions by sector in today’s world. And on the right, you’ll see what we need to do as quickly as possible. So basically, crushing most of those emissions in the next decade. So Ag and forestry, commercial and residential electricity, industrial transportation. Then what you’ll see, and that will include, you know, moving electricity emissions by to 100%, renewables as soon as possible, reducing transportation emissions by 80%, ag emissions by 80%. And then you’ll see that gray bar, that what we need to do is sequester a bunch of emissions almost 100 million metric tons. So to recap, every sector needs to be massively disrupted, and every sector needs to pull off really heroic levels of drawdown. The second thing, next slide, please, that gives me hope is that we finally have the wind at our backs.

And I know that many of you feel this as well. While President Biden’s climate plan isn’t perfect, the federal government government is finally sending the right policy signals. So I’m going to just run through some of the highlights of Biden’s plan. just picking up some of the kind of top notes of it. So we’re all grounded in the same information. The first is that he has declared a climate emergency and he’s declared climate as a national security priority. Next slide.

The second thing is he’s called for an end to fossil fuels. Next slide.

And a national transition to clean electricity by 2035. Next slide.

As well as a transition of the Federal fleet to electric vehicles. Next slide.

He’s also called for the protection of 30% of land and coastal waters by 2030. We’re still waiting to hear what exactly that means. Next slide.

And he took a page for California’s development of a new program last year of the civilian climate Corps. And he’s recommending a similar federal efforts. And we’ll post a link to that California climate action core in the chat. However, even with global agreements, or Biden’s platforms, it’s important to note that the majority of the actual work on climate will happen at the local level. And that’s the third thing that gives me hope. It’s the massive amount of creativity, energy and commitment that has emerged at the state and local level in the last few years. So while we have a lot of work to do together, there’s some incredible momentum happening up and down the Central Coast. And I’m going to hand it to CEC’s director of energy and climate programs, Michael Chiacos, to talk about the first of CEC’s three pronged strategy for the next decade. Reverse. Michael?

Michael Chiacos, Community Environmental Council: Thank you Sigrid. My name is Michael Chiacos. I’m CEC’s director of energy and climate programs. And the central coast in California can help lead the world to zero carbon. My wife and I are expecting our first baby in May. And it is possible that by the time she reaches adulthood, we could be living in this zero carbon world. So imagine with me this future 100% clean electricity, zero emission vehicles and cities easy to get around without a car buildings that don’t use fossil fuels in a zero waste, circular economy. So this is the big idea. And CEC is working with a network of partners under the leadership of the climate center to possibly pull forward California’s goal of carbon neutrality by 2045. Could California get to carbon neutrality by 2030? Matching Norway’s ambitious goal? The quicker we get there, the greater chance we have of avoiding climate disasters that are becoming increasingly severe and commonplace. 

Much climate action is locally implemented and we will push agencies across the three county region to adopt zero carbon targets by 2035 or earlier. This will ensure that local communities are taking strong actions, developing innovative, equitable, replicable programs, and proving California can reach bolder goals. We’ve already made significant strides on 100% renewable electricity. Our region is a national leader on zero emission vehicles. Local governments are getting fossil fuels out of new buildings in our communities are cutting food and plastic waste. Our five year strategic plan seeks to significantly ramp up efforts to get to zero carbon, accelerate our work to sequester carbon in our working and natural lands and develop climate resiliency by preparing for the climate impacts that are intensifying. Next.

CEC, the central coast, and California are leading our nation and world towards this future. We experiment and innovate here in California, creating the clean energy economy of the future. What we do here is spreading to other states and regions. One example the cities of Santa Barbara and Goleta were early adopters of 100% renewable electricity goals. In five Ventura cities were some of the first in the nation to achieve 100% renewable electricity. Now, over 170 cities in eight states have made similar actions. And President Biden recently set a goal of 100% carbon free power for the entire nation by 2035. Next.

So here’s how we’ll do it. We already have two pioneering cities, San Luis Obispo and Santa Barbara, they have set some of the most ambitious goals in the entire country of carbon neutrality by 2035. Now we need to work on others and entities like school districts and transit districts. We seek to influence county and city governments in Santa Barbara, Ventura, and SLO counties to set and take action towards ambitious equitable goals: in their climate action plans, General plans, transportation plans, hazard mitigation plans, and other critical policy documents to halt carbon emissions, draw down excess carbon and build that community resilience. We are also launching a climate leadership program to build a troop of diverse climate activists that can engage in policy advocacy and build community support for action throughout the three counties, including youth, people of color, and other underrepresented communities. Next.

So what gives us this confidence that we can reach these ambitious targets? It’s because we have a strong track record. We have the technology and we are building the will to make it happen. Here’s one success story that is accelerating our clean future. In 2007 CEC wrote our energy blueprint, which was one of the first carbon neutral plans in the entire country, we call it Community Choice, the closest thing to a silver bullet for quick decarbonization. Over the last decade 23 of these local energy agencies have formed serving over 11 million Californians. They’re the easiest and quickest way for our region to move to 100% clean energy, while funding programs to help our region decarbonize at scale.

In 2018, Ventura, Thousand Oaks, Oxnard, Ojai in the county of Ventura became some of the first communities in the nation to be powered by 100% renewable electricity after they joined clean power Alliance, along with many other cities in Ventura and LA Counties. In 2020, Central Coast community energy started expanding the San Luis Obispo and Santa Barbara counties and now serves most of our region. They have set a goal of 100% renewable electricity by 2030 through long term power contracts with newly constructed renewables and storage. Both agencies are quickly developing programs to get more electric vehicles on our road, develop solar micro grids, get fossil fuels out of our buildings, and more to help our region decarbonize. CEC and our network are continuing to advocate, engage, and help these new agencies as they develop ambitious goals and programming. Next.

So what makes you so unique is that we work on many levels. We advocate for policy drivers, then we build the networks and we pilot on the ground action and bring them to scale. Let’s take one example with electric vehicles. We advocate for California to set strong EV policy and for agencies such as the county of Santa Barbara to commit to only purchasing EVS in their fleet. And this year, the county is buying 56 EVs and installing 87 chargers. CEC and Sierra Club worked with Santa Barbara MTD to set a goal of 100% Electric buses by 2030. This is one of the most ambitious goals in the nation. We’ve helped Ventura schools receive funding for electric school buses, and will continue to help local agencies deploy all electric buses develop electric car share vanpool or other on demand transportation. 

CEC also led development of electric drive 805 you can see the website here I hope you’ll visit it. This is a coalition of CEC, the air districts of Ventura, Santa Barbara, and SLO and governments, businesses and other partners, that have been working for a decade to make it easier for this transition to take place. And then we do the on the ground work, get more charging stations bill and ensure that low income drivers know about special rebates that make EVs more affordable. So we now have over 1800, public charging stations and almost 20,000 plug in vehicles in our three counties. Californians built the EV market and Governor Newsom recently set an executive order of 100% zero emission vehicle sales by 2035. Massachusetts just set a similar goal as are other states. And, as is President Biden. Next.

For renewable energy, our tangible actions are proving how we can achieve bold policy goals. We worked with the cities of Santa Barbara and Goleta to set 100% renewable energy goals and Community Choice is quickly making these goals reality across our entire region. The Strause wind farm in Lompoc, which CEC advocated for, will double renewable electricity production in Santa Barbara County with one project. Our solarized residential program has directly helped 858 homeowners go solar while boosting the Central Coast solar market. We are now working to expand our solarized nonprofit program with a goal of installing one megawatt of solar on regional nonprofits. And thanks to the advocacy of CECs staff and board, Santa Barbara Unified School District just approved a plan to solarize 14 schools including six solar micro grids. options as well, that both of the installers can support you with.

Another success story: CEC built the Santa Barbara County Food Rescue, a collaborative Food Recovery Network of private public and nonprofit sectors preventing produce and restaurant quality food from going to the landfill and turning into methane. Instead, we are getting this food to those facing hunger throughout the county. Over 100 tons of food has been rescued and provided to seniors, vets, and people in need. We’re currently scaling up with the aim of activating more community kitchens and streamlining production to lower the cost of meals.

CEC’s ditch plastic program has successfully advocated for seven regional laws that limit the distribution of millions of single-use plastic items per year. We continue to push for policies that reduce single-use plastics at the source and are also advocating for a shift to a circular economy that designs waste out of the system. Now I’m going to pass the baton to Allegra who will talk about how we can draw down the excess carbon emissions.

Allegra Roth, Community Environmental Council: Thanks, Michael. My name is Allegra Roth. I’m CEC’s Food and Climate Program Manager. So by now we know that eliminating carbon emissions isn’t going to be enough to achieve our climate goals and climate safety. We need to actively draw down carbon from the atmosphere and rapidly scale nature-based solutions to achieve not just carbon neutrality, but to get to carbon negative. So this is our decade. This is the decade our challenge is to remove tremendous amounts of carbon from the atmosphere, carbon that has been released over the last century, and store it in our plants and the roots and the soil beneath our feet. And the best way to do that is to support what plants and soil have been doing for free through photosynthesis for billions of years. We need to do this by adapting the way we manage our land. Next slide.

There are dozens of strategies we have at our disposal from compost application on rangeland to changing our methods of tilling, to planting trees along the edges of fields, there’s a lot we can do and a lot of carbon that we can draw down. As an example, a few years ago, CEC found that we could offset all of the emissions from our county’s agricultural sector, simply by applying compost on just 15% of our county’s rangeland. Compost won’t be the only strategy CEC pushes for by any means but just shows that that the climate impacts are real and they are doable. So over the next year, CEC is going to do everything we can to rapidly scale nature based carbon negative solutions and set bold goals for nature-based carbon sequestration, both at a local level and at a statewide level. This is our big idea. And to do this, CEC will do what we do best: piloting climate-smart strategies and building coalitions of people to scale those solutions.

Compost on range land has gotten a lot of attention over the last few years for its potential. And we’ll continue to study the impacts of compost, but we will also be looking to pilot and research other strategies. So those could include cover cropping, tree planting, agroforestry, things along those lines. Luckily, the state of California has an entire grant program dedicated to doing just this, the healthy soils program. And there’s dedicated funding in this program to study and implement healthy soils practices on California farms and ranches. We luckily continue to see more and more investment in this program. And it’s great to have meaningful financial support from the state. And CEC will keep promoting this program. It provides a great opportunity for us to partner with farmers, develop research projects, and actually pay growers to do this work, which is hugely important.

In order to increase the use of compost, specifically, like I was mentioning, we need to push for alternative composting technologies, including the use of small scale compost, small scale, community based and decentralized composting system. So the more that we can keep food waste in organic materials in our local community where it comes from, we won’t have to transport our food waste dozens or hundreds of miles away. We can avoid unnecessary emissions from the landfilling, and transportation of that food waste and keep it in our community. And in the end, food waste at its core is just nutrients, and water and carbon, all of which we need in our soils. So we’ll be finding innovative ways to keep these materials on our farms on our ranches, in our community and school gardens that can really benefit from the food waste when it’s managed properly.

So there are major institutional shifts that we need to significantly scale carbon smart farming. Specifically, when it comes to Farmer and Rancher incentives. We have found that there are various policy barriers to this work at the regional level. And we need to address those barriers and the lack of policy incentives at the regional scale. So that includes working with county departments, our regional water boards, our planning agencies, and helping translate those solutions into incentives at the state level. So a piece of the farmer incentives has to be financial. So we’re looking at new financing mechanisms as well, like carbon markets, or ecosystem service markets. And this is something that the Biden administration has shown a lot of interest in. So we’ll hopefully be seeing some leadership at the National level, specifically around the carbon market. 

The goal here is to make it financially feasible and financially beneficial for farmers in our region to adopt soil health strategies. We can’t do this work without the people on the ground managing our land: farmers and ranchers planting seeds and tilling fields every day. We will definitely continue centering the priorities of growers as we push for these incentives.

None of this work, especially the research and policy work can be done without our partnerships. A priority for CEC has been and will continue to be building strong coalitions of researchers and technical advisors, farmers and Policy Advocates to really take a multi sector approach to this work. We’ve built a really vibrant and exciting network of partners with statewide organizations and legislators. And there’s huge opportunity to translate what we’ve done on the central coast to the state level and the folks at the state are keeping an eye on us to see what we do and what we come up with. And as you can imagine changing the carbon stock in our soils to the degree that we need to require buy in from people at every scale: from growers all the way up to statewide lawmakers and CEC is well positioned to build and maintain the coalition of folks that need to be at the table.

So to wrap it up, when CEC first started doing this work, a few years ago, very few people were talking about carbon sequestration and soil health. Since then we’ve gotten more and more confident about the power of this work. Soils have been on the front of the New York Times Magazine, Hollywood celebrities have gotten on board. At the local level, the county of Santa Barbara has chosen to include natural and working lands in their Climate Action Plan. The county of Ventura has actually included specific Carbon Farming language in their general plan, which is the guiding document for land use in the county. So there’s a lot of momentum and energy in this work. And it’s been great doing this work on the ground, launching pilots, hosting events, and advancing policy and actually seeing the movement grow around us and being part of that growth. CEC’s made big waves in this work in the last few years. And there’s still a lot of work to do. And we’re excited to share our steps along the way. So I think that’s it for me, and I’ll hand it to Sharyn Main, the director of CEC’s Climate Resilience Program.

Sharyn Main, Community Environmental Council: Right, thank you Allegra. My name is Sharyn Main. As Allegra said, I’m the director of climate resilience at CEC. And, you know, climate impacts are here, we’re all feeling them. And even with aggressive efforts to reverse and repair, as we just heard from Allegra, and Michael, it’s not going to be enough to protect us from the threats of climate change that are already here. We’re not even likely to see some of the peaks of some of these climate impacts such as sea level rise, or extreme heat and even intense fires for maybe another 30 to 50 years. So what this means is that we’re going to be dealing with climate impacts for at least the rest of our lifetimes, and likely our children’s lifetimes as well. That’s why we must also spur bold action to protect our community, particularly those most vulnerable from the impacts of climate change. Next slide.

We’re seeing fires like never before. In 2020, California doubled its previous fire record with over 4 million acres burned. Sigrid gave us a very, very harrowing experience, her own experience, but we’ve all had them. When you think about fires that then fuse together, and they last, like we like happened last year, in the August complex fire California experienced our first ever Giga  fire. That’s 1 million acres or more. So wildfire experts have actually started to expand the definition of mass of these massive blazes, whether they’re mega fires or Giga fires. And it’s beyond just acres burned, to mean the wildfires that have really an unusually large impact on people and the environment. Also, heat records continue to be shattered across the globe. And we are once again heading into another drought year here regionally, with a prediction of about half of the normal rainfall for the region.

And even though we live on the coast, many of us are really not paying much attention to sea level rise. And while this particular climate threat may seem like something far off into the future, it’s actually going to be quite devastating to us both socially and economically. I mean, it’s already impacting roads and infrastructure and limiting access to certain beaches. And it’s been noted by the USGS, the US Geological Survey that over 600,000 people and $200 billion in property will be at risk in California over the coming decades. And these impacts are likely to be far more costly and impactful to society than even the worst wildfires and earthquakes in our state’s history, by they say a factor of 10. So you can imagine this is a really, really important issue.

And while climate really is affecting all of us, whether it be fire or drought, or extreme heat, or sea level rise, or even unpredictable storms, the impacts of climate are borne disproportionately by those most vulnerable, those being low income communities, or frontline workers, marginalized populations, communities of color, homeless, elderly, the young and even those with underlying health conditions. And when climate impacts and disasters are combined with say, a pandemic, which we’ve all been experiencing, prolonged recession, and then even racial violence and intolerance, the burden is not only disproportionate, cruel and unfair, but it’s devastating to our community cohesion and social well being.

With bold actions to prepare and protect people in places we can tackle the climate emergency and its human costs and safeguard your children and grandchildren’s future, as well as lift up those most vulnerable. Building a just and equitable Climate Resilience is going to require integrating a range of strategies and connecting the dots from public health, land use planning, infrastructure protection, disaster preparedness to the neighborhood level engagement and empowerment, which is really key. Creating resilience to the climate changes really demands new approaches that empowers community and gives voice to indigenous knowledge and address what we’re facing.

So how does this happen?

CEC will push agencies to set even far more ambitious equitable and resilient schools. We have great partners and our cities here in our county are doing great work. But but we really must go further, we have to protect against the future risks both near and long term. And we have to engage diverse voices in this process. Equity and justice needs to be centered in climate resilience. And this includes challenging the systemic racism and barriers that still persist. Our communities of color or low income and frontline workers should not suffer a greater burden of climate change. And government agencies and community partners need to incorporate the resilience measures into their current work plans. We’re in a climate emergency and the impacts they’re happening now. So we’re going to do this in a couple of different ways.

Many of you here have participated in our climate resilience roundtables. Over the last year we’ve been listening and learning from the community through this series of roundtables. We’ve brought together government agencies, climate disaster planners, community leaders from public health and social justice and environmental sectors. These roundtables resulted in over 700 community generated ideas and solutions to promote climate resilience. And we’ll be sharing all of these ideas and unpacking the key themes that we learned from the roundtables in a web webinar that we’re hosting next week, next Friday the 12th. And I think we’re gonna put that in the chat for you, because I’d love to have you participate.

Here are just a few examples of some of the top ideas are generated from the resilience roundtable series that we’ll be exploring. And these ideas are ranging from more inclusive planning, which I’ve really alluded to, to climate resilience hubs, to transportation and structure protection. And we’ll have all of these in both English and Spanish for our event next week. So our plan will be to continue to promote these community generated ideas and solutions through CEC’s climate resilience priority snapshot, and this will be a report that will be informed by our most critical thinking and what’s happening in the community, the on the ground conditions. So we’re looking at what’s happening now what you need to focus on, what are the most immediate threats? And what has the most community energy around it? What are we looking at? What is the community really calling for, and I think access and inclusion is one of those examples, and what needs to be elevated, what’s really not being addressed. And I think about things such as, the connections between public health and some of these climate impacts. So this snapshot report will not only inform our work, but we hope that it will encourage others to adopt these key elements in their planning efforts going forward. And it will help give the public sort of real time issues that are before us that we need to consider.

We’ll also be working closely with our partners at the Central Coast Climate Justice Network, and create really a policy action platform based on the principles and the ideals that have emerged through the climate resilience roundtables. And this will really help elevate key climate justice policy, recommendations and help strengthen the equity and justice lens at the local, regional and state level. It will remind governments and agencies to incorporate these perspectives of the Spanish and indeed indigenous language first communities and the frontline and social essential workers and communities of color as they set their climate goals and actions. And it will help make a case for more capacity, support and decision making power to empower our communities so that they can actually have greater input and control of their own resilience. Next slide.

And finally, we will look for partnership opportunities to help climate protection measures that really connect the dots with public health issues, such as the need for urban cooling, and clean air centers during smoke events and fire events. And I want to point out that the World Health Organization has recently suggested that governments really work on an all-hazards approach to preparedness, from infectious disease outbreaks to extreme weather events, and even climate change. And this to me also includes an all-people approach, we need to work at these intersections of health, the environment and the economy to really achieve true resilience.

And as has been mentioned, really throughout our presentation, the networks and collaborations and partnerships are really key to an integrated approach to climate resilience. And CEC does have strength in this area. We brought together networks and community partnerships between governments and nonprofits and activist groups in academia, and much more. We serve as both a convener and a leader helping to push policy and cutting edge ideas. Just a really quick few examples, we co-founded and co-chair the Central Coast Climate Justice Network along with CAUSE, which has now been around for about four years. And this is where we have over 16, social justice environment organizations that are currently working together, along with our affiliate members from government agencies. And as mentioned earlier, through our food program, and the Santa Barbara County Food Action Network, there are over 30 partner agencies that we’re working with, including health organizations, education institutions. And these are really important partners going forward because strengthening the social safety net is really critical to providing core elements of a just community resilience. And we are actively sharing and leveraging our actions with multiple climate collaboratives that are up and down the state from the local Santa Barbara County Climate Collaborative, to our central coast Climate Justice Network, as I mentioned, our Central Coast Climate Collaborative, which is from Monterey to Ventura County, and even ARCCA, which is a statewide collaboration of regional collaboratives, and networks. So really an important component in part of our strategy. So with that, I’m going to hand it back to Sigrid.

Sigrid Wright, CEC: Great, I’m back. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you, Michael, for talking about what we need to do to reverse emissions, Allegra to talk about what we need to do to actually work with nature to repair our broken carbon cycle. And Sharon for talking about how we protect against the increasing climate threats that we are facing. I want to just talk very briefly about how we will be measuring and tracking progress over the next few years.

So each of our programs has set goals for the next five years. And over the next couple of months, we’ll be building out a dashboard to monitor our progress and assess where we’re at in tracking and meeting our goals. What I’m showing you here is a dashboard just specifically for community engagement — the type of thing that we can easily track right now as we work to build a troop of climate activists of youth and adults, which is a really significant portion of our effort. This no longer is work that can be done by one or two organizations. It’s work that has to be done by all of us. And we’re designing programs and efforts to engage you all. And I know there are a few questions about what that might look like. So I’m going to take a moment here to transition us into the Q&A.

And so there is a q&a section, where you can type in your questions. We’ve been answering some of them in writing, so you can see those in the answer section. And then we’ll be addressing a few of those live right here. I’m actually gonna ask Michael Chiacos to take the question earlier, it looks like it may have gotten dismissed… or about how folks can engage in policy work. I’m not actually sure what happened to that question.

Michael Chiacos, CEC: Yeah I can answer that. Okay. 

Sigrid Wright, CEC: Could you repeat the question to please? 

Michael Chiacos, CEC: I don’t have it on my list. But yes, it was about how can everyday citizens engage in climate activism. And one of the easiest ways to make sure that you’re staying up to date is to sign up to get our action alerts and to follow the communications that CEC puts out. There are definitely a lot of opportunities right now. The county of Santa Barbara, the city of Santa Barbara, some of the cities in Ventura County are developing or doing their second climate action plans. And there’s ample opportunity to participate in that.

The city of Santa Barbara is also moving forward to building an electrification reach code to get natural gas out of new construction that’s active right now. So if you sign up for action alerts, you’ll be able to learn how to send in emails or letters, attend different meetings and be able to participate. If you’re interested, please let us know. Also, we’re putting together a more formal program that will help to really build this diverse troop of climate activists from different walks of life. And we can definitely help you get into that more formal climate activist program as well as we develop it.

Sigrid Wright, CEC: Excellent. Sharyn, you may just want to repeat the invitation to the webinar here in the next week or so that’s really about community engagement in developing solutions. 

Sharyn Main, CEC: Right. So the wrap-up — we’re calling it the wrap-up climate resilience Roundtable — it really is a culmination of our 15 months worth of work. And so that event is next Friday, March 12. And it’ll be at 10am. And it’s a webinar that will really allow us to take all of that information, all of these generated ideas, but really wrap it up into how we’re going to progress forward. And from that, we really want to continue to engage people in the ideas because some of them are very simple ideas. And some of them are much more policy-oriented ideas. 

But the idea is that these are the issues that the community has elevated to the top of this process. And so I’d be really excited for you to come to participate in that. And then for those that can sign up, we have a limited number, but we’ll have an opportunity for an afternoon session that same day to take a deeper dive to talk about how we could then collaboratively maybe take some of those top ideas and actually start working towards implementation –  start working toward alignment with some of the state and federal resources that are coming down the pipe and how we could actually start to get ahead of it so that we’re ready when those dollars are coming into our community. So I encourage you to sign up for that and to participate, learn what we’ve done for the year. And then let’s take this and move it forward.

Sigrid Wright, CEC: Thank you. Michael, there are a few questions here about transportation, one from Hillary about transportation, the largest contributor of greenhouse gas emissions. And we know that simply electrifying public fleets, and getting individuals to purchase electric vehicles isn’t enough, what is CECs plan to work on promoting use of investment in public transportation. And then there’s another question from Deborah. Just about about electric vehicles. So those are two different strategies for tackling the transportation sector. Do you want to address those? 

Michael Chiacos, CEC: Yes, Hillary, I totally agree with you, we can’t just move to more efficient vehicles and alternative fuels. One of the most important things that we need to do is to reduce the amount of driving that we do. And CEC mostly works on more policy items, you know, in general plans and transportation plans, SBCAG worked to really figure out how to redesign our cities so that we can make driving a choice, not a necessity. So it’s a very long and complex process to totally redesign our cities. But we’re definitely up to the task and are always commenting and engaging on different planning activities. 

We also have worked with traffic solutions, and constantly working with Santa Barbara, Bicycle Coalition, and Coast to advocate for alternatives to driving alone, along with MTD. You know, we realize, though, that because of how our cities are built up, that, you know, a lot of people want other people to ride transit and are not willing to do alternatives to driving alone. So, you know, we take a very pragmatic approach and also realize that not a lot of groups were working on electric transportation. So over the last 10 years, we’ve really led work on electric vehicles. 

And to get to Deborah’s question, I put a link in the chat about a webinar that we put together a few months ago if you could go to electricdrive805.org, or follow that link and watch the webinar. And we also have our eight steps to a free or low cost electric vehicle. Most people that live have a family of four making under $104,000 (so low to moderate-income) could actually lease an electric vehicle for free or very low cost. Some of our staff have been doing that as well as some of the other people that we know in the community. So there’s a lot of information there. And then for people that have higher incomes, electric vehicles are very affordable, as you’ll see in that webinar and all the information on Electric Drive 805.

Sigrid Wright, CEC: And there’s another webinar coming up here in a few weeks on a clinic on electric vehicles. 

Michael Chiacos, CEC: Yes, stay tuned for an updated webinar actually in three weeks on March 23, at noon, and there’s a signup on Electric Drive 805 events, if you want to sign up for that webinar. 

Sigrid Wright, CEC: And that one will actually be bilingual. So just definitely want to make sure people know about that one. 

Sharyn Main, CEC: Sigrid, I’ll just also point out, in case you haven’t gotten your webinar fix, there’s plenty to do this week. And so I want to point out that we are partnering with the City of Santa Barbara, and tomorrow at 11. And then again, on Sunday, there will be a brainstorming session, idea generation session that’s kind of similar to what we did with Resilience Roundtables, but really focused on their climate action planning. And so they’ll be looking at their areas of energy waste and transportation. So it ties into how somebody can get involved and get those ideas out. And so I hope you will participate, we’ll put a link for that one as well. So again, that one, tomorrow at 11 and again on Sunday.

Sigrid Wright, CEC: We have so many great questions and I know we’re not gonna be able to get through all of them. And I do want to take a moment just to talk about healthy soils, what we can each personally do to work with nature and sequester carbon, so Allegra, there’s a question in here specifically around that is there from Hugh Kelly, is there a scope for a soil-wise gardening program?

Allegra Roth, CEC: Whoo. That’s a great idea. I guess there are a couple things, I would just encourage folks to think more about the organic waste that you interact with, whether it’s food waste, or green waste coming from your garden or or your neighbors. All of that is a resource. And we need to be better as a community and globally about reclaiming that as a resource and making sure the carbon that’s in it is put back in our soil back in our land where it can do some good. 

If you want to learn more about kind of resilient land management and soil building land management, Santa Barbara City College horticulture department has a variety of classes that are very affordable, where you can learn more about this. There are other community gardens that put on workshops, we can link to those in the chat at some point. So I don’t know if that answers your question, Hugh. But I’d love to talk more offline about that with you.

Sigrid Wright, CEC: Thank you. All right. Michael, I’m gonna throw another one out to you that is around solar panels being installed on campuses at Santa Barbara Unified. And the question is really about, Will the students be learning about the solar panels? I would imagine that the answer to that is yes. But maybe you could just alert folks to what is happening with the schools.

Michael Chiacos, CEC: Yeah, so I’m not sure about the exact lesson planning that will happen, but I’m sure the creative teachers we have at Santa Barbara Unified will work some of the solar panel lessons into their lessons, but CEC has been advocating for many years now for Santa Barbara Unified. I’d really like to call out our former board president Laura Capps for her advocacy on the board as well. 

And so we’ve had a lot of meetings over the years, with Santa Barbara Unified and they finally moved forward and just recently awarded a proposal to a couple organizations that are working together to build solar at most of the schools at Santa Barbara Unified and then six solar micro grids that will be able to have battery storage Incorporated. So this is a really great success for Santa Barbara Unified and we expect to see more and more schools going solar.

Sigrid Wright, CEC: Fantastic. Great. 

Allegra Roth, CEC: Sigrid, I’m sorry, I have one more thing to point out. The county of Santa Barbara does have discounted composting bins. So if you’re interested in managing your own food waste, there are a lot of options for residents and Hilary in the chat I saw she mentioned worm composting. So there are a lot of really creative ways that you can compost at home.

Sigrid Wright, CEC: Fantastic. Okay, I think we are getting close to the end of our hour. Any final thoughts from any of our panelists? Anything that you haven’t, you didn’t get a chance to share that you would like to? 

Okay, very good. Well, we have a number of questions that we weren’t able to get to. So as we as we wrap up the event here, wanna let you know that we’re going to take some of these questions and answer them in our follow up email blast that will go out again, there will be a link to the video for today, as well as some of the other resources that we shared.  There’s a lot of really important work happening right now. 

CEC shared some of the work that we’re focused on, but as you’ve been seeing in the chat section, both the city and the county of Santa Barbara are doing their updates to their climate action planning. So right now really is the time to get involved with that. Some really interesting creative thoughts that people were throwing out, and I would really encourage you to participate in some of the idea generation and visioning that Sharyn and others have been talking about today. So I think the city of Santa Barbara has got one session tomorrow.

So with that, I am going to thank my team. Fantastic job with the panel. Nayra thank you for interpreting behind the scenes Iris, Alhan, Kathy, thank you all. I think we’re gonna close. Great. Thank you. Have a great afternoon, everyone.

Want to take more action?

Speak at the virtual City of Santa Barbara Council meeting
Date: Tuesday, March 23
Location: Join Meeting Electronically 
Webinar ID: 700-928-339 (use Chrome, Firefox, or Safari browsers)
Time: The Council meeting begins at 2:00 p.m. The Westside Community Paseos project is item 10 on the agenda, so it may come up later in the afternoon. View Agenda.