San Francisco is known as a progressive city. Thanks to the leadership of Mayor Gavin Newsom, State and City incentives and loan programs, and a lot of grass roots efforts the city by the bay is already a shining example of energy locavorism.

San Francisco Solar Map

Under the leadership of Jared Blumenfeld, Director, San Francisco Department of the Environment, the city now has 1,311 PV systems installed with a total capacity of 7.5MW. Estimated annual cost savings exceed $1,500,000.  And sites can be found across the entire city, from businesses in the financial district, to condo’s in the Richmond, to single family homes in the Sunset.  Citizens of San Francisco are taking personal responsibility for creating at least a portion of their energy needs on-location; and that is the definition of being an energy locavore.

And it’s not just solar homes and businesses.  The city recently installed solar powered bus shelters, several schools and municipal buildings now have solar, and there are some small wind installations that off-set a portion of the energy load from that building or structure.

Solar Powered Bus Station Image by Inhabitat

When we started Build Baby Build just nine months ago, we asserted that the growth of distributed generation was a key component to growth of the renewable energy industry and our nations goal of achieving energy independence, one community at a time.  Some say this is folly, a pipe dream, especially in a down economy.  But people also forget that in the early 1900’s most people thought a bridge across the Golden Gate Straight was impossible and impractical; then on November 4, 1930, at the height of the Great Depression, voters is San Francisco went to the polls and put their homes, farms and business properties up as collateral to support a $35 million bond issue to finance the building of the Golden Gate Bridge.

Today, many more cities and towns have programs similar to San Francisco’s that encourage the development of local renewable energy resources.  If you have a local success story, please use the Comment section below to share it with our readers.

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Related posts:

1. Success for San Francisco Solar Energy Incentive Program
2. Solar Subsidies in San Diego