SunCal and solar power

Unfortunately, given that Tuesday’s meeting was seven hours long.

Yes, seven. hours. long.

Something was wonky with the system of uploading it to the internet so the video feed was not online when I wrote this and by the time it went up I didn’t have a spare seven hours to listen to it.

Fortunately, Michele Ellson loaded up on just enough caffeine to stay up long enough to hear the update from SunCal about their plans for Alameda Point and what they intend to do moving forward.   The big takeaways from Michele’s report was that :

• SunCal intends to file something by the deadline to “correct” the deficiencies that the City claims are in their Optional Entitlement Agreement
• SunCal is poised to call the City (and City Council’s ) bluff regarding the release of project financial documents, like the pro forma, which would give everyone an idea of how much it costs in cold hard cash to develop Alameda Point
• SunCal has managed to get the labor unions on board with the project now, which was of great concern to some of the City Council members during the Measure B campaign, from Michele’s report:

Leaders of two local trade unions – which paid thousands of dollars to help defeat Measure B, SunCal’s development initiative for Alameda Point but which now have a signed project labor agreement with the developer – stayed past 2 a.m. today to ask the council to work with SunCal to try to make a development deal for the Point.

“SunCal has created a team to move forward, to do something at the base,” said Andrew Slipka, a representative for Alameda County’s carpenters union. “The game is not over yet.”

So it appears that as long as the SunCal submission on Monday is deemed to be acceptable by City staff — and given the attitude of key City staff in the past, I’m sure the application will be carefully combed over for any deficiencies to pounce on.

The most interesting item was the tidbit about who SunCal has brought on board as part of their development team.   The news that former Speaker of the  State Assembly Robert Hertzberg is actively being courted to be part of the development team is a biggie.  Both politically big (if you are a democrat and everyone knows that being a democrat is fairly standard if you want to win any seat in Alameda) and business wise big considering the projects that  Mr. Hertzberg is currently involved with.    He currently is co-founder of G24 Innovations which, according to Wikipedia:

…produces a new type of lightweight and flexible solar cell that generates power in low, ambient and even indoor conditions. G24i has won numerous awards in recent years: in January 2008, CNBC European Business chose the company as one of its “Top 100 Low-Carbon Pioneers and The Guardian (UK) named Hertzberg as one of the “50 People Who Could Save the Planet.” G24 is also the recipient of the “NESTA Rushlight Award” (for leading British achievement in the environmental field) as well as winning the World Bank’s “Award for Lighting Africa.

However, according to the Wikipedia article, the company is currently located in Wales, however, there are plans to expand to the United States and if Mr. Hertzberg is involved with the development teams, it wouldn’t be a far stretch to speculate that rather than expanding first to Silicon Valley, the company might consider expanding first to Alameda Point.

Seriously, as long as Alameda doesn’t muck it up somehow, if we could secure a company like G24 Innovations that would be a huge “anchor” that could draw companies doing similar work and it could potentially provide a diversity of jobs (white, blue, green collar) to Alameda and Alamedans.