The Sustainable Systems Research Foundation: Who are those guys?

Speaker 1 00:00:21 Good afternoon, case Squid listeners. It's every other Sunday. Again, this is Ronnie Lipshitz host of sustainability now, which you are listening to. Sustainability now is a biweekly case, good radio show focused on environment, sustainability and social justice in the Monterey Bay region, California, and the world. Well, on today's show, we're departing from the usual format. First, I'm very excited to introduce our new co-host, Brooke Wright, who's going to be dividing production and broadcast responsibilities with me in the future. Today's show is her debut and audition all in one. So Brooke, do you wanna start by telling our audience something about your background and your current activities? Speaker 2 00:01:03 Sure thing. Thank you, Ronnie. Thanks for the opportunity to be here. Um, let's see. So I had the privilege to attend and graduate from U C S C with a degree in Environmental studies in biology. About 10 years ago. I dabbled in journalism at one time, having a column in the Santa Cruz, um, the Sentinel, uh, I discovered I like interactive conversations, more than one-sided interviews. So radio was something I was really excited to check out, and I'm really happy to be here. Um, for the last three years I've been working in the sustainability field, working with Ecology Action, and now with environmental innovations on mostly on green business work. But I also have the privilege to work with you, Ronnie, and with author Bob Staton on a climate justice project in Watsonville that I'm excited we'll be talking about today. Speaker 1 00:01:50 So I have to start with a confession. I'm the co-founder of and project developer for the Sustainable Systems Research Foundation. And we have been incubating several projects that are coming close to fruition and seem worth talking about over the past couple of years. Yes, we've been on the air now, or I've been on the air for two years, just last week, last month. Um, I've had various guests, some of whom were associated with, uh, sustainability now and, and others who were not. And so some of these projects you've already heard something about. But today, Brooke is going to be my interlocutor and I will be the interlocutor if such a word exists. So, Brooke, you take it away. Okay. Speaker 2 00:02:33 All right. Here we go. Okay. So first of all, Ronnie, I want to learn about all the projects that Sustainable Systems Research Foundation is doing, but before we get into the projects, I wanna understand the title, SSR F Sustainable Systems Research Foundation. Uh, is it a foundation? Tell us about it. Speaker 1 00:02:52 Well, no, uh, a foundation is a, is a, is an organization with a special, special tax, uh, uh, uh, accreditation that allows it to give away money tax free, but it has to have, uh, give away a certain fraction of its its funding every year. Uh, the, the title came about because, uh, I was not present at the naming. There is that famous quote by, and now I forget. But if I had been present at the creation, I would've given God some advice. And so, uh, it's misleading to say that it's, it's, it's a founda a, a Grant giving foundation. It's actually a one a a 4 0 3 <unk> nonprofit. Um, which means, uh, well, most people know what that means, Speaker 2 00:03:42 So, yeah. How does it function then? Speaker 1 00:03:45 Uh, well, we have a very small staff. We have a board of directors. The, the staff does project development. Basically, we've identified several different project areas that we want to, uh, pursue, and then we try and pursue them. And, and there are a couple of key points about this. One is that the projects that we want to develop, and we, I I sort of, I've come to call the, uh, organization a project incubator rather than developer, because developer sounds like we actually have money to push the project along. So we, we come up with ideas, we incubate them, we reach out to various partners, we learn as much as we can about them, and then try to put together essentially, a partnership that will ideally allow the project to, you know, be realized. Um, but these projects have to be local, because one of the things that I have discovered in 30 or 40 years of working in the field is that there are lots and lots and lots of ideas. Speaker 1 00:04:45 Some of them good, some of them bad, some of them truly awful. But the people who come up with the ideas rarely look into the logistics of actually deploying or implementing what they are proposing. It all seems very, very obvious. And this is particularly true of people with a technical and technological bent, right. If something can be done technologically right, then that's, that's the end of the problem. But I taught politics for 30 years, and politics is extraordinarily important on, in all of this, and, and usually gets in the way of, uh, free and clear path. So projects need to be local because that's where we can do effective work. Mm-hmm. <affirmative>, they need to be replicable because the idea is that other localities and communities will try to duplicate them, and they need to be scalable, which means that they can be increased or decreased in size. Speaker 2 00:05:38 Okay. So, and you mentioned that it was mainly the Monterey Bay area that you work on projects, uh, or the foundation focuses on. Speaker 1 00:05:46 Right. Um, and, and again, that's the lo sort of the local notion, right? Mm-hmm. <affirmative>, um, we're not trying out to try to save the world. We're trying to, um, you know, pursue things that can be done by people who are determined to work on a, on local solutions, and then can be replicated elsewhere. And, and if you can do something in California, right, it's legal, it's feasible, uh, and it's workable. It means that you can do it anywhere in California. It may not work in Nevada because of different laws and regulations, but, uh, it certainly would work in California. Speaker 2 00:06:25 Got it. Got it. Okay. Well, while we're talking about the name, um, the word sustainable is in there, and I know you weren't there for the naming, but is that <laugh>? Do you wanna talk about what that word means for this organization? Speaker 1 00:06:35 Yeah. Well, you know, one is often asked, what does sustainability mean? And I try to actually avoid defining it because there are so many different definitions that it, that has become more or less, uh, meaningless. But I think about sustainability as a social project. It's not just something, uh, it's not just eating right or being conscious of one's carbon footprint, or deciding whether or not to have children. It's not about individual actions. What really has to be pursued are socially organized actions. And a society has to decide that it is committed to certain kinds of policies and projects and activities, right? Mm-hmm. <affirmative>, and that involves politics. So, um, as a social project, it's not just something that you go out and do. So buying a an electric car is not enough, right? It's gotta be something you, you also have to, to act in terms of what's the transportation system going to look like, right? What will happen if everyone buys electric cars and nothing else changes, right? There are questions like that, and that's really not just about individual choice. Speaker 2 00:07:51 And then is that kind of the nut that this foundation or this organization was trying to crack? So, I wanna hear a little bit about the story of who's involved and what you just described sounded very much like, oh, yeah, you're from political sciences, so you bring this view on a policy level. Speaker 1 00:08:07 I, I wasn't trained in political science, and so I'm, I tend to be very interdisciplinary and steal from, from as many fields as I can. Um, which, uh, which means that I'm self-taught. And I think there's a saying that says the self-taught person is a, as a fool for a teacher. Um, but, uh, the, the idea is that you, you know, you, again, single sort of disciplines or approaches to social problems don't work. And people are often surprised when they find out that, you know, something which seems evidently good for everybody is opposed in the state's legislature that there are organized interests against it. Okay? And so, my colleague, co-founders and I came to this, uh, through working teaching at uc, Santa Cruz, um, at Rachel Carson College, uh, in a sustainability minor, which I helped to establish. And, uh, bringing, trying to bring to it this kind of sensibility that, that nothing is just a single discipline or a single field. And because everybody gets taught, you know, single disciplines or maybe two disciplines, they're also taught to think about problems through the windows or the lenses of those disciplines. And it becomes very difficult to go outside of that. One of the things that we've noted, uh, is that the people who seem to be most interdisciplinary are also all over 60, because they've only come to this through 40 odd years of trying to figure out, you know, how to approach these very complex and what are sometimes called wicked problems. Speaker 2 00:09:52 Okay. What, so what are some of the other, um, disciplines of the, your colleagues at ssrs? Speaker 1 00:09:57 Well, uh, I, I'm very, very partial to geography. And, and it's not the geography that I learned in, in the 1950s and sixties, which is about, you know, the products that countries produce and the songs and dances. This is about, this is much more about the sort of relationship between social institutions, uh, and material factors, uh, production, uh, justice. How does particular kinds of systems get organized through power relations? And what does that have to do with the things that you see on the ground? Right? What's bart, for example, is very much a commuter system. It's not a transit system. Now, why is it a commuter system as opposed to a transit system? Because in the 1950s and sixties, when it was first being planned, there was an enormous, enormous growth in the suburbs. And there was what was called white flight. So all of these white sub suburbs had to be served somehow. This wasn't really about reducing congestion and traffic, you know, this was about getting people to work quickly and efficiently. Um, now, you know, I'm, I'm not arguing that was the only reason BART was built mm-hmm. <affirmative>, but that is how one would think about it. And that's a matter then of, you know, of geography, of economics, of, of power, of politics. The train is really, in some ways a minor thing because it had been done so many places before. Mm-hmm. Speaker 2 00:11:31 <affirmative>. Mm-hmm. <affirmative>. Interesting. What, um, I'd love to hear a little bit about how s SRF picks its projects. How are, how do these projects come ah, well into being? Speaker 1 00:11:45 Well, I have to confess that these are projects that my co-founder Kevin Bell and I were trying to pursue while we were up at the university. Mm-hmm. <affirmative> <affirmative>. So, for instance, we have a, a housing, an an accessory dwelling unit project. And that grew out of the problems of housing U C S C students, and the ways in which the university was approaching this. We have a project called Waste, not Want Not, which is about waste disposal. And in particular, trying to, to find truly compostable materials and, um, figure out how to get businesses in particular to buy those things. That was because ucs E'S recycling program went south. Um, it turned out that most of the stuff that was being recycled was going to landfill. Uh, the energy, the, the microgrid that we'll talk about, the Watsonville project came out of a, a, a National Science Foundation project on microgrids that we participated in in the early part of the last decade. It's now the last decade. Right. And the fourth one, sustainable agriculture, uh, came out because students are enormously interested in food and food production. It's very interesting, you know, and, and of course, food has become sort of the issue of the 21st century, at least amongst, uh, well off households and countries mm-hmm. <affirmative>. So all of these basically come out of our experience at the university. Um, which doesn't mean we're, we're, you know, close to starting new ones, but, but we're working on those four areas right now. Speaker 2 00:13:23 And that Yeah, that's actually interesting too. Cause when I think back to my days at U C S C, food was a very interdisciplinary issue. So it makes sense that it would be something that SS r f is involved in too. It was something that community studies was looking at and environmental studies was looking at, and of course, I'm sure there were other degrees Speaker 1 00:13:40 Yeah. To, to preach a little bit more, you know, go on. I think, I think a lot of this comes out of the ideas of wellness, which was a sort of a move by, by insurance companies in particular to shift responsibility for individual health from public and medical system to individuals. Right. And so, of course, what you eat is extremely important in terms of your health. And so that then became, you know, one of the sort of primary issues of the wellness movement. Now, of course, there are other things, um, and that's actually politics at work there, this whole sort of shift from public health to wellness. And one last thing before we, that, that, what's interesting right now about the whole vaccine, uh, issue is that vaccines are a public health issue because the idea is to protect the population against disease mm-hmm. <affirmative>, right? Arguing that it's individual choice a person, you know, freedom consists of being able to decide whether or not to get vaccinated. And whether or not to risk covid is actually part of the destruction of the public health system, which has taken place over the last few decades. Speaker 2 00:14:54 Okay. So, hi, you are listening to Sustainability. Now. I'm Brooke Wright, and today I am interviewing Ronnie Lipshutz about the Sustainable Systems Research Foundation and its projects. And I am very excited to talk about these projects. Um, but first I wanna say, I'm glad we got to hear about that light festival. Cause that sounds amazing, <laugh>. Speaker 1 00:15:14 It does. It does. And and it just turns out it's over tonight, Speaker 2 00:15:17 Right? We gotta get down there quick. Okay. So we have a couple projects we're gonna talk about. Let's start out talking about the Sustainable Urban Food Initiative, Sufi, because every good project has to have a good acronym. How did it get started, Ronnie? And how is the work funded? Speaker 1 00:15:34 So, when Kevin and I started the sustainability minor at Rachel Carson College, we was then College Eight. Um, one of the things we were really interested in was Urban Gardens. And they were very, very sort of, you know, popular and highly visible. And, um, the, uh, the Center for Agroecology and Sustainable Food Systems at, uh, the university, while it is not strictly speaking, an urban garden is in the city, right? And, and the question that came up to us was, what are the economics of Gar Small Farms Urban Gardens? Right? Um, people put a lot of emphasis on what they can do in terms of local food resilience and security. But nobody ever asks what is the actual cost of raising, let's say, a red pepper in your garden. Okay? And to some degree, casus, the, uh, agro ecology farm, uh, is in the same boat because labor is essentially not included in the cost, right? Speaker 1 00:16:37 If it's your own sweat equity or it's student interns who are doing the work, they're not being paid, right? And you don't take into account, uh, all the time and other costs that you put into it. So in order to be really a, I don't know, viable in our economy, it's important we thought to take a look at these economics, but it turns out it's not so easy. Most gardens, the vast numbers of gardens, uh, don't keep track of these kinds of issues. What are the inputs? What are the outputs? So we wanted to develop a research project that looked at, that, examined this systematically. Um, it turned out not to be so easy. We thought we could get data from the farm. The farm hadn't ever collected that kind of data. You know, how much time they put in what they actually produced, you know, what? Speaker 1 00:17:32 That they priced their, their produce, but they didn't actually know what the true cost of it was. They're now, now they're collecting data. I'd like to think it was at our urging, but, um, uh, and most gardens don't do that. So, so we were trying to start something like this at the university. Uh, we weren't very successful, but as we, we moved off campus and started to pursue our projects, uh, one of the things that, that, uh, Kevin in particular pointed out was that small farms, which are very important to local food sheds, and these are farms of 50 acres or less, right. Also are, tend to be under capitalized, enormous numbers of farms in the United States. Small farms have annual revenues of $10,000 or less. Mm-hmm. <affirmative> people don't make money running small farms. Uh, and a lot of people do it out of love as opposed to out of, you know, the desire to get rich. Speaker 1 00:18:33 Um, and because they lack the, the, the resources, they also can't take advantage of new agricultural technologies. Some of these are being a, a lot of these are applied on big, you know, hundred thousand acre farms because economies of scale make it worth it to buy a surveillance drone, let's say. But if you've got a 50 acre farm, you know, drone is gonna cost all the, uh, equipment is gonna cost $10,000, and, and it's not gonna be used all the time. Right. So two things. First, what sorts of technologies and, and management techniques, because those are technologies too. Uh, could we bring or could we, you know, help to inform local farmers about, uh, and I forget what the second one was. <laugh> <laugh>, um, okay. Speaker 2 00:19:23 But the idea being that by bringing them those technologies, it would become more viable. Speaker 1 00:19:28 Well, it would increase productivity. Mm-hmm. <affirmative> and profits mm-hmm. <affirmative>, right? Because after all, that's the other issue. The other thing that we we've observed is that, um, the, the agricultural system, there's the small scale agricultural system is in many ways fairly anarch. People don't talk to each other. They're competitive. People don't know, farmers don't know what other farmers are planting, right. Crops come ripe all at the same time. And that depresses prices, what if you could coordinate information sharing so that farmers could start to plan their crops, you know, in sort of collaboration with other farmers? Like Speaker 2 00:20:09 Some kind of co-op, Speaker 1 00:20:10 It could be a co-op, right? It could be some sort of, of network. You know, it's, it's, it's still sort of in, in the making. There, there are things called food hubs, which are online platforms that allow farmers to say what it is that they have this week, and consumers to see what it is that they can buy this week and where Right. But that doesn't coordinate among farmers, right? That, and of course, small farmers also supply restaurants, right. Especially high-end restaurants. Right. That becomes a fairly important source of income. Are there ways to actually, you know, know, increase that kind of access to these, these outlets, local outlets? So, Speaker 2 00:20:53 So, and so you do see it as an important way to bring about local food security. It's not just a sort of, oh, it's nice to have for restaurants, but actually Speaker 1 00:21:02 Well, yeah. I mean, you know, if you can produce certain kinds of foods and there are more, there's more of it available mm-hmm. <affirmative> mm-hmm. <affirmative>, right? And, and there are, uh, outlets that aren't just simply reliant on special orders from restaurants, that means that maybe the food will be less expensive. That's of course, an important question, right. And more available. And I, I saw in the Sentinel this morning, a, a program that's, um, being been organized by Cat Taylor of Tomcat Farms, which is, you know, delivering produce to, to low income houses in, um, uh, in crates, you know, through the, through the harvest season. So, you know, if that could be part of this as well, right? I mean, there, there are various kinds of possibilities. The what's missing on a larger scale is coordination, I think. And, and that's what this sort of information sharing could accomplish. Speaker 2 00:21:59 So on that note of the food hub, I remember there was a platform like that locally, and then I think it disappeared. Do you know, are there any in this region, in the Monterey Bay region right now? Speaker 1 00:22:09 I think that I've seen one recently, but, um, but there, yeah, as a rule, they haven't succeeded terribly well. Mm-hmm. <affirmative>, part of it is that they only do this one thing, right. Which is more or less sharing information between farmer and customer. Okay. Right. And Speaker 2 00:22:27 Not with Speaker 1 00:22:27 Each other. Not with each other. Mm-hmm. <affirmative>. And there are multiple steps, right, between the, the, the farm and the table, which includes, uh, distribution. Mm-hmm. <affirmative>, it could include brokering, storage, you know, a whole set of things, all of which might be out of the reach of small farmers because of the costs. And so they're sort of stuck doing certain kinds of already established things, um, like working through distribution companies that, that, you know, will take their produce. But because it will take their produce, it doesn't give them, uh, you know, higher prices. Uh, higher Yeah. Payments. Speaker 2 00:23:09 Right, right. Yeah. Okay. Okay. Well, um, let's hear about, uh, actually food security. I sort of touched on that. Um, do you know, are they, is there some coordination with food rescue efforts and organizations? Well, Speaker 1 00:23:26 Well, we haven't done that yet. Okay. Because right now we're in a, in the pilot phase of the project, which, you know, I can, I can tell you something about, but we, we have, you know, we are trying to develop collaborations mm-hmm. <affirmative> with other organizations. And I think that that kind of relationship is down the road a bit when, you know, the farms that we are going to be working with are producing certain kinds of foods and, you know, and so on. So, um, we wanna, you know, we want to contribute to that, to fu food security. Right. Um, issue. But it's gotta be sort of one thing at a time. Speaker 2 00:24:06 Got it. Okay. Um, so you've mentioned before, so one part of Sufi is collaborating with Whiskey Hill Farms near Watsonville on a project to bring the benefits of agricultural technologies to small farms that you were just talking about. So tell us a little bit more about that in Speaker 1 00:24:22 The, so, uh, whiskey Hill Farms is a, uh, an amazing place in, in, uh, near Watsonville. Do Speaker 2 00:24:30 They make whiskey? Speaker 1 00:24:30 Well, they make alcohol. Okay. Um, and it's linked to Bloom distillation, no Whiskey Hill. Whiskey Hill was a site back in the twenties during prohibition, where whiskey was actually made and sold. Okay. And so it's a location, it's not the, the, the business of, of the farm, but the alcohol that Bloom distillation is producing, you know, could be used, I suppose, in, in whiskey, um, Speaker 2 00:24:54 Or for hand sanitizer Speaker 1 00:24:55 Or for hand sanitizer. Right. Um, so, uh, the, the, the farm is, is basically the brainchild of, of Dave Bloom and Tom Harvey. And, uh, I actually have had Dave on the show a couple of times. So if anyone is interested, you can go and look at the archive and, and listen to the two shows. It's a place where they use agricultural wastes to make high-grade alcohol, and then they use various byproducts from the alcohol production system to grow food. And they have six greenhouses, and they grow various kinds of crops. Some of them are exotic crops like turmeric, which are more difficult to grow outside. Um, they use, uh, byproduct heat from the, uh, alcohol distribution process and from composting to warm the soil in the greenhouses, for example. Uh, and they pump carbon dioxide into the greenhouses during the day using irrigation, um, you know, drip systems. Um, so there's a lot of sophisticated stuff going on there. Mm-hmm. <affirmative>, um, we are thinking a little bit more in more basic terms about what we want to do, but we wanna offer farmers at least access to what's going on at Whiskey Hill Farms and what might be feasible for them. Okay. Okay. Um, Speaker 2 00:26:23 We forgot to answer. How, um, how is it funded? The work that you're doing? Speaker 1 00:26:28 Let's, well, uh, that of course is always an issue. We recently received a small grant from a program of the US Department of Agriculture to, uh, to launch the, the pilot. So, and, um, it's not enough to pay for the whole project, but, but we're going to pursue it anyway. We're going to have a series of six workshops this coming fall and winter in which we are going to cover a whole set of different, uh, areas related to both, uh, agricultural technologies and farm management techniques. And then we're going to set up small plots in one of the greenhouses that the participants can experiment on during the course of the program during the six months. Right. And work with some of these technologies. Um, we originally, uh, set this up sort of with the idea of opening this up to all small farms and also targeting Latinx farmers. Speaker 1 00:27:27 And what's happened is we now have nine Latinx farmers signed up and six more that have indicated interest. So, uh, it's kind of, again, you know, there's this phrase in, um, in, in the entrepreneur entrepreneurial world, sometimes you have to pivot, right? And so this is a sort of a pivot that we didn't anticipate, but it's pretty exciting actually to be able to, to work with that community. I mean, we are, you know, we are white, older white males, which of course makes things a little bit awkward. Um, and some of them don't speak English. So we are also use, you know, including translation services in these workshops. Speaker 2 00:28:10 Great. Um, so what are the next six months going to look like and how about the next five years too, for this Speaker 1 00:28:17 Project? Well, you know, our hope is, I mean, I've been writing, you know, grant proposals like crazy, right? Our hope is one of them actually gets, comes through so that we can extend the project, um, and more or less make it a going concern. Um, I should add that, you know, our thought is not to be the people, the operators of these projects, right? Is to get them launched and sort of self-sustaining and running with their own organization, right? So we are not gonna be, we don't want to be managers, right? We want to be, it sends incubators and, and, you know, launchers of these kinds of things. So I can't tell you really, Brooke, you know, it depends on so many, Speaker 2 00:28:59 Right, Speaker 1 00:28:59 Right. Different, different factors where Speaker 2 00:29:02 It's going. Okay. Great. Well, um, I think it's time for a break again. So you are listening to KS Q D 90.7 in Santa Cruz and ks qd.org on the internet. So, hi, you are listening to Sustainability. Now. I am Brooke Wright, and today I am interviewing your usual host, Ronnie Lipshutz, about the Sustainable Systems Research Foundation and its projects. Okay. And this is the part I've been waiting for. I'm very excited. Let's talk about another project of the S srf, which is the Epics Project. Um, as I mentioned earlier, I actually get to work on this with Ronnie to some degree, and, um, I think it's really interesting and hope the listeners do too. So, Ronnie, why don't you tell us a little bit about Speaker 1 00:29:48 Epics? So, EPICS stands for end poverty in California with solar. Uh, and it's a spin on Upton Sinclair's, um, candidacy for governor, California governor back in the 1930s when he had a program called Epic, which was in poverty in California. And the, the project is a brainchild of Bob Staton, who has been a guest on the show, and I rebroadcast his interview a few weeks ago. Um, and Bob's basic idea is to use revenues generated from the sale of solar electricity to provide everyone in California with a basic income of a thousand dollars a month. Now, lest this sound crazy, there is an annual oil dividend that is given to every citizen of Alaska, or I don't know if a citizen or resident. Um, and that comes from royalties paid on the state's oil. So the logic here is that solar energy falls on everyone. Speaker 1 00:30:49 It's a public good, right? Mm-hmm. <affirmative> by the same logic, if it falls on everyone, it's owned by everyone and nobody pays any royalties on it. What what happens is that if you have the money and the technology, you can put up a solar system and capture the solar energy and turn it into electricity and sell that for a profit. Or you can use it in your own house, depending on, you know, the scale and, and the location. Bob's idea was that we would set up immense solar farms around the state, and that the electricity that would come from those farms would be sold at a particular price, and a portion of the revenues would then go to fund that basic income. One of the virtues of the project is that it doesn't rely on direct tax revenues to provide this basic uni universal basic income. Speaker 1 00:31:46 Uh, it does come out of people's pockets, of course. Um, but, um, looking at the, you know, the mechanics and the politics and the economics of something that, that large, it's not altogether clear how workable it is in the near term. Now remember, California is supposed to become all electric in the next 20 or 30 years, and that's gonna require a lot of new generating capacity mm-hmm. <affirmative>, and it's also supposed to become more or less net zero carbon emissions. So, um, you know, it may well be that that required quantity of solar will be built, but to, we wanted to test this out, this concept out. And so we started to look at, uh, areas around here where it might be possible to build a microgrid that would be operated by some kind of, of independent entity, and the electricity would be sold to businesses, uh, and part of the revenues would then be used for a basic income program. Speaker 1 00:32:48 In Watsonville, what we settled on was a project that would involve food processors in Watsonville mm-hmm. <affirmative> on a single block on South Riverside. Uh, and the revenues would go to provide monthly stipends to, uh, low income farm worker households. And of course, farm workers are doing the work, producing the food, right. That the food processors are processing. So there's also that nice, uh, connection. And we, of course, are very reliant on farm workers to produce, you know, to, to, to harvest our food. Right. Um, again, then as we looked at the, the INI initial concept of a, a large microgrid, we ran into politics. And, you know, and again, folks, Ali Ditra, who was on the show in June, talked about microgrid politics. So, um, the, the state regulations in the public utilities commission and the private utilities are not thrilled with the idea of independently owned and operated solar microgrids or microgrids of any sort. A microgrid is a small scale system that serves a limited territory. It could be a block, it could be a neighborhood, uh, it could be even be a city. Um, and where, Speaker 2 00:34:08 Where do you think, sorry to interrupt. Where do you think that that resistance is coming from? Speaker 1 00:34:13 Well, you know, if enough of these things get built, if, if enough of these things get built, then the utilities start to lose customers. Right? Right. Right. Because the electricity is notionally going to be cheaper. Mm-hmm. <affirmative>, it's gonna be more reliable. It's not gonna be subject to, uh, shutoffs by wildfires because it will be local. Um, and the private utilities get a lot of their revenues now from, from moving electricity through, uh, high voltage transmission lines, and then through local distribution lines, two-thirds of the, uh, electric, the cost of electricity is transmission and distribution. Um, so if people stopped relying heavily on transmission and distribution, that source of revenue would also go down. And, and private utilities are beholden to shareholders and war Wall Street. Right. Pg e is in a particular difficult situation because it's come out of bankruptcy and pushing up its share value is extremely important to paying off the victims of, of various fires that it's caused. Right. So there's a lot of, you know, a, a lot of resistance there, and there is also resistance in the state legislature. Speaker 2 00:35:29 Right, right. Yeah. I wondered if there was also a piece of it, which is that if you have so many, uh, people, businesses developing their own private microgrids, that then how do you fund getting electricity, like as a social equity issue? How do you fund getting it to far flung places or things like that? Is there, is that playing into the policies at all? Speaker 1 00:35:52 Well, that's certainly, I mean, that's certainly a consideration, right? I mean, if only people who have capital can afford to build and use solar systems, it's going to leave the, you know, the low income households out of the, out of the picture. Right? Right. Um, but you know, we, we believe that it is possible to put together a significant program of microgrid construction that takes that into account. Okay. Um, it, it could provide lower electric rates for low income, you know, neighborhoods and developments mm-hmm. <affirmative> and so on. Right? Now, low income houses can get, uh, discounts of about 30 to 40% on their electricity rates. Um, but it's entirely possible that microgrids could do even better. Um, and if the regulatory restrictions open up, the owners of, of microgrids could sell electricity to neighbors. You know, so one can imagine, um, low income developments operating a microgrid and selling to neighboring houses and generating revenue that way. Right. Um, it's not, you know, it's, it's, it's really, uh, and, and that's more a political question, right. Than a tech techn technological one. Right. Will the state do something about, you know, along those lines or not? Speaker 2 00:37:19 Right. Right. Well, um, so on that topic of social equity too, so this project's really fascinating because it actually links both, it addresses this resiliency a bit, talking about a microgrid, but then also has this component where the revenues go to the, um, basic income Speaker 1 00:37:38 Pilot. So, so we're in, um, conversations with a private company, food processing company in Watsonville, um, which is interested in developing solar electricity system. And, uh, we have, along with our partners pitched to them the idea of putting a solar, uh, installation on their buildings, having the system operated by a special purpose entity, which would then sell electricity to the business. It would be discounted from the, the private retail rate, um, and the revenues that would result, you know, depending on whether the operating entity is private or public, you know, the revenues or profits would then be divided between, you know, whatever the, the, uh, economic sort of setup of the, the whole thing is and the basic income program for, for farm workers. Right. And so the project that we're doing is, is fairly small scale. It's, uh, one, one business. Right now we're looking at it in a kind of a modular fashion that if this works, you know, at this level, and this is completely legal right now, I should point that out, right? That there are no restrictions on doing this kind of, of setup. If this works, um, you know, then it can be expanded into a full fledged microgrid for this particular block in, in South Watsonville. And if we can make it work, there's no reason why it can't work elsewhere. And of course, you know, food processing is very important in California, especially on the coast from the various farms that are, you know, producing truck crops and, and so there's a lot of potential there. Speaker 2 00:39:31 Right, right. Um, let's see here. So yeah, uh, how does this connect private and public sectors? Um, and I actually wanna ask, uh, as part of that question, how this pilot sort of is a proof of concept of that connection as compared to this being at scale. So say, kind of different, right. How this might get funded and connect these groups versus if it was done at scale. Speaker 1 00:40:01 Well, you know, if it were done at scale, it would require hundreds of billions of dollars. Well, there's that, right? There's that. Yeah. Um, and even if it were done, you know, as a municipal project, it would still be extremely expensive. So this is really sort of starting from the bottom right, if this, if it works at, at this scale, and I should point out this is on the scale of maybe five megawatts. And by comparison, uh, the typical solar installation on the top of a roof is about six kilowatts. So this is this 5,000 kilowatts versus six kilowatts. So, you know, maybe a thousand homes worth. Um, and, uh, but that's small. Speaker 2 00:40:42 And, and just to tie that data point to something, how many families do you think might get supported with that stipend? Speaker 1 00:40:50 Well, of course that depends a lot on the, the, the revenues, which depends a lot on the financing structure, uh, and the way in which the project is set up. Uh, it could be anywhere from 10 to a hundred, depending on, you know, on the size and the, the, what the, the company is supportive of. I, I should say, this company is really interested in this idea. And remember I talked about the solar commons and no royalties being paid on solar energy. Well, you can think of this as kind of, uh, extraction of royalties from the private sector. Um, and it could be from, you know, it doesn't have to be just the private sector, but the point is that this benefit is then essentially payment for the value of the energy resource, which is now being captured, um, without any kind of payment. And I think, you know, I I, I think the idea of a solar energy commons, um, is sort of a far out one, but it's not unreasonable. Speaker 2 00:41:58 Yeah. Well, it, and it's really interesting. I think it makes sense that such an interdisciplinary nonprofit is spearheading it, because in the work that I've done, even with you to talk to different groups, it's fascinating. It's really hard for people to wrap their brains about something that's focused on a basic income, but also focused on climate change, also focused on the, you know, climate justice issues, especially that Watsonville faces. So, um, it's really fascinating. So, um, would you like to say anything else about that project before we go to a break? About what's, what's, what are the next steps or? Speaker 1 00:42:37 I think that's enough for now. Let's go Speaker 2 00:42:39 On. Let's do it. All right. So you are listening to KS Q D 90.7 FM in Santa Cruz and ks qd.org on the internet. Hi, you are listening to sustainability now. I'm Brooke Wright, and today I'm interviewing Ronnie Lipshutz about the Sustainable Systems Research Foundation and its projects. So we got a chance to talk about a couple projects. It was the, um, Sufi project and then also the Epics project. What else is Sustainable Systems Research Foundation trying to do? Speaker 1 00:43:11 Well, I would say we're, we're trying to do three things. The first one, I've mentioned two of them earlier. Uh, one of them is the waste, not want not project, right? And the, the logic there is that, well, there are two, two issues here. The first is that most compostable plastics require special treatment in high temperature facilities. And if they're thrown on the ground, they eventually break down into tiny particles, which we've learned sort of, you know, our, our, everywhere in our environment and in our bodies, there is a category of, of plastics that is made completely of biologically degradable materials. And these could be composted in your backyard, and if you throw them out on the ground, they will break down into their individual constituents and not into little pieces of plastic. But the real question is, you know, when you go into someplace like a restaurant, you know, take away fast food restaurant, and you're given all of this, uh, single use stuff, and you're encouraged to recycle and or throw things away, people have a difficult time often figuring out where to put things, right? Speaker 1 00:44:24 If you can get businesses to actually do procurement of these compostable, uh, items, right? These ones that are made of these biological materials, then all of that goes away. And the state is requiring businesses, I think, starting at the beginning of, of 2022, uh, to have, for cities to have in place systems for collecting these and composting these materials, right? So there's a sort of imminent need for coming up with better ideas than sending, uh, organic and other ways to, to next nearby counties to, to process, right? I don't actually know what the state of this is across Santa Cruz County, but my sense is, uh, we've got a long way to go. Um, so, you know, a, a again, this is not what we started out to do. We were starting out looking at recycling, right? And have sort of moved towards this, this compostability issue as making more sense than trying to worry about 23 varieties of plastic and what is recyclable and what is not. Speaker 1 00:45:34 That's really sort of the issue, right? Is, and, and the other thing of course, is if we can get, if we, if if restaurants and businesses can be convinced to use ret reusable products, that's even better. Absolutely. Because, um, even though it costs more, for example, it costs quite a bit more to make a stainless seal coffee mug, but it display that coffee mug will displace over its lifetime, hundreds of paper cups. And at the end of the day, the economics are much more favorable for the reusable mug than for the, the single use. But, you know, it requires a real sort of shift in how we do business and the incentives and disincentives to single use stuff. Uh, plastic is really cheap, and as petroleum companies, fossil fuel companies are forced outta the business of burning fossil fuels, they're gonna move into the business of making plastics Speaker 2 00:46:31 They've already done. So I would Speaker 1 00:46:33 Say <laugh>. Yeah. And, and that's, you know, that's a subject of considerable concern, I think. Speaker 2 00:46:38 Do you know any more about those materials you're talking about that these sort of biological plastics or Speaker 1 00:46:43 What that is, you know, some of them are based on, on seaweed, uhhuh, <affirmative>. Uh, I think there's some are based on, on mushrooms on, um, fungi. Uh, we're having someone come and talk about fungi in a couple of weeks. Uh, some of them are based on bamboo. Um, you know, and in principle, almost anything can be turned into a plastic mm-hmm. <affirmative> a anything organic, you know, any kind of plant can be, can be transformed. A a again, you know, the question has to do with what does it take, you know, what are the costs, what are the inputs and the outputs? But, um, you know, plastics are just carbohydrates, right? In essence, right? They're chains of, of carbon, hydrogen, and oxygen, uh, atoms and molecules. And that's the same thing you get in plants, Speaker 2 00:47:36 Right? Right. But if you manufacture them to the point where there's so much like a plastic, you might end up with something just as hard to break down in the environment. Speaker 1 00:47:45 Right? Yeah. I mean, yeah. Right. I mean, this is, this is substitution and this is not, you know, a completely sort of different, pardon the term paradigm right. Of, of, you know, reusability. Right. And reusability is of course, preferable. Speaker 2 00:47:59 Right? Speaker 1 00:48:00 Right. But you know, again, if you start going that way, then all those plastic companies don't have markets and, and the, uh, plastics associations are powerful lobbyists. Speaker 2 00:48:11 Right, right. Speaker 1 00:48:12 Absolutely. The the other project Yeah. Is the, um, has to do with, with, uh, building accessory dwelling units. Right. Oh, good. Okay. And, and the idea here is that, uh, people who already own their houses, right, and own land, could build accessory dwelling units in their backyard. Mark Premack has talked about this on the show. Um, or they could convert rooms in their houses, you know, to be separate units, and these could provide an income stream as well as lower cost rents in the city. And, and there are, so, you know, rents are really high because the housing supply is stressed, and people who work in the city can't afford to live here because their incomes are not high enough to afford rentals. So, um, this is one possibility. And there are potentially, you know, five or 10,000 sites in the city of Santa Cruz alone that could accommodate this. Uh, there's probably lots and lots of empty bedrooms as well across the city, because people who have lived in their houses for 30 years or more can't afford to move. Right. You can sell your house for a pretty penny, but then you can't buy one for the same pretty penny unless you go into the Central Valley or Kansas. Right? Right. Speaker 2 00:49:37 So when you talk about, you said five or 10,000 suitable places for ADUs, you're talking about backyards and Speaker 1 00:49:43 You're talking about backyards, right? That doesn't include what are called junior ADUs, which are, you know, taking some bedroom in the house and converting it into a, an independent living unit with kitchen and, uh, bathroom. Right? Right. Um, the, the, the, you know, there are a number of, of obstacles to this. First of all, building an ADU in California, is extortionately expensive right now? Is Speaker 2 00:50:07 It more expensive per square foot than building a new house? Or is it just Speaker 1 00:50:11 That it's, that it's actually, it can actually be as much or more Okay. Because, you know, again, it's economy of scale. Right. When you're building a house, you only have to put down one foundation. Right. And a, and the foundation averages out over all the square footage. Right? Right. So if you're, you're building a new house, it's a good idea to put an ADU in with the plans, because then you can take advantage of that. Speaker 2 00:50:33 Right. Have the plumbing go there. The Speaker 1 00:50:35 Utilities, um, if you're trying to build a new independent unit, that becomes more difficult. The permitting system, the design system, all of these things can be quite, um, uh, threatening, threatening isn't quite the right word, but daunting, daunting is the word I want, you know, to a homeowner who's thinking about it. Right. Sometimes it takes over a year to get permits because of the various arcane requirements that cities and, and, uh, counties impose on homeowners. Um, but, and, and there's a real buzz around California, around ADUs, but I've come to sort of think that, well, maybe the market isn't really there and the way that, that a lot of us think it is, and it's partly because of financing, partly because of construction costs, and, um, partly because of the, you know, the whole process being so intimidating. If you think about people are sort of thought as people who live in their houses for 30 years or more have low property taxes and high property values, but they are house rich and cash poor. If you've lived in your house for 30 years, that means you're gonna be 50 or older. Do you want to take on a whole new loan at that point, especially if you've paid off your house? Speaker 2 00:51:56 Ah-huh Speaker 1 00:51:57 <affirmative>. Right. This could also be seen as a public good. So public co-financing of ADUs, uh, this, the county does a little bit of that Santa Cruz County, um, which would reduce the burden, theoretically reduce the burden of the loan, could go a long way towards dealing with that and the benefits from the housing in the community, and I might add from reductions in commuting distances, which is the major source of carbon emissions, right? Right. For, for people who, who can't live, afford to live here, um, you know, start to look actually more favorable, but you know, this is sort of socialized housing, Speaker 2 00:52:41 Right. If you have that public Speaker 1 00:52:42 Financial, if you have that public financing. Right. And so again, it raises a lot of, you know, a lot of, um, Speaker 2 00:52:49 Yeah. Speaker 1 00:52:50 Opposition. Um, Speaker 2 00:52:53 Right. So are who are you, um, who is s SRF working with on that? Is that something you work? Speaker 1 00:53:00 Well, we've been, we've been collaborating with a number of, of organizations around the region and, and the Bay Area. Okay. Um, who are all interested in doing this. And, and, um, I have to say that, you know, everyone has their own projects. Right. And this is a kind of an additional one. And so it's, it takes, you know, somebody to, to push the, the noodle forward, as Kevin likes to say, <laugh>. Okay. Okay. Got Speaker 2 00:53:28 It. Got it. Well, thank you so much for sharing about those projects and getting, giving me the opportunity to talk with you about all of them and about what the work is that S S R F is doing. I was curious, one last question. How can, is there any way that listeners can get involved and what S Sr F is doing? Do you take volunteers or Speaker 1 00:53:45 Donations or what is we take? We do, well, we're a nonprofit. Okay. We do all of those things. I don't want to be too crass, but Okay. If you go to our website, um, you know, you can find out about all of these sorts of things, and I think it's Sustainable Systems research.org g or sustainable systems foundation.org. I still have haven't gotten that, the distinction between our email and our website Straight all. Speaker 2 00:54:09 Well sure. Google will know, Speaker 1 00:54:10 So, yeah. Yeah, yeah. Speaker 2 00:54:11 Google knows all. Okay. Thank you Ronnie. Speaker 1 00:54:13 Okay. Thank you Brooke for, for being my interlocutor. And thanks to all the staff and volunteers to make Case Squid, your community radio station, including Emily Dunham, who is engineer for this show. And so until next, every other Sunday, sustainability now.