Currently problems have been rising due to lack of energy supplies worldwide. Last year, in Paris COP 21, representatives of 195 countries reached notable compromise to lower the greenhouse gas emissions rate. Under the Paris accord, many participating nations offered vague, general, nonbinding plans without specific plans or reinforcement to reduce their carbon emissions. Respecting this compromise, local leaders in San Diego committed to use the renewable energy entirely in 20 years.

Influenced from Paris compromise, San Diego, the eighth-largest city in United States, decided to fully use renewable energy with unanimous approval, becoming the largest American municipality to transition to use 100% renewable energy, including wind and solar power. Many environmental organizations viewed this action as practical as well as symbolic decision.

Many other notable cities, such as New York and San Francisco have claimed to use more renewable energy, but San Diego is the first of them to make pledge legally binding. Under this ordinance, San Diego committed to complete its transition and cutting its greenhouse gas emissions in half by 2035.

In order to achieve this goal, the city suggests that one of the ways includes transferring some control of power management to the city from the local utility. The officials said they would shift half of the city?s fleet to electric vehicles by 2020 and recycle 98 percent of the methane produced by sewage and water treatment plants.

The city mayor Kevin L. Faulconer claimed that Environmental attributes and San Diego?s ocean and sunshine are in our fabric, our DNA, who we are. He has a plan saying that transforming the electric grid would drive the economy and create jobs. Not specific plans have been determined yet. But the mayor suggested that the initiative steps are to commit to a goal to make sure we set it and hold to it.

As San Diego commits to the renewable energy, California can begin to build its bank of carbon reductions and contribute to global goals. The director of the Sierra Club?s clean energy campaign in California, Evan Gillespie, estimated that San Diego?s plan would lead to an annual reduction of seven million metric tons of greenhouse gases, a contribution to California?s broader effort to reduce greenhouse gas emissions by 80 percent by 2050. These goals are California?s own goals, passed by its state government and not by its federal government, that are credited as one of the most ambitious on climate change, and that is as influential as many countries given its size.

Credit: San Diego Vows to Move Entirely to Renewable Energy in 20 years, The New York Times