Sonoma County is in the eye of the perfect storm at the ideal time to transform the world’s energy infrastructure from fossil fuels to renewable energy sources. And the essential combination of players—policy makers, business leaders, builders and technicians—is lined up to form the perfect team. While hard to accurately track the storm’s trajectory due to recent erratic global markets, shrinking funding sources, red tape and bureaucratic foot dragging, these North Bay visionaries, some with the bucks, the pull or the commitment—some with all three—know, without a doubt, what has to happen.
One key project that will launch this energy revolution is the retrofit of Santa Rosa’s Airport Business Center (ABC). The ABC is working to create a green business park. Efforts include using water, pumped from nearby treated effluent ponds, to heat and cool buildings via geothermal heat pumps, then using it again for irrigating landscaping and vineyards. They also include solar panel installation as well as smaller details like light bulb and window replacement.
Located six miles north of downtown Santa Rosa, ABC is a 450-acre, multi-family residential, industrial, office and retail complex. Total build-out will eventually encompass more than 600 acres of industrial and office development, five acres of retail space, 10 acres of residential apartments and 90 acres of agricultural and open space. Among its largest major corporate and government agency tenants are Kendall-Jackson Winery, Icon Estates, Sonoma County Office of Education, Sonoma County Agricultural Commission, Sonoma County Water Agency, Korbel Champagne Cellars, Exchange Bank and Alexander Valley Cellars. It’s also home to the Charles M. Schulz Sonoma County Airport, Windsor Golf Club, Hilton Garden Inn, Airport Stadium 12 (a 12-screen movie complex), restaurants, retailers and the 232-unit Vineyard Creek Apartments.
“This isn’t about climate change,” says Randy Poole, Sonoma County Water Agency’s general manager and chief engineer. “It’s about sustainable, low-cost energy. Combating climate change is the icing on the cake.”
The water portion of the effort is a huge part of the puzzle. To fully understand the economic and environmental significance of retrofitting a complex water infrastructure, start with the fact that California burns 20 percent of its entire energy supply treating and moving water through a system of pipes, pumping stations and treatment systems. Drinking water gets moved; wastewater, rain water and storm water runoff gets captured, transported, treated and redistributed for use in homes, businesses and industrial complexes. Water is essential to California’s agricultural base, from the vineyards of the North Bay to the fields of the Central Valley.
“Water is heavy and it costs energy to transport,” explains Paul Kelley, Sonoma County Supervisor and the county’s water agency director. “If you cut [transport] costs in half by first capturing wastewater at its point of origin, and second by reusing treated wastewater in geothermal-based systems as well as for irrigation, you’ve just saved a bunch of energy. That reduces the carbon footprint and greenhouse gases and, in the case of property owners, there are reduced costs as well.”
The geothermal heat pumps the project proposes will rely on the stability of underground temperatures (which, in temperate North Bay climates, remain a steady 50 to 60 degrees year-round) to produce energy by channeling recycled water through buried pipes. During hot summer months, the geothermal unit pulls heat from the buildings, significantly reducing the energy used for air conditioning. In the winter, it extracts heat from the earth to raise temperatures inside the buildings. It’s estimated geothermal units can cut power consumption and save 30 to 70 percent of heating and cooling costs.
“This is an extraordinarily rational use of reclaimed water,” says Larry L. Wasem, managing general partner of the Airport Business Center. “The simple fact is, regardless of the quantity, water is going to be cleaned up to tertiary standards. So, why in the world would you not reuse it?” [Editor’s note: “Tertiary standards” refers to water that’s been cleaned and filtered to a level that’s safe for drinking.]
“We have a unique situation in the Airport Business Center,” says E.B. “Pete” Downs, senior vice president of external affairs for Jackson Family Wines, one of the ABC’s largest tenants, “in that we have government entities and private industries, as well as the owner of the site, all coming together and working in a common direction on a project that’s pretty innovative. It’s the synergy of the three entities coming together that’s going to make this thing float.
“What’s really caught the imagination,” Downs adds, “is that there are several businesses, including Kendall-Jackson, that have expressed very serious interest and want to play an active role in this.”
Big ticket items, big returns
Downs’ dedication is a positive sign, because investment in converting the heating and cooling systems, irrigation and industrial water usage at the business center—basically sinking pipes around and throughout the 450-acre commercial campus—carries a price tag of $50 to $70 million. The Sonoma County Water Agency’s GeoExchange Energy Efficiency “slash-carbon” series of projects features cutting carbon emissions using geothermal heat pumps, like those proposed at the ABC, as its centerpiece. Water conservation is a second component of the projects planned at the ABC, in Sonoma Valley and in rural Geyserville. A third element consists of retrofitting buildings with advanced lighting technology to lower energy needs.
Forget, for a moment, the issue of funding, and focus on the nuts and bolts of the ABC design. County Supervisor Kelley explains why it’s the perfect slash-carbon footprint point project: “We have a distinctive, definable area in the business park. The tradition of the whole thinking is, ‘How do we conserve water? How do we improve energy use other than project-by-project?’ That’s how a lot of state and federal grant programs are handled. Why not look at an area of multiple, contiguous and definable property owners, like the business park, then if we do it here, how can we replicate it [on a larger scale]?
“Take a flight over any area in the country, and what do you see?” Kelley asks rhetorically. “Business parks—they’re all over the place, small, large, medium. What’s the distinctive feature of business parks? They have distinctive water use, sanitation needs, recycled water opportunities to reduce those uses, and most of them have flat roofs that are perfect for solar.”
“Parking structures work well, too,” Wasem interjects.
“What I want to relate,” continues Kelley, “is that we’ve been to Washington, D.C., and talked to the Department of Energy. When we described the contiguous, definable area, public/private partnership [model] and getting the huge potential bang for your buck for energy savings with greenhouse emissions reduction, their eyes lit up. They hadn’t heard that idea before!”
Wasem jumps in. “We’re going fast. First and foremost, we’re getting the Airport Business Center aboard with an initiative that involves everything from reducing water consumption to heating and cooling the whole park with treated waste water. Also, freight rail will be running again along the north coast. Even 10 years ago, freight service wasn’t particularly viable. That’s clearly changed.
“So, [the GeoExchange project] is a whole series of initiatives. And, frankly, the whole purpose isn’t to have a glossy presentation, but to get the people together and get [a coordinated effort] together quickly.”
“Let me describe, conceptually, the implementation,” Kelley suggests. “We have a business park—in our case, one where the Sonoma County Water Agency administrative offices are located. We have to decide what we want to do [with the ABC tenants and businesses] and how to proceed down the path” of sustainability.
Step by step
“First, you do an energy assessment, which is an audit on the individual properties and buildings: What’s the energy usage, the waste water? Then, there’s a set of tools you can use to make those buildings greener on their basic operation—everything from changing windows and light bulbs to low-flow toilets—a whole array. In some cases, properties are using fresh water now for landscaping, where recycled water can be used instead. Those are the tools in your toolbox, and one of the ways these tools become viable is by having them in the infrastructure, so recycled water is used throughout.”
In terms of payback, Jackson’s Downs recalls that, over the last year, his facility has changed out more than 800 light fixtures for what he calls, “a huge savings of power. The efficiency payback for us is about a year and a half.”
“I’ve heard payback was six months,” Wasem interjects.
“That’s true for some of those big warehouses,” Downs says. “The payback is there—and the lighting is actually better.”
“The barriers are the cost of retrofitting the infrastructure,” adds Kelley. “That’s not something a property owner, or even a group of property owners [can finance on their own.] That’s something a municipal government or someone who provides sanitary service must provide.”
Other funding mechanisms can potentially include the creation of special districts and recently passed state legislation, AB811, that’s designed as a funding arm to link property improvements (in this case, renewable energy or energy efficiency) to that property.
Legislative progress, financial benefits
Kelley likens AB811 to installing solar panels on his home to improve its efficiency and reduce non-renewable energy consumption. “I financed [a solar energy system] by adding it onto my 30-year mortgage. When I sell the house and pay off my mortgage, the new owners move in and get the benefit of my solar project forever, even though I’m the one who paid for it. In the case of AB811, it’s tied to the property tax rolls. There are a whole bunch of financial benefits” bundled into the law.
Kelley, Wasem and Downs all agree that sweeping changes must be legislated to break the ineffective, greening project-by-project model and accelerate the transition to renewable energy—be it solar, geothermal, wind or wave-generated sources. Current laws, for instance, prevent the transfer of alternative power generation back onto the state’s energy grid. It makes no sense, they say.
“We’re going to have to challenge the State of California,” Kelley says. “Right now, if you generate excess power, it goes back into the grid and you don’t get credit for it.”
“We’re going to buck some pretty powerful folks at the state level to get that changed,” Wasem adds.
Wasem, a major Sonoma County developer, uses his own projects as an example. ABC owns a six-story office building in downtown Santa Rosa that can’t produce enough solar to meet all its needs because the surface space of the roof is inadequate, but it also has a 282,000-square-foot warehouse in Windsor that could generate all the solar power it needs and power the Santa Rosa office building.
“I suspect we’re coming to the perfect storm to actually get that changed,” Wasem says of the power grid regulation. “If you want to release a renewable explosion in California, you have to change the laws. If we want a real opportunity to make the business park [concept] work, we’re going to want to generate excess renewable power—as long as we get credit for it.”
“I have this idea that, with analysis, we could generate five megawatts of solar power if we install solar at the Charles M. Schulz Sonoma County Airport,” Kelley says. “Just look at the t-hangers and the warehouse space that’s blank, using no power. If we’re able to green it with a solar farm, for lack of a better term, we could easily power areas within the business park.”
What makes (good business) sense
“We’re business people,” Wasem says. “But right now, there’s a true belief that all of these efforts will have rational economic paybacks, so it’s a real bonus that we’re doing something good. But it makes economic sense, too.”
“It’s important for business to do whatever it can,” Kelley adds. “Part of being sustainable is being concerned about the environment and doing things to minimize your impact. My perspective is that, between the waste water providers and government entities, we want to find a way to benefit the environment and reduce both the carbon footprint and gas emissions, benefit the economy and keep jobs in Sonoma County.
“We know we’re not going to get very much bang for our buck unless it’s economical and benefits business in a particular area,” he continues. “And we also know that a 20-year payback isn’t viable for most businesses.
“If there’s a way you can provide underlying infrastructure,” Wasem says, “like ringing the business park with recycled water, like finding ways to finance solar projects and other things, those are the kinds of payback [projects] that make economic sense. If you get enough payback, the benefits are keeping jobs in the area and operating commercial buildings within a smaller carbon footprint; you’re able to be competitive elling your product or having your office [where you want it].
“There’s so much emphasis right now on sustainability. It’s a nice buzzword and a lot of people are using it, but what it means to a business is that the business is here next year and the year after. If you go out of business, it’s harder to get those jobs back than to keep them in the first place.”
With the large business owners at ABC signed up, what will it take to get the dozens of smaller owners on board? Part of that answer, these men say, is tied directly to the creative opportunities that are possible with tools like AB811, what Kelley calls the mechanization required to “fund the changes that need to be made.”
