Last Fossil Fuel Power Plant In San Francisco Shut Down, February 2011

In 2007, an alliance founded by Our City and other environmental and social justice groups won passage of local legislation to run the City on clean, renewable electricity. This historic victory made clear that San Francisco should no longer rely on polluting fossil fuel plants for its electricity supply.

But San Francisco's Public Utilities Commission (SFPUC) unfathomably continued to allow the four decades old Potrero Hill Power Plant to run, burning noxious natural gas and diesel fuel, and heavily polluting the Potrero Hill and Bayview Hunters Point neighborhoods.

Worse still, the SFPUC outrageously argued that to close that old plant and still maintain a stable electricity supply, it was necessary to build another polluting natural gas plant right on the doorstep of the already disproportionately polluted and economically marginalized Bayview Hunters Point.

To put a stop to this unacceptable plan, Our City founded a coalition with Brightline Defense Project, Sierra Club, San Francisco Green Party and over 20 other environmental and social justice organizations, to put an end to fossil fuel power plants in San Francisco.

By 2008, this coalition succeeded in forcing the SFPUC to cancel construction of the new gas power plant. And in the course of that campaign, we clearly established that the Potrero Hill plant could also be closed without threatening San Francisco's electricity supply.

The coalition then allied with the Potrero Hill Boosters and other neighborhood organizers who had long fought to close the plant, and on February 28, 2011, the Potrero Hill Power Plant was at last shut down for good.