B-E-E-P! A fully-charged cellphone alarm startles you out of bed. Time to begin your morning routine! Bleary eyed, you flick on the lights. You brew coffee and turn on the morning news. You flip on the overhead fan as you start your hot shower. It hasn’t even been ten minutes yet, and you have used several electric appliances.

Imagine all San Francisco residents—over 850,000 people—with the same routine. That’s a lot of energy used, and you haven’t even left your apartment yet.

Fortunately, the SFPUC works hard to provide the energy San Francisco residents and businesses need to get through their morning routine and beyond. The agency operates two Power programs—Hetch Hetchy Power and CleanPowerSF—that serve over 70 percent of the City’s electricity needs with clean power. Because the SFPUC relies on clean resources like water, solar, and wind and not coal or natural gas, its Power programs are crucial in meeting San Francisco’s goal of achieving 100 percent renewable energy by 2030. Oh, and they also save our customers money, too. It’s a win-win.

Hetch Hetchy Power

The tap water residents drink in San Francisco from Hetch Hetchy Reservoir also energizes the City’s schools, MUNI, street lights, City Hall, SFO Airport, the Zoo, and other civic institutions, affordable housing, and private facilities. This Hetch Hetchy Power is 100% greenhouse gas-free, and from April 2016 to October 2019, the SFPUC’s customers avoided pumping nearly 723 million pounds of greenhouse gases into the atmosphere. That is the equivalent of removing nearly 70,000 passenger vehicles driving more than 813 million miles from the road for a year. The SFPUC’s customers also pocketed more money, too. For the same period, customers saved $137 million, compared to what they would have paid if they were a PG&E customer.

CleanPowerSF

The SFPUC also operates the CleanPowerSF program. Launched in 2016, CleanPowerSF buys electricity (to power your cell phone charger, television, lights… sound familiar?) from renewable sources, and PG&E delivers it to residents. The SFPUC serves approximately 380,000 residents and businesses in San Francisco.

The SFPUC is competitive with PG&E on cost, and often, cheaper. Since the program launched in May 2016, the program has saved customers more than $11 million, compared to what they would have paid with PG&E. Rates are adjusted year-to-year, but currently, each customer saves $21 annually.

Hetch Hetchy Power and CleanPowerSF are extremely valuable as local Power programs, helping save customers money and meet the City’s ambitious climate goals. So the next time you get startled out of bed by your cellphone’s alarm and begin your morning routine, the SFPUC hopes you think of the agency… in a good way, of course.