Solar Power 2004 has set up shop at San Francisco's Hyatt Regency from 10/18 thru 10/21. Admission is priced for industry insiders, but exposition halls in the Hyatt and at One Market Street are free to the public. Oddly, the conference is co-sponsored by PG&E, which has opposed renewable energy for 30 years and public power for nearly 100 years, and SF's public power agency, the Public Utilities Commission, as well as a number of oil companies. Conference-goers will have to cross Local 2's picket lines at the Hyatt, where workers have been locked out of their jobs for weeks in a protracted battle over the terms of a new contract.

The Solar Power conference focuses on business development, policy, and technology, leaving out such broader hot topics as global warming or fossil fuel depletion. US energy corporations, from oil companies to utilities like PG&E, have worked for decades to cast doubt on climate change and discourage development of energy efficiency or renewable energy technology. PG&E is currently fighting hard at the California Public Utilities Commission to maintain its monopoly over energy efficiency funds and kill proposals for independent programs that would save more energy and cut into PG&E's profits.

PG&E aside, solar power in San Francisco has made big gains recently—on paper. The Energy Independence Ordinance, passed unanimously by the Board of Supervisors this year, is designed to work with the state "Community Choice" law to provide 40% of SF's power from renewable energy & efficiency. Solar Bonds (Prop H), passed in 2001, gave SF Supervisors unlimited bonding authority for solar, wind and other renewables and energy efficiency.

Lennar Corporation, a Florida company notorious for building housing on toxic dumps -- including cases of whole neighborhoods sinking into toxic dumps -- and favored by Mayors Willie Brown and Gavin Newsom to build 1,600 homes on the Hunters Point Shipyard superfund site, made it into the Solar 2004 program as part of a session on solar power in residential construction. Lennar has angered residents of the BVHP district after it went out of its way last month to cancel KPOO's broadcast of a public meeting on the Hunters Point redevelopment plan. Read more

In related news, FedEx Corp. and the City of Oakland announced on 10/18 that FedEx will construct California's largest corporate solar electric system atop its hub at Oakland International Airport.