Climate Action

San Francisco has long been a proud national leader in the environmental and sustainability movement. Under Mayor Breed, this work expanded to new levels.

Mayor Breed, addressed the urgent threat of climate change by moving forward ambitious environmental goals through her Climate Action Plan. Mayor Breed’s agenda addressed climate change from all angles: housing, transportation and land use, energy, buildings, zero waste, and healthy ecosystems. This includes transitioning to 100% renewable electricity by 2025 and setting in action plans to reach net-zero emissions by 2040, five years ahead of the state of California’s goals. In addition to reducing emissions and harmful pollution, policies in the Climate Action Plan promote economic recovery, workforce development, racial and social equity, public health, and resilience.

Access to clean, affordable electricity is at the heart of San Francisco’s strategy for reducing harmful greenhouse gas emissions and improving the health and well-being of communities across the city. Under Mayor Breed, San Francisco has advanced programs that reduce carbon emissions and promote equitable access to clean energy in San Francisco, including discounts for 100% renewable energy for low-income customers, rebates to replace fossil fuel powered appliances, and incentives for installing electric vehicle charging infrastructure.

Mayor Breed declared that housing policy is climate policy, declaring the need to address both the affordability crisis and the climate crisis at the same time. When we don’t build housing, we push working people into longer and longer commutes, which creates pollution and gridlock across the entire Bay Area. When we build housing near transit and in walkable neighborhoods, we create opportunities for people to walk, bike, and commute short distances by train and bus.

To reduce pollution from transportation, Mayor Breed has committed to increasing low-carbon trips to at least 80% and electrifying all vehicles that remain on the road by 2040. To accelerate the adoption of zero emission vehicles and expand public charging infrastructure, she passed new laws requiring parking garages and lots to install charging infrastructure, and to make it easier to open standalone charging locations.

Thanks to Mayor Breed’s leadership, San Francisco has a clear, actionable roadmap to become an all-electric, carbon-neutral City.

Climate Action Plan — The landmark policy framework of Mayor Breed’s Environmental agenda was the creation of the Climate Action Plan, a comprehensive approach to eliminating greenhouse gas emissions in the City by identifying strategies and actions in six key areas: energy supply, building operations, transportation and land use, housing, responsible production and consumption, and healthy ecosystems.

In total, the Plan identified 31 strategies and 159 supporting actions to help achieve the new environmental commitments to reduce emissions 61% below 1990 levels by 2030 and reaching net-zero emissions by 2040. In San Francisco, net-zero emissions is defined as reducing emissions 90% below 1990 levels and sequestering the rest in natural solutions like trees and green spaces.

Housing & Building:

Mayor Breed’s commitment to building more housing and making that housing as green as possible is driven by making our cities more sustainable. Buildings are responsible for 41% of San Francisco’s emissions.

• That’s why as of 2021, all new constructed buildings in San Francisco must have all-electric infrastructure that doesn’t use fossil-fuels like natural gas.
• Mayor Breed advanced efforts to require that large commercial buildings make the switch to 100% renewable electricity, with all large commercial buildings of 500,000 square feet or more having to be on 100% renewable electricity by the end of 2022.

Electric Vehicles & Clean Transportation

Transportation is the largest source of greenhouse gas emissions in San Francisco, with private cars and trucks producing the majority of those emissions. Successfully shifting trips to transit, walking, and biking can be done by redesigning streets to make our Muni buses and light rail travel more efficient and reimagining streets as places for people of all ages and abilities.

• Our Muni fleet is the greenest in North America, and Mayor Breed initiated the addition of new electric buses to improve the sustainability of our vehicles.
• Under Mayor Breed’s San Francisco has added over 20 miles of bike lanes in just two years, making it safer and easier for people to travel by bike throughout the City.
• FERRIES

To welcome the new era of electric vehicles, Mayor Breed initiated a series of programs and law changes, including:

• Passed legislation mandating EV charging in commercial parking garages.
• Authored legislation updating the City’s highly-technical Planning Code to include the definitions and codes necessary to enable EV charging infrastructure citywide.
• Launched the City’s first EV Roadmap convening stakeholders to promote sustainable mobility in San Francisco and reduce air pollution. The actions developed in the Roadmap are helping ensure the electrification of the transportation sector and enable the City to meet its ambitious greenhouse gas reduction goals.
• These successful EV initiatives have helped the City’s new EV car registrations increase by over 37%.

Zero Waste

• As Supervisor, passed legislation creating the City’s first drug take-back program, still in effect today. Since then, San Francisco has diverted about 140,000 pounds of prescription drugs from being dumped improperly into landfills, the Bay and ocean.
• As Supervisor, passed the strongest Styrofoam ban in the nation.
• Was the only Supervisor to support the City’s roll-out of the new refuse bins which reduced the black bin by 50% and doubled the size of the blue bin.
• Co-sponsored legislation banning plastic straws and PFAS in compostable take-out foodware.
• The City has implemented several new zero-waste programs, including the Refuse Separation Compliance Ordinance and the Single-Use Plastics, Toxics and Litter Reduction Ordinance.

Clean Energy

As Supervisor, Mayor Breed was successful in leading the effort to launch San Francisco’s clean electrical energy program, Clean Power SF, which is a community choice aggregation program in which SF purchases renewable, greenhouse gas free energy and makes it available to SF ratepayers. Today, CleanPowerSF serves 385,000 customers with renewable, accessible, and affordable energy and is credited with much of San Francisco’s success reducing overall carbon emissions.

Air Quality, Green Spaces, & Healthy Ecosystems

• In partnership with the State of California, San Francisco launched the City’s first owned-and-operated Street Tree Nursery. The nursery enables the City to propagate its own trees, that are not only adaptable to the City’s various microclimates, but are more cost-effective and sustainable than outsourcing from across the Bay.
• Helped secure a $2 million grant enabling the San Francisco Recreation and Parks Department to plant over 1,500 trees in parks in the last year alone.

Environmental Justice

• Launched the City’s first Climate Action Community Grants, totaling over $900k to CBOs. The grants support building electrification, emissions reduction, urban greening, composting, waste and toxics reduction, environmental justice, and youth engagement in community.
• Increased investments in the City’s integrated pest management program, a nuanced but highly critical service that has helped reduce toxics and pests in over 2,000 affordable housing units in the City since the start of Mayor Breed’s term.

Water Management & Conservation: San Francisco and the state of California are always either facing drought conditions or preparing for their return by advancing innovative programs to reuse water. The City is also upgrading our storm water systems and adding more green infrastructure to ensure that our combined sewer and stormwater system does not become overwhelmed during storms. This is all in addition to the continued protection of Hetch Hetchy, where SFPUC generates clean hydro-electric power to provide reliable, affordable, and clean electricity.