Santa Cruz-popular Humble Sea Brewing Co. is making a big move to a new city. The brewery will open its first taproom in San Francisco, taking over a space in the tourist-popular Pier 39 development, SFGATE reports.

The brewery's new location is slated for Pier 39, room N-111-1A, and will open sometime in July, marketing director Lee DeGraw told the outlet. It will be a sprawling 80-seat taproom and plans to partner with a yet-to-be-determined restaurant for the food component. The brewery takes over the former Wines of California Wine Bar, which closed in 2019, and has its own patio.

This move to San Francisco is the latest in a series of expansions for the brewery, which most recently added its fourth taproom location in Alameda Point in May 2023. The brewery also has taprooms in Pacifica and Santa Cruz Wharf, as well as the brewery's flagship location in Santa Cruz. The brewery's Felton location closed in August 2023. The brewery has had its sights set on San Francisco for the past five years, they told SFGATE, and it's an ambitious move for a business that started in owner Nick Pavlina's grandmother's house.

The news comes at a time of turmoil in the San Francisco and Bay Area beer scenes. In July 2023, San Francisco's oldest brewery, Anchor Brewing, ceased production after more than a century of producing its legendary steam beer in the city. New Belgium also closed its massive San Francisco waterfront taproom in February 2023, while popular San Francisco brewery Cellarmaker moved production to the East Bay after acquiring Rare Barrel in 2022.

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The post Santa Cruz Brewery Humble Sea Is Opening a Taproom at San Francisco’s Pier 39 appeared first on DAILY SAN FRANCISCO BAY NEWS.

When it comes to clean energy, a few sexy technologies — solar panels, electric cars — get all the headlines. I blame you for reading public. That’s what you click on!

But the workers of the clean energy transition, especially in the early years, are apt to be boring old technologies nobody writes about, some of which may already be in your home. For example, the rising need for energy storage may be partly answered by … the water heater, that unlovely white cylinder thing in your basement.

The other day, I came across another unlikely hero: the heat pump. (Try to contain your enthusiasm.) It requires a little setup, though.

A close look at what’s required to lower San Francisco’s emissions

Siemens — a big player on both the hardware and software side of the “smart cities” space — has developed a tool for modeling carbon emissions in cities. It allows the company to run scenarios showing how various technologies and practices could reduce emissions. It’s called the City Performance Tool, or CyPT.

Siemens recently approached San Francisco about using CyPT to assess the city’s ambitious sustainability goals. Long term, the city’s carbon emissions are meant to decline 80 percent from 1990 levels by 2050. (They are already 14.5 percent below 1990 levels.)

Siemens used CyPT to analyze how a bunch of different technologies could contribute to San Francisco’s goals. It ran three scenarios. In the first, it modeled the aggressive but achievable deployment of a whole range of technologies, centered mostly on sustainable transport and buildings. Here they are:

(Siemens)

As you can see, electric cars, car sharing, and congestion charging are the biggies on the transport side. On buildings, home automation and “performance optimization” do the most work.

But this scenario only got Siemens to a 63.4 percent drop in emissions by 2050 — short of what San Francisco needs.

For the second scenario, it modeled carpeting the city with solar panels, to provide a source of electricity cleaner than what the grid provides. With panels on just about every suitable roof, the city could get an additional 776,600,000 kWh/year of carbon-free power. Whatever its other benefits, however, this strategy only secured another 3.6 percent in emission reductions, bringing the total to 67 percent by 2050.

How to get from 67 to 80 percent?

You got it: heat pumps.

A heat pump is a “mechanical-compression cycle refrigeration system” that can serve as both a furnace and an air conditioner (indeed, many air conditioners are just one-way heat pumps). From manufacturer Trane:

Even in the air that seems too cold, heat energy is present. When it’s cold outside a heat pump extracts this outside heat and transfers it inside. When it’s warm outside, it reverses directions and acts like an air conditioner, removing heat from your home.

Because it merely moves, rather than generates heat, it is far more efficient than combustion furnaces.

They key feature for our purposes is that heat pumps run on electricity. When Siemens modeled shifting 80 percent of citywide heat consumption over from natural gas to electric heat pumps, emissions declined another 14 percent, bringing the 2050 total up to just above SF’s goal.

(Siemens)

In fact, “market adoption of electric heat pumps for 80 percent of citywide heat consumption is the single most impactful lever considered in this analysis,” it concluded.

I find this perversely pleasing. In the already boring category of appliances, electric heat pumps may be the most boring. Be honest — every time I write “electric heat pump,” your eyelids droop a bit. But they matter!

(Note: heat pumps work so well for decarbonization in San Francisco because of its clean electricity and mild climate—they won’t have the same effect in areas with dirty and more expensive electricity.)

What heat pumps can teach us

So as not to just have a laugh about heat pumps, let me extract a couple of lessons here.

1) First, this helps illustrate that the bulk of the decarbonization over the next few decades is not going to be accomplished by sexy new technologies with, y’know, carbon nanotubes or whatever. It’s not, fundamentally, going to be tech development work.

Instead, it’s going to involve the more quotidian work of slogging through and reforming the rules, regulations, and incentives offered by various levels of government, so that they align around the deployment of existing clean energy technologies, including the boring ones.

A case study from my own experience: Recently, my wife and I did a bunch of internal work on our house — new plumbing, new insulation, new electrical box, new water heater, and new furnace (and a new kitchen faucet, the one part of the work I actually see day to day).

We still had the old oil furnace installed in the house when it was built in 1957. It was that sickly peach color popular with appliances back then — a real monster. Check it out:

Look at this beauty. DR

I wanted to switch it out for a heat pump. That would have made my house almost fossil fuel-free, since Seattle enjoys very hydro-heavy, low-carbon electricity.

But my utility, Seattle City Light (generally a pretty progressive utility), offers no rebates for air-source heat pumps (only the fancier and more expensive ductless kind). By contrast, it offers substantial rebates for the purchase of an efficient natural gas furnace. [Correction, 10/5/2016: Oops, got that a bit wrong. It’s true that SCL doesn’t offer rebates for air-source heat pumps, but it’s not true that they offer rebates for natgas furnaces — those rebates came through Puget Sound Energy, my gas utility.]

In the end, choosing a heat pump over a natural gas furnace would have cost us $8,000 more, and given that we were already spending into ourselves penury, we just couldn’t do it. It would have paid itself back eventually, but over something like 20 years. Who knows if we’ll be in the house that long?

So I had to pipe another fossil fuel into my house. It was galling. Especially since I live in a temperate climate, perfect for a heat pump.

Making sure that rules and incentives are aligned to promote boring-but-important technologies — that’s the real meat and potatoes of decarbonization in the next decade or two.

2) Without rehashing this all over again, I will say that Siemens’ results line up perfectly with the decarbonization strategy I laid out in a post the other day, namely: Clean up electricity and electrify everything.

That’s what the humble heat pump represents: a way to shift heating and air conditioning from fuel combustion to electricity. It ain’t exciting — you won’t see it on any tech blogs — but it’s important.

(Thanks to @MackayMiller for the tip.)

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The post This humble dwelling equipment could possibly be San Francisco’s secret local weather weapon appeared first on DAILY SAN FRANCISCO BAY NEWS.

]]> https://dailysanfranciscobaynews.com/this-humble-dwelling-equipment-could-possibly-be-san-franciscos-secret-local-weather-weapon/feed/ 0 https://dailysanfranciscobaynews.com/this-humble-dwelling-equipment-might-be-san-franciscos-secret-local-weather-weapon/ https://dailysanfranciscobaynews.com/this-humble-dwelling-equipment-might-be-san-franciscos-secret-local-weather-weapon/#respond Mon, 07 Nov 2022 12:36:14 +0000 https://dailysanfranciscobaynews.com/?p=23785 When it comes to clean energy, a few sexy technologies — solar panels, electric cars — get all the headlines. I blame you for reading public. That’s what you click on! But the workers of the clean energy transition, especially in the early years, are apt to be boring old technologies nobody writes about, some …

The post This humble dwelling equipment might be San Francisco’s secret local weather weapon appeared first on DAILY SAN FRANCISCO BAY NEWS.

]]>

When it comes to clean energy, a few sexy technologies — solar panels, electric cars — get all the headlines. I blame you for reading public. That’s what you click on!

But the workers of the clean energy transition, especially in the early years, are apt to be boring old technologies nobody writes about, some of which may already be in your home. For example, the rising need for energy storage may be partly answered by … the water heater, that unlovely white cylinder thing in your basement.

The other day, I came across another unlikely hero: the heat pump. (Try to contain your enthusiasm.) It requires a little setup, though.

A close look at what’s required to lower San Francisco’s emissions

Siemens — a big player on both the hardware and software side of the “smart cities” space — has developed a tool for modeling carbon emissions in cities. It allows the company to run scenarios showing how various technologies and practices could reduce emissions. It’s called the City Performance Tool, or CyPT.

Siemens recently approached San Francisco about using CyPT to assess the city’s ambitious sustainability goals. Long term, the city’s carbon emissions are meant to decline 80 percent from 1990 levels by 2050. (They are already 14.5 percent below 1990 levels.)

Siemens used CyPT to analyze how a bunch of different technologies could contribute to San Francisco’s goals. It ran three scenarios. In the first, it modeled the aggressive but achievable deployment of a whole range of technologies, centered mostly on sustainable transport and buildings. Here they are:

(Siemens)

As you can see, electric cars, car sharing, and congestion charging are the biggies on the transport side. On buildings, home automation and “performance optimization” do the most work.

But this scenario only got Siemens to a 63.4 percent drop in emissions by 2050 — short of what San Francisco needs.

For the second scenario, it modeled carpeting the city with solar panels, to provide a source of electricity cleaner than what the grid provides. With panels on just about every suitable roof, the city could get an additional 776,600,000 kWh/year of carbon-free power. Whatever its other benefits, however, this strategy only secured another 3.6 percent in emission reductions, bringing the total to 67 percent by 2050.

How to get from 67 to 80 percent?

You got it: heat pumps.

A heat pump is a “mechanical-compression cycle refrigeration system” that can serve as both a furnace and an air conditioner (indeed, many air conditioners are just one-way heat pumps). From manufacturer Trane:

Even in the air that seems too cold, heat energy is present. When it’s cold outside a heat pump extracts this outside heat and transfers it inside. When it’s warm outside, it reverses directions and acts like an air conditioner, removing heat from your home.

Because it merely moves, rather than generates heat, it is far more efficient than combustion furnaces.

They key feature for our purposes is that heat pumps run on electricity. When Siemens modeled shifting 80 percent of citywide heat consumption over from natural gas to electric heat pumps, emissions declined another 14 percent, bringing the 2050 total up to just above SF’s goal.

(Siemens)

In fact, “market adoption of electric heat pumps for 80 percent of citywide heat consumption is the single most impactful lever considered in this analysis,” it concluded.

I find this perversely pleasing. In the already boring category of appliances, electric heat pumps may be the most boring. Be honest — every time I write “electric heat pump,” your eyelids droop a bit. But they matter!

(Note: heat pumps work so well for decarbonization in San Francisco because of its clean electricity and mild climate—they won’t have the same effect in areas with dirty and more expensive electricity.)

What heat pumps can teach us

So as not to just have a laugh about heat pumps, let me extract a couple of lessons here.

1) First, this helps illustrate that the bulk of the decarbonization over the next few decades is not going to be accomplished by sexy new technologies with, y’know, carbon nanotubes or whatever. It’s not, fundamentally, going to be tech development work.

Instead, it’s going to involve the more quotidian work of slogging through and reforming the rules, regulations, and incentives offered by various levels of government, so that they align around the deployment of existing clean energy technologies, including the boring ones.

A case study from my own experience: Recently, my wife and I did a bunch of internal work on our house — new plumbing, new insulation, new electrical box, new water heater, and new furnace (and a new kitchen faucet, the one part of the work I actually see day to day).

We still had the old oil furnace installed in the house when it was built in 1957. It was that sickly peach color popular with appliances back then — a real monster. Check it out:

Look at this beauty. DR

I wanted to switch it out for a heat pump. That would have made my house almost fossil fuel-free, since Seattle enjoys very hydro-heavy, low-carbon electricity.

But my utility, Seattle City Light (generally a pretty progressive utility), offers no rebates for air-source heat pumps (only the fancier and more expensive ductless kind). By contrast, it offers substantial rebates for the purchase of an efficient natural gas furnace. [Correction, 10/5/2016: Oops, got that a bit wrong. It’s true that SCL doesn’t offer rebates for air-source heat pumps, but it’s not true that they offer rebates for natgas furnaces — those rebates came through Puget Sound Energy, my gas utility.]

In the end, choosing a heat pump over a natural gas furnace would have cost us $8,000 more, and given that we were already spending into ourselves penury, we just couldn’t do it. It would have paid itself back eventually, but over something like 20 years. Who knows if we’ll be in the house that long?

So I had to pipe another fossil fuel into my house. It was galling. Especially since I live in a temperate climate, perfect for a heat pump.

Making sure that rules and incentives are aligned to promote boring-but-important technologies — that’s the real meat and potatoes of decarbonization in the next decade or two.

2) Without rehashing this all over again, I will say that Siemens’ results line up perfectly with the decarbonization strategy I laid out in a post the other day, namely: Clean up electricity and electrify everything.

That’s what the humble heat pump represents: a way to shift heating and air conditioning from fuel combustion to electricity. It ain’t exciting — you won’t see it on any tech blogs — but it’s important.

(Thanks to @MackayMiller for the tip.)

The post This humble dwelling equipment might be San Francisco’s secret local weather weapon appeared first on DAILY SAN FRANCISCO BAY NEWS.

]]> https://dailysanfranciscobaynews.com/this-humble-dwelling-equipment-might-be-san-franciscos-secret-local-weather-weapon/feed/ 0 https://dailysanfranciscobaynews.com/this-humble-residence-equipment-may-very-well-be-san-franciscos-secret-local-weather-weapon/ https://dailysanfranciscobaynews.com/this-humble-residence-equipment-may-very-well-be-san-franciscos-secret-local-weather-weapon/#respond Sun, 04 Apr 2021 10:50:59 +0000 https://dailysanfranciscobaynews.com/?p=2734 When it comes to clean energy, some sexy technologies – solar panels, electric cars – are making the headlines. I blame you, the reading audience. Click on it! But the clean energy transition workhorses, especially in the early years, tend to be boring old technologies that no one writes about, some of which may already …

The post This humble residence equipment may very well be San Francisco’s secret local weather weapon appeared first on DAILY SAN FRANCISCO BAY NEWS.

]]>

When it comes to clean energy, some sexy technologies – solar panels, electric cars – are making the headlines. I blame you, the reading audience. Click on it!

But the clean energy transition workhorses, especially in the early years, tend to be boring old technologies that no one writes about, some of which may already be in your home. For example, the increasing demand for energy storage can be partially answered by … the water heater, that unsightly white cylinder thing in your basement.

I recently came across another unlikely hero: the heat pump. (Try to contain your excitement.) It does take a little setup, however.

A closer look at what it takes to cut emissions in San Francisco

Siemens – a major player on both the hardware and software side of the “Smart Cities” division – has developed a tool for modeling CO2 emissions in cities. It enables the company to run scenarios that show how different technologies and practices can reduce emissions. It’s called the City Performance Tool or CyPT.

Siemens recently reached out to San Francisco to use CyPT to evaluate the city’s ambitious sustainability goals. In the long term, the city’s CO2 emissions are to be reduced by 80 percent by 2050 compared to 1990 levels. (They are already 14.5 percent below the 1990 level.)

Siemens used CyPT to analyze how a number of different technologies can contribute to the San Francisco goals. Three scenarios were run. The first part modeled the aggressive but achievable use of a whole range of technologies, mainly focused on sustainable modes of transport and buildings. Here you are:

(Siemens)

As you can see, electric cars, car sharing, and congestion charges are the biggies on the transportation side. In buildings, home automation and “performance optimization” do most of the work.

However, this scenario only brought Siemens a 63.4 percent decrease in emissions by 2050 – just before what San Francisco needs.

For the second scenario, a carpeted city floor was modeled with solar panels to provide a source of electricity that is cleaner than what the electrical grid can provide. With panels on almost any suitable roof, the city could get an additional 776,600,000 kWh / year of carbon-free electricity. Whatever the other benefits, this strategy only secured another 3.6 percent in emissions reductions, bringing them to 67 percent by 2050.

How do I get from 67 to 80 percent?

You got it: heat pumps.

A heat pump is a “mechanical compression cycle refrigeration system” that can function as both an oven and an air conditioner (in fact, many air conditioners are just one-way heat pumps). From manufacturer Trane:

There is heat energy even in air that is too cold. When it is cold outside, a heat pump extracts this external heat and transfers it inside. When it’s warm outside, it reverses direction and acts like an air conditioner that removes heat from your home.

Since it only moves heat, not generating it, it is far more efficient than incinerators.

The main feature for our purposes is that heat pumps run on electricity. When Siemens modeled the shift of 80 percent of citywide heat consumption from natural gas to electric heat pumps, emissions decreased another 14 percent, bringing the total by 2050 to just above the SF target.

(Siemens)

Indeed, “the market introduction of electric heat pumps for 80 percent of urban heat consumption is the most powerful lever considered in this analysis,” he concluded.

I find that perversely pleasing. In the already boring category of appliances, electric heat pumps are possibly the most boring. Be honest – every time I write “electric heat pump” your eyelids droop a little. But they are important!

(Note: heat pumps are so good for decarbonizing San Francisco because of their clean electricity and mild climate. They don’t do the same in areas with dirtier and more expensive electricity.)

What heat pumps can teach us

In order not to just laugh at heat pumps, let me extract a few lessons here.

1) First, it shows that most of the decarbonization in the next few decades cannot be achieved through sexy new technologies with carbon nanotubes or whatever. Basically, it will not be a technical development work.

Instead, it will be the more mundane job of working through and reforming the rules, regulations and incentives offered by different levels of government to align with the adoption of existing clean energy technologies, including the boring ones.

A personal case study: Recently, my wife and I did some internal work on our house – new plumbing, new insulation, new electrical boxes, new water heaters, and new stoves (and a new kitchen faucet, which is part of the job that I actually do See day by day).

We still had the old oil stove installed in the house when it was built in 1957. It was that sickly peach color that was popular with appliances at the time – a real monster. Listen:

Look at this beauty. DR

I wanted to exchange it for a heat pump. That would have made my house almost fossil fuel free since Seattle has very water-heavy, low-carbon electricity.

But my utility, Seattle City Light (a pretty advanced utility in general) doesn’t offer discounts on air source heat pumps (just the fancier and more expensive ductless kind). In contrast, it offers significant discounts for purchasing an efficient natural gas stove. [Correction, 10/5/2016: Oops, got that a bit wrong. It’s true that SCL doesn’t offer rebates for air-source heat pumps, but it’s not true that they offer rebates for natgas furnaces — those rebates came through Puget Sound Energy, my gas utility.]

In the end, choosing a heat pump would have cost us $ 8,000 more than a natural gas stove, and since we were already in dire straits, we just couldn’t do it. It would have paid off at some point, but over about 20 years. Who knows if we’ll be in the house that long?

So I had to add another fossil fuel to my house. It was annoying. Especially since I live in a temperate climate, perfect for a heat pump.

Making sure rules and incentives are aligned to promote boring but important technology – this is the real meat and potatoes of decarbonization for the next decade or two.

2) Without rehashing this again, I’ll say that Siemens’ results fit perfectly with the decarbonization strategy I outlined in a post the other day: clean up electricity and electrify everything.

This is what the humble heat pump is: a way of converting heating and air conditioning from burning fuel to electricity. It’s not exciting – you won’t see it on any tech blog – but it matters.

(Thanks to @MackayMiller for the tip.)

The post This humble residence equipment may very well be San Francisco’s secret local weather weapon appeared first on DAILY SAN FRANCISCO BAY NEWS.

]]> https://dailysanfranciscobaynews.com/this-humble-residence-equipment-may-very-well-be-san-franciscos-secret-local-weather-weapon/feed/ 0