http://www.nytimes.com/2016/09/20/us/california-today-air-pollution-fossil-fuels.html 2016-09-20 14:06:37 California Today: Clearing the Air, Without Fossil Fuels Tuesday: Cutting out fossil fuels in Los Angeles, the sapping of the Silicon Valley food scene, and San Francisco’s friendly bicycling. === Good morning. Welcome to California Today, a Tell us about the Want to receive California Today by email? Los Angeles, cloaked in some of the nation’s dirtiest air, thinks it’s time to make a clean break. Backed by the mayor, the City Council last week ordered the municipal power utility to enlist a group of experts to chart a course toward eliminating fossil fuels from its slate of energy sources. That would mean a complete reliance for electricity on sources like sun and wind. Last year, fears over global warming prompted a mandate from the state to generate half of its energy from renewable sources by 2030. With its motion, Los Angeles is The Los Angeles Department of Water and Power is the nation’s largest municipal utility, the exclusive provider of electricity to the city’s roughly four million residents through a mix of natural gas, coal, nuclear and other sources. To get from its current usage of renewables — about 23 percent — up to 100 percent would involve an outright reinvention of how the city powers itself, analysts say. Councilman Officials say one of the trickiest challenges is likely to be energy storage. The problem with solar and A total reliance on renewable energy will require a major expansion of the utility’s capacity to store energy for use at other times. To get there, officials said they are looking at least in part to the promise of batteries. Energy storage technology has advanced swiftly in the last few years. In 2013, Just last week, Tesla For the moment, however, battery systems remain too costly to help integrate renewables on a large scale, government agencies say. To get around that problem, Los Angeles is counting on time. Just as solar panels have leapt in efficiency and plummeted in price, so goes the hope for batteries. “We’re seeing the technology get better and get less expensive with each passing year,” said Mr. Bonin, the council member. “So we want to be able to sort of look forward and plan for what we think is coming.” • • A hidden population of • San Diego’s • It’s • A wildfire burning on • • State lawmakers say new • The U.S. Senate’s odd couple: • • The Los Angeles designer Pamela Shamshiri brought this • And just for fun: Check out this video of window washers who wore superhero outfits and repelled down the side of an San Francisco, hills and all, is a cyclist’s city. On Monday, the editors of Bicycling magazine gave a shout-out to city leaders for making it a safer place to ride, ranking it the country’s No. 2 “bike city.” Chicago took the top spot, a triumph credited to Mayor Rahm Emanuel’s effort there to add 100 miles of bike lanes. The magazine said it identified the nation’s This year, San Francisco moved up five places since the last survey in 2014. The magazine said the city had added miles of bike lanes, installed 800 new bicycle racks and experienced a surge in ridership. It praised its ambitious commitment to eliminate all traffic deaths by 2024 under the slogan San Francisco is also the heart of Other California cities were well represented down the rankings, with Oakland coming in at 21, Los Angeles 24, San Jose 26, Long Beach 28, Sacramento 37 and Thousand Oaks 49. California Today goes live at 6 a.m. Pacific time weekdays. Tell us what you want to see: The California Today columnist, Mike McPhate, is a third-generation Californian — born outside Sacramento and raised in San Juan Capistrano. He lives in Davis. California Today is edited by Julie Bloom, who grew up in Los Angeles and attended U.C. Berkeley.