At CleanStart, we like to watch city rankings on green and sustainability to see where our region sits.  ACEEE’s City Scorecard is a notable one. This year, Sacramento improved, moving from 20th to 17th out of the 100 Largest Cities in the US. Every year the American Council for an Energy Efficient Economy puts out its City Clean Energy Scorecard. The Scorecard compares efforts by US cities to make buildings and transportation more energy efficient and increase the utilization of renewable energy.

While we have a leading utility in SMUD, and the City of Sacramento has continually supported sustainability, we must take continual actions to fight climate change and support sustainability. Sacramento improved its score in Transit, Community Activity, and Utility/Energy. This corresponds to the activity you might see just living around Sacramento, from more bike lanes to shared mobility, fast charges, and SMUDs Sustainable Communities initiative.  

While scoring better than most, Sacramento lost points on building standards, specifically enforcement. It is essential to address this because emissions from buildings are a significant portion of greenhouse gas emissions.  Also, building emissions impact underserved communities who live in and around older buildings more. There is a push to electrify buildings and replace and update older buildings to make them more efficient. For example, SMUD and Sacramento Metro Air Quality Management District support consumer and commercial replacement of old dirty equipment (like stoves and lawnmowers). 

If you want to see the rankings, you can check them out here.

Four Companies who completed CleanStarts CEO Crash Course applied for and won California Sustainable Energy Entrepreneur Development (CalSEED) Grants. These grants of $150,000 were awarded to 28 companies.  212 companies applied and were put through a rigorous review process.

Four Companies who completed CleanStarts CEO Crash Course won.

Descriptions from CalSEED here.

EV Life, LLC is building the first online platform that gives drivers everything they need to switch from gas to an electric car. They will create an EV climate loan and lending platform that saves most drivers over $200 per month on an electric car loan by incorporating thousands of dollars in EV rebates and incentives into the upfront financing of each car. The platform will have algorithms that analyze applicants’ creditworthiness and their eligibility for EV incentives in order to offer them the most affordable EV auto loan on the market.

Hago Energetics, Inc. aims to help farms become more profitable by converting farm waste to high-value products, such as hydrogen and valuable carbons. They break down organic matter, such as food scraps and animal waste, in conditions with no oxygen to produce a biogas that is later decomposed to hydrogen and carbon; this hydrogen is expected to sell at a lower cost and lower carbon footprint than the current methods.

Tolo Inc. aims to create a new artificial intelligence tool using high-resolution imagery for remote inspection of utility assets. It will allow inspectors to identify risks to electrical infrastructure, including foliage clearance violations and equipment degradations that inspectors could ordinarily miss in the field, reducing the risk of utility-caused wildfires.

Waterhound Futures, Inc. will demonstrate a cloud-based predictive modeling and analytics software that enables companies and municipalities to optimize performance and cost efficiencies of water and wastewater treatment, ultimately reducing the use of energy and freshwater in conventional treatment processes.

Congratulations to them, and we hope more companies see CalSEED and similar grant opportunities as a viable path forward.  If you want help finding grants and partners, check out Empower Innovation and OpenGrants. Make sure to sign up for CleanStarts Newsletter for more opportunities. 

Earlier this year, Bike and Scooter share services in Sacramento appeared to be enjoying great success. Back in February, Jump had over 2000 scooters and an estimated 1000 bikes out on the streets of Sacramento. Additional companies Lime and Spin were also competing in our market. In April, due to the Covid-19 outbreak, they pulled nearly all of their bikes off the streets and in May, Jump’s parent company Uber sold Jump to Lime. There is much speculation about what is happening and whether the rideshare model will work going forward. What has the impact of vandalism of countless bikes, like throwing them in the river, been? What will the bigger impact of the global pandemic that forced Jump to suspend its bikes and scooter share programs be? 

In May of 2018, Sacramento became the fourth to bring Jump bikes into their city. Since then the bikes have faced a lot of problems. As early as August of the same year, many of the bikes were vandalized and this problem escalated as time went on. Authorities fished countless bikes out from the American River. In total, about 15% of the bikes placed in Sacramento were vandalized.

Once COVID-19 hit, Jump faced additional problems. Although Jump doesn’t share detailed rider data, it was obvious that ridership dropped significantly when businesses shut down due to Shetler-in-Place orders. The primary reason given for removing the bikes was health and safety concerns due to Covid-19, but Bike and Scooter shared success relies on active city centers where people make many small trips, which makes the prolonged economic shutdown a serious threat. With the city license fees required to keep their bikes on the street, Jump incurs a big cost with little or no revenue if people are not using the bikes.

In May of this year, Uber lead an investment into Lime totaling $170M, as part of the deal Jump was sold to Lime. Uber says they sold this part of the company so that they could focus on the automobile part of the company. Another factor in this investment could be Lime and Uber’s competition over market share–customers having to choose between using identical products can only differentiate on price. The merger is a good sign for the companies who still appear to be losing money trying to gain market share. Lime is committed to the bike and scooter share, now with Ubers investment. 

Eight months after the beginning of the Pandemic, you can now see Jump Bikes and Lime Scooters coming back to Sacramento, and Lime and Uber are partnering on joint services. Additionally, SPIN bikes are available in the Sacramento market, so some competition remains. While the bikes are beginning to be put back out for people to use, both companies are still losing money and Covid-19 remains a major issue in Sacramento County, leaving them at risk.