AMBAG Planner Linda Meckel will speak at our next breakfast Friday, Aug 20 in Salinas (click here for more info or to register).

Here are some details on her topic, AMBAG's 2035 Regional Blueprint:

Over the next 25 years, the Monterey Bay Area's population will increase by 20% and age considerably. Under current growth patterns, the population will become more geographically disparate. With future housing located further from where the jobs will be, commuters will be ever more dependent on driving, usually alone, to work. Congestion will worsen, and taking alternative ways of travel-bus, bike or walking-will be more difficult and dangerous, and more expensive, for all of us as drivers and as taxpayers. Greenhouse gas emissions will increase and there will be unsustainable demands on limited water resources.

Hartnell college interns help local buildings get greener (8/2/2010)

The 59 interns currently enrolled in the Green Building Pre-Apprenticeship Training Program at Hartnell Colleges Center for Sustainable Construction program are hard at work. Alongside their mentor and instructor, Jordan Daniels of BuildingWise, LLC, a Moss Landing-based high-performance building consulting firm, hands-on, true to life work is being conducted. Students are busy gathering data and assessing many local buildings, with the goal of helping them improve building performance and save operations and maintenance costs.

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First of Its Kind Electric Car Stops on the Central Coast (KION-TV, 7/26/2010)

SAN LUIS OBISPO - An electric vehicle on a 16 thousand mile journey from Alaska to the southern most tip of South America made a pit-stop on the central coast Sunday. It's the longest range electric car in the world and biggest battery pack of any road-going vehicle.

It's a sports car clearly and it's got great handling great acceleration and most importantly a fantastic range.

"What we're doing is driving from Alaska all the way down to Argentina," says project manager Alex Schey.

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Congress seeks to protect local clean-energy programs, legislation introduced
San Jose Mercury News
7/16/2010

The state's congressional Democrats launched a full-court press this week to save a nationwide home-energy financing program that federal regulators have snubbed.

Thirty House members, mostly from California and including Santa Cruz County Reps. Sam Farr and Anna Eshoo, are backing legislation that would force the Federal Housing Finance Agency to participate in Property Assessed Clean Energy programs or PACE, where homeowners finance energy upgrades through their property taxes.

Last week the federal agency called the program risky and directed its mortgage partners Fannie May and Freddie Mac to not do business with homeowners in PACE. Since Fannie May and Freddie Mac own or guarantee about half the nation's mortgages, the directive has dimmed prospects for PACE.

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Officials break ground on NOAA's long-awaited Sanctuary Exploration Center (Santa Cruz Sentinel, 7/12/2010)

Shovels in hand, officials representing city, county, state and federal agencies broke figurative ground Monday morning at the heavily traveled intersection of Pacific Avenue and Beach Street, where the $15 million, 12,000-square-foot Monterey Bay National Marine Sanctuary Exploration Center is expected to open in the spring of 2012.

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WATER has been, and will always be, a hot topic not only in the region, but in the State as a whole. The amount of WATER available in the future to support residents and the economy while balancing environmental needs will shape how the Monterey Bay Area Region lives, works, and plays, both today and in the years to come. As such, a coordinated effort to determine the best management of this critical resource will ultimately strengthen the region as a whole.

To kick off this endeavor, the Association of Monterey Bay Area Governments (AMBAG) through its non-profit, RAPS, Inc, will be hosting a series on WATER as part of its 2010 Community Planning Forum. The three forums will consist of three distinct water topics: