Sustainability Now! Sunday, October 25th, 2026: The Spark Community Utility: A City-Led Path to Clean, Resilient, Affordable Energy, with Bob Krause
KSQD 90.7 FM Santa Cruz
with Bob Krause
On Sustainability Now! Sunday, October 25th, 2026, from 5-6 PM
Electricity prices in California are on the rise and they are forecast to go much, much higher in the future. Climate change is wreaking havoc across the world even as we are pumping more greenhouse gases into the atmosphere than ever before. And electric utilities want more and more control over the energy they buy or produce and sell to you. Finally, the Trump Administration is doing its best to undermine the renewable energy that could address both issues.
What if there were a cost-effective way to address all three issues and giving communities more control over their economies and their future? Well, there is: community energy! Renewable energy systems designed to be locally owned and operated, with electricity locally distributed and consumed, and cheaper and more resilient than anything that private utilities could provide. But the State of California and its investor-owned utilities have done everything they can to make it impossible to build community systems that they don’t control. Is there a way around these obstacles?
Join host Ronnie Lipschutz for a conversation with Bob Krause, energy policy strategist and principal of NeoLogic Systems in Berkeley, California. For the past five years, Bob has been working to develop and disseminate something he calls “Spark Community Utilities,” which develop and deploy local electrical utilities that can operate, legally, in parallel to and independent of the private utilities. We are going to talk about the local energy conundrum in California, how it got to be this way, and how Spark could spark a revolution in how and where you get your electricity.
That’s on Sustainability Now! Sunday, October 25th, 2026, from 5-6 PM on community radio for the Monterey Bay Region, KSQD 90.7 FM, KSQT, 89.7 FM, 89.5 in Monterey and KSQD.org, streaming on the internet.
November 5th, 2026: Amory Lovins on “Disruptive Energy Futures: Reflections on the Past, Speculations on the Future” Attend Amory’s talk live or listen online!
Thursday, November 5th, 2026
Wrigley Building, 2801 Mission Street, Santa Cruz
Off-grid Solar Building Tour and Opening Reception 5:30pm-7:00pm at R. Blitzer Gallery in the Wrigley Building
Talk and Livestream 7:00pm-9:00pm
Event Registration & Tickets Livestream
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