all. you can sign up online or call. you'll have the peace of mind knowing you're doing your part in your household to help the environment. sc . >> welcome to the meeting of the commission on the environment, and thank you, all of you, for being here on this rainy evening. anthony, will you call the roll. >>clerk: good evening. this is a meeting of the san francisco commission on the environment. the date is tuesday, november 27, 2018, and the time is 5:02 p.m. a reminder that the ringing and use of cell phones, pager's and

other electronic devices are prohibited at this meeting. please remember the chair may remove persons from the room of the use of any cell phone, pager or any sound producing device. please note there is public comment on every item on the agenda as well as public comment for general items that aren't on the agenda. you also have a right to speak anonymously. the chair will call folks in the order of the speaker cards that we receive them, and then we'll give folks an opportunity to speak anonymously if they like. after that, we ask that you please fill out a speaker card and hand it to me, and i will hand it to the chair. so with that, we'll move to item one, call to order. [roll call] >>clerk: there is a quorum.

the next item is item 2, the president's report. this item is discussion. >> good evening. welcome to the commission on the environment. tonight, we have two presentations, followed by the closed session performance evaluation of director debbie rafael. special welcome to our guests from the san francisco planning department, the economic world forum, and the silicon valley blockchain society. i want to thank commissioner stevenson for sponsoring the presentation on blockchain society, and its future environmental programs and policies. one of the commission's mandates in the city charter is for us to hold meeting to help educate the department and the public on new trends that may impact the environment in san francisco. blockchain is a very interesting innovation, and many of us,

especially me, are interested about learning about this. so let's get started. is there any public comment on the president's report? hearing none, next item, anthony. >>clerk: the next item is item three, approval. meeting minutes. this item is for discussion and action. >> great. so this is for the september 25 meeting. do i have a motion? >> i move. >> commissioner wan. >> second. >> commissioner stephenson second. is there any discussion or any changes, commissioners, on the minutes? okay. do we have any public comment on the minutes of the 25th of september, the commission

meeting? okay. hearing none, all in favor? [voting] >> any opposed? okay. motion carries. and the next item is -- >>clerk: the next item is item four, approval of the october 18, 2018 joint meeting with the commission on the environment status of women. this item is discussion and action. >> and this was a very, i think, historic meeting on the commission on the status of women and the commission on the environment. i think it's the first time that both commissions have met to discuss the environmental impacts and how those environmental impacts impact women and families. it was really very thoughtful. lots of lively conversation, as well. do i have a motion to accept the

minutes of october 24 the join meeting on the commission of the environment and the joint meeting on the council on the status of women. commissioner stevenson has made the motion. commissioner wan has seconded it. is there any comments, commissioners? any public comment? hearing none, all those in favor of approving the minutes of the 24 of october, signify by saying aye. vogue vogue. >> any opposed? thank you. next next item. [agenda item read] >> hi. anastasia gliksten, and i wasted a little bit of my time to come

here to say shame on you. why do you continuously allow pesticides to be used on parks? they're not good for us, and particularly bad for children. agriculture uses more, that we need it for biodiversity, it's ridiculous. how can you follow that when each of them are linked -- maybe not to the satisfaction of chemical company, but sufficiently linked with whole array of diseases -- childhood diseases. and just to tell you that davidson was poisoned on 15 of

november . this time, they probably didn't do glyphosate. i went to the -- i forgot -- i meant to get some amount of poison from monsanto for all of you. before this, the mount davidson that i lived to -- now, it's so persistent and basically doesn't go anywhere. i went to presentation and i

heard something very interesting. -- [inaudible] >> -- but once you start, he had road egress, and really long training which probably cost the district tons of money. and before this, he was small businessperson who was doing his without any herbicides and it was just fine. another item, i think i have time to say, what they were going to do when they were removing manually cape ivy. you do have to -- what happens if you do it with herbicides, you have to come back and spray again. this i.p.m. meeting in san francisco. thank you. >> thank you. any other public comment --

public comment? hearing none, next item? >>clerk: the next item is item six, discussion of the american planning association award for excellence in sustainability for the san francisco better roofs ordinance. this item is for discussion. >> yes, and director rafael will present that. so in lieu of our environmental service award, today, we'll be hearing about the award that the city received for an innovative environmental policy. >> thank you, president bermejo. this award was given to us a while back, but due to scheduling, we're coming tonight, and in lieu of the award given to the provide sector, we're talking about an award that we got ourselves. and what is so exciting and interesting for me on this particular award is that there were past commissioners, ruth gravanis, who was such a

passionate champion about biodiversity and about the need for green roofs that every time we talked about a green roof as being a roof that had solar panels on it, she would say it needs to be considered both. and the planning department was thrilled at that, as well because it had been something near and dear to their heart, as well. so this is something that the commission on the environment, the planning commission, and then, the two departments worked hand-in-hand to form a first in the nation policy that has become a model nationally, and so it's time to celebrate and acknowledge the power of what we can do, all of us together. so with that, why don't you come

up. >> good evening. i'm jeff jazzlene. i'm with the san francisco planning department. i'm here to provide an update on the san francisco better roofs ordinance which requires solar panels or gardens on certain roofs since october 2017. i'm joined by barry hooper, primary orchestraitor of a number of the key ordinances, as well as advancement of the ordinance itself. san francisco as we know as a history of being both remarkably cool and impressively green. under the leadership of director rafael and the commission, the city has been widely emulated

and a thought in best practices leader nationally and internationally. until relatively recently, there was an exception to this environmental leadership legacy. the same could not be said of greener living roofs. while we had outstanding examples about the city and a remarkable one in process and transbay, we had no will policies or programs in place specific to their implementation. to begin to address that deficiency, the planning department conspired with the p.u.c. and s.f.c.-s.f.e. to lure the preeminent international green roofs conference to the city. we hosted the cities alive conference in 2013 which catalyzed our bringing together the trades, agencies and other green experts and fanatics. well, actually, we're all fanatics. in anticipation of the conference, spur conveyed a

green roof task force which resulted in a specific long range strategy known as a greener and better road map for san francisco. the road map was announced at the ensuing conference in october 2013. this brought us closer to catching up with other cities such as washington, portland, philadelphia, and toronto. following the conference, a group consisting of representatives from the department of the environment x the planning department, and p.u.c. began to work in earnest to further assess living roof technical and economical efficacy as well as to map out a specific perspective policy. we coined the nomenclature as we were in a drought at the time,

and we were concerned that green might equate to excessive irrigation. a cornerstone of our effort was the commissioning of a cost-benefit study that tested various generic buildings and scales. for each building type, the results were impressively positive. they demonstrated that living roofs were net positive for all projects with substantial environmental and economic profits for the city as a whole. in the process of transparency we ensured that this could be used by other municipalities in other climates, both economic and climateological. this result was pioneering and largely the result of barry's effort. working large wee with our partners, we crafted an

agreement in support of senator wiener, with the green roofs project. the second phase established that solar living roofs are a combination to be deployed. these requirements which took effect on january 31, 2017 constituted the first such mandate in the country. the time between the previously mentioned 2013 conference and the moment the ordinance took effect in 2017 was used to develop a complete geography set of i ever willmentation tools. when the ordinance took effect we were fully implementation ready. and these are among the accrued benefits anticipated to accrue over 15 years. 15 to $100 million in additional tax revenues, between 60,000 and 385,000 tons of carbon he mission avoided or is he

questered. since that time we recently assisted in developing an economic analysis similar to denver to support a citizen driven ballot initiative to garner votes. san francisco was invoked as denver and portland advanced their policy case and made their requirements. we also provided information recently in support to new york and vancouver, both of which are in the process of advancing similar ordinances. since adoption, in addition to the anticipated beneficial results locally, the better roofs ordinance has become an flunl force in advancing the development of this highly

effective means for the city in terms of the project and municipal scale to positively and meaningfully respond to climate change. took us four years to move from that first conversation to implementation, the result and influence has not gone unnoticed. the ordinance received an award from the california chapter of the american planning association for innovation and green community planning about 1.5 years ago, and more recently, the planning department and the department of the environment were bestowed an award because of fully carbon offset and f.c.c. certified award looks like this. that concludes my presentation. i'd be happy to answer any questions, but first, with your permission, i'd like to present

this to director rafael, barry hooper, and the planning department on behalf of the san francisco sustainability association. [applause] >> any comments or questions? >> in the interest of the commission's time, i did not have prepared remarks, but appreciate the great and thorough presentation, jeff, and appreciate the partnership with the planning department and support we've gotten from the p.u.c., particularly water enterprise and the department of building inspection, as well, so it's been a broad every day, spur. a number of community stakeholders, you know, were great contributors, and contributed the momentum that led to the adoption of the ordinance, so really appreciate the out come and it has been an -- outcome and it has been an inspiration elsewhere. thank you.

>> thank you. >> yes, sir? [inaudible] >> -- green roofs initiative. now that we're requiring green roofs, if someone's got a project and it involves a green roof, i guess especially if it's solar, do neighbors have an ability to complain or object based on aesthetics, like in some cities? >> well, it is san francisco. we haven't had that experience, particularly since these are passive facilities. frankly, there have been lots of discussions about rooftop facilities and their impacts, but those impacts have been social because in this case we're talking about nonsocial spaces, other solar or green roofs which are specifically managed as a landscape, not as a park or other type of space. we haven't had that experience.

it doesn't mean we won't, but that's our experience so far. >> right. thank you. >> any other questions. >> do we still not have a shade ordinance? >> shade for -- >> well, i guess it's an antishade ordinance, really, that people can't shade your -- your green roof for your solar? >> we do not. we have allowable building heights. they're -- they're established by the -- by the zoning code, the planning code. part of the opportunity in the flexibility with both the solar and green components as an and-or would be if shading was a potential issue for a solar

component that living roofs would still succeed in that environment and could be used in that. >> that's good. yeah. thank you. >> thank you. >> any other questions, commissioners? is there any public comment? hearing none, maybe we should have a photo. do we need a photo opportunity? yes. let's do a photo -- a quick photo. anthony, do you have your camera or -- >> up here or down there? >> down there. >> okay. some people are --

>> thank you for indulging us with the photo. next item -- >>clerk: just want to make sure -- >> oh, sure want to make arthur there's no public comment. i asked before, but i didn't see anybody jump up. last chance. okay. moving onto the next item. >> okay. item seven, discussion of blockchain technology and the future of environmental programs and policies. this item is for heather stevenson, commissioners, and there's two presentation. one is the uses and technologies

of blockchain technology. the speaker is ashley lindquist, and the second is the change of the future of blockchain technologies. >> okay. thank you, anthony. and before we get started, we just want to remind to hold our questions until the end of all the presentations out of respect for the time of our visiting presenters. feel free to ask clarifying questions during the presentations, but we'll save the longer ones for after the second presentation. also a note to the public that we will take public comment at the end of this item, after the second presentation. thank you. commissioner stevenson. >> hi, everybody. as many of you know, i work in tech startup, so i'm working in technology, mostly the communication since 1996, so i'm dating myself a little bit

there, and i mostly focus on communication and marketing. throughout my workday, i interact with a lot of different startups, and i am constantly thinking about ways that the environment maybe the climate could intersect with technology. unfortunately, a lot of that focused on zero waste because i work in an office where a lot of people are not sorting their trash correctly. we're constantly focusing on our communications plans, all the ways that we use communication across the city to get our message out. but lately, i've been thinking more broadly about technology innovations and how that could impact climate on a broader scale. i had the great opportunity over the last year to have some meetings with some of the folks from c-40 and with debbie, and their women for climate program has a technology challenge that's going on right now, if

you know a great women working in tech, if they have some great ideas, the deadline for that is november 30. i've been thinking a lot about how we can take technology and the environment and apply it in a broadway. specifically this all coincided with me getting really intrigued in blockchain. i'm just one of those people that likes the new stuff coming down the line, and wanting to stay up on it, so i started attending different meeting and hearing different companies presenting about blockchain. there are implications to this tech that could be applied to climate or civic life that we haven't thought about. i talked to debbie and we thought this was an opportunity for us to kind of look toward the future and see what the future has to bring to us or maybe start some conversations that apply to us as time goes

on. because as president bermejo mentioned, we have an obligation here at the commission to educate ourselves and the city on some of these things. i want to thank debbie and the whole energy team who met with me starting about six months ago to talk about this presentation and we -- to start to kind of frame what the issue could look like and we could have these conversations. we decided to break it into three parts specifically. first we're going to hear a blockchain 101-style presentation. it's hard to think about. we all think it's bitcoin and cryptocurrency, but it's more than that. we thought we'd bring in some people to talk to you about that. secondly, there's going to be a discussion about potential pit falls. you may have read some things in the news about energy usage surrounding blockchains, so we're going to have a conversation around things like

that. some of things like privacy also come up during that discussion, and finally there's going to be a discussion on potential opportunities to use blockchain for developing future environmental programs and policies. we're very excited about that. we're very fortunate to have with us today to very remarkable and distinguished experts, ashley landquist of the world economic forum is going to be giving our first presentation, and aman ban is the president of the world blockchain foundation. thank you. >> hi, everyone. [please stand by]

between multiple parties in a verifiable and permanent way. in the system, generally speaking, the technology offers a distributed and synchronized mechanism which is aimed, or would be comparing against a centralized system. basically centralized data bases. we are talking about

decentralized data bases no one has. assets, whatever the transaction may be. transparency. traceability of the transactions. irreversible records and automatic execution. automated smart contract. so first, the ledgers or distributed ledgers is the term for this. we distributed. there are thousands of computers around the world.

second with the network. and they all continuously downloading and syncing to the shared record list. on the bottom, you see an image of the screen shot i took a month ago of the bitcoin, we can explore and look at transactions and the bitcoin. so i choose from a website. you can see all the transactions happening. you don't see who is sending them. you just see numeric addresses and a specific amount of money was sent to this number at a specific time. this allows for a common shared view of the transaction history. this is very important because this is how these computers know what transactions are valid or not. it gets a bit technical. if they all have a shared view

of the history. they know whether money has -- digital money has been sent already. this is called the double spend problem. in distributed ledger we search the problem. we search undistributed competing research for decades. it was difficult to see what digital money was already spent. here everyone can see it. and everyone can convene around the system and agree and city what transactions have happened. this is just the bitcoin chain. this can take different forms for specific needs and purposes. we can have different networks and different ledgers. as i mentioned, there is a decentralized functionality.

no one owns this. a and there is transaction transparency. you can see what transactions have been noted. we have more sophisticated protocals and data bases that can over lay privacy features. if there is a need for privacy, for instance, the amount of money sent could be masked, the sender and receiver, you may not see a specific number. you don't see anything. you just see that something was set at a specific time. we can close the networks, that is called the provision networks, access is granted to certain people. i started off by saying this is public, it is reviewable. we can see the transactions. on top of that, we can have privacy or we can close the door. depending on the design

interests. we can see the movement of funds and goods. a lot of people are interested in a block chain application related to supply chain tracking and traceability. of any kind, minerals, and try to put a kind of tamper resistant seal on them. they can scanned when it moves through a supply chain. and because the participants in this supply chain which could be in the dozens, are reporting to a data base without a single owner, they know and whose information is accurate, because

of mentioned, they know where goods were when. so competitors, they can't point fingers. there is a common sense of truth as to where this cargo was when -- which can aim in tracking the goods. technology applies cryptography. we have smart contracts, which is the classic computer logic. however, because we are engage in a peer-to-peer environment. you can set up an arrangement to party a and exchange money to party b. you have a medium sending or receiving information or money that you can set up

automatically contracting smart contracts. that is what these are. the way of adding software on to this layer. here are four key features of technology. and depending on the use, we like different features. for my project exploring how these smart contracts can be used to fight corrosion, we really like the transparency feature. we should be able to see this option. and see the exact amount and any assumption or areas where activity may have happened. of course, this is not a

guarantee to reduce corruption. the technology is a tool. we need to consider a lot of design elements and risks and implementation criteria to successfully implement what we want to. for that supply chain that i mentioned, all parties can convene and know that no one else has manipulated the data and point number two, we like, coordination over this. parties can convene and transaction with each other. and no one else. they don't need to rely on one large supplier and user base or data base who they may not trust.

the first transaction in the distributed system, again the data bases are held and continuously sync in computers all over the world. the mechanism for the transactions to happen require a consensus and that takes time. it is always necessarily slower than a centralized system. the launching data base or ledger can do can be done in a centralized manner. however, we are choosing to explore the use of chains for the aforementioned capabilities. if we have need for these elements. transparency, coordination, censorship orifice hardware

resilience. -- physical hardware resilience. because of the data is being logged and synced in computers around the world. thousands or a dozen, depending on how many people are let into the network. there is more opportunity for people to see that data. than if it was in a private centralized server. access management is quite difficult. we do have not recovery passwords here.

we have privacy for signing in. like a regular password. if it is lost, it could be lost forever. and this management of account passwords that are needed to send transactions can be difficult. of course, the technology is quite new. bitcoin is ten years old now. and many other protocols are only a couple of years old. we have new technologies always. the protocols are not very scaleable. they cannot handle many transactions. there are many people working on this. a range of centralization and decentralization of the data

bases. these large chains which are mentioned which are totally publicly viewable and anyone can create an account, you just download and you can participate. we don't know who is participating. we don't know how many people. it is very difficult to know these things. and because there are so many anonymous users, transactions are slow. this is also where we see digital currency. we move over to the other side, in the middle, we have publicly viewable decentralized data bases with access. this means, there is only certain people can write or add transactions. however, everyone can see this. i can see opportunities and government cases here where you may want the transparency and you may want the public to see

something, a watchdog to see the transactions. however, you only want certain people to be able to write to that and make transactions. finally we have private provisions. the lock down system. that certain people are able to write transactions and only a certain number of people see the transactions. this is similar to a regular centralized data base we use. there is no digital currency usually in this case. it is not needed. the computers to maintain the system when they don't know each other. over here, this could be a

couple of companies, or agencies within government and there is no need for the payment of people to maintain the data bases other than be a sponsor of the program. this can work very quickly as well. we have several different types of consensus mechanisms. again, the distributed systems, we have thousands of computers all around the world. this is different than the centralized system that we are used to where a company or bank can approve transactions and see that they are legitimate. here is the list of consensus mechanisms. no need to cover them in detail. the ones that you recognize at the top is called proof of work.

this is the mechanism that bitcoin uses and many other major bank public permissionless -- this is the one that extremely energy intensive and it is also quite slow. this uses a lot of electricity. in terms of environmental implications, we will get into, the harm on the environment depends on how much electricity is being used. of course whether that electricity is generated by clean energy or not. currently, estimates of how much electricity consumed is equivalent to a small state like denmark or ireland. and this fluctuates. just this week, bitcoin markets are crashing right now.

computers stopped participating because it is no longer worth it for them. because the bitcoin price is quite low. they get paid less. they get paid 12.5 bitcoins to transform a transaction if they are looking to do so in this system. that 12.5 bitcoin is worth less because bitcoin is worth less. so we will see influxes and outflows of mining activities. depending on the price of bitcoin and how much is used. that said, they may have shifted over to light coin, another technology. depending how quickly and easily they can convert the hardware to operate on the systems. i am not clear if that is a reduction of energy being displaced on to another network.

to wrap up, i am not too concerned about this. as you can see, there are 6 other major types of consensus mechanisms and there are other major ones that are listed. and they do not use the same system. they use electricity just like anyone using a computer. but it is not nearly -- you don't have the time to get into -- briefly, the bitcoin system, all the computers use hardware processing power. and they try to unlock a certain code. and these other systems, the mechanisms are different. so the second one, which is the second most popular called proof of state, the way it works is these computers when their bitcoin -- in the future when

there is migration, it depends on how much of that digital currency they own. and when was the last time they -- the money. they are not spending the computer power. we have proof of space or proof of capacity. which is actually where where the computer weighs by how much hardware space is used. it is a bit different. all of these are greener and usually they are faster. and i listed the types of protocols as examples that are operating on them. again, these are all based on the distributing systems research and cryptography. which was created ten years ago. it solves the problem.

i will conclude here. i will look to you as to whether to answer questions. >> next up the managing general partner. we are happy to have you today. >> thank you very much. a pleasure to be here. good evening, everyone. one of the things that often happens when we have the conversations of bitcoin, cryptocurrency. it is important to understand

that we have different -- the most conversation we have is around bitcoin. it is the most prominent crypto-currency so far. have many of you have heard of bitcoin in the context to feel like you wanted to invest or you did invest or you didn't. so the one thing i would say, being in the space now for a very long time, this is very -- there are a lot of people who made a lot of money. there are a lot of people who lost a lot of money. if you go back to the.com boon and bust, this is the cycle that we have seen before. so the one message i would start with is the system is in the game. this is really good timing that you are bringing the conversation to the fore.

there is a lot of time for this. as a city, as a country, we can play this profitability. in the context of bitcoin and as we mentioned earlier, bitcoin is now consuming in a year, energy as much -- you know whwe need t attention. so let's start actually by quickly looking at the ecosystem. we have the crypto -currency. bitcoin is the most popular. there are a few others. crypto-currency. bitcoin cash, there are a few

others, right. and a lot of the speculation has been with the crypto-currency. i am actually a big fan of both. i think they accelerate -- if it had not been the crazy rise of bitcoin price wise, you would not see the attention and money that went into it. and really what we need to focus on, forget the currency trend now, is the chain. the fundamentals were explained. what we are excited is how it is used, right. and i will give you a very, very quick and simple example that will resonate with you. one of the lowest hanging fruit.

providence. how do you know you are you. how do you know the property you have is yours. how do you know the transactions you made around that are valid and stay. about six months ago, i was with one of the largest refugee agencies. red cross is a larger agency. this is from a refugee perspective. 4.5 million refugees. streaming into the camps that they have. guess what, the biggest need is right now? the general consensus when i asked the question is everything to do with food, water, building, shelter, safety. the biggest need is identity.

4.5 million people streaming in there with no identity. who are they. and even if they had a passport, you don't recognize the state that they have come from anymore. so that document doesn't mean anything to you. and when i was in that conversation, for me the answer was obvious, the block chain is designed for that. if there was low hanging fruit that you want to grab before anything else, it is identity. so there is a lot of incredible benefits of technology that explain how it works. there is a third part to the whole conversation. the moments when companies have tokens as a new asset cost in these projects and raise the

kind of money that is outside the regulation governed by the npc, around the world. and what that it is brought about a capital need to projects that were legitimate. it brought a lot of capital into projects. and what we have seen now with this, the price of crypto-currency and coming down hard is that we are starting to weed out a lot of the companies. the reality is that 90% of the companies whether they were legitimate or the intention was right and wrong will disappear. sometimes it is because the timing is wrong. sometimes the execution is

wrong. you decentralize google and facebook, it is really, really, significant for us to pay attention because it would not have been the world we live in it if not for the dot come boom and bust. the companies are foundational to what we are today. which brings us to an interesting aspect we look at carefully. that is i think in the conversation that you have going forward, it is going to be relevant which is the environment. ... how they treat the block chain and fundraising for it. there are leading positions on

how we address the clauses and one of the byproducts of that, in the u.s. we don't have a coherent approach. it has been stepped in and stayed these things are not okay and we will come down hard. we do not have rules to say this is how we treat the block chain or the service providers. we are seeing access to money -- so somewhere, around the way we will have to find the right balance between making sure we have sensible regulations and that we don't lose what made the ecosystem so unique. the problem with treating regulations with the same brush strokes as in the past, in all

of my conversations whether they are with folks on the regulatory side or folks in congress, in many ways, there is a technology gap. you need to explain to us how block chain works so we can regulate it. i say remember the gap, not just the technology gap. it is a gap of philosophy. it was not born out of nothing. if you look at where the greatest numbers of adopters of crypto-currency are, they are not in the united states. they are not in the u.k. or in germany. they are not in scandinavia. there is something in common in all of the places. regime or countries, where there

are high legislation in venezuela. it is where you see the most movement. the philosophy around this was some kind of battle against centralized authoritarian rules and regimes. we have to be very careful that when we come up with regulation, at a federal state, city, council level, we think of the philosophy of why decentralization came to be born. (please stand by)

. . passed on november 4 three interesting laws and these were not laws passed by the regular laytors, but by the congress and these are laws of the land now. the first is to regulate crypto

currencies. you know exactly what you are investing in and know the rules of the land. the second is the way to regulate the underlying technology and here is how blockchain will be regulated so we know. the third is how to regulate service provider, especially fiduciary service providers, exchanges, banks, anyone dealing with the fiduciary side. so they have a very clear vision of what they can provide and who they can provide it to and how they can provide it. and we really, really need to get there. the thought that i have this picture and this is the president and a very interesting talk with that dinner and she spent 30 seconds on the regulations and the prime minister of the country is the main architect behind that and what she said what i am really interested in is how is this going to make the world a better place. it is interesting because she