Civil Municipal Magazine - Dec 2023

160 CIVIL AND MUNICIPAL VOLUME 4, ISSUE 12 of the traffic issues that we’re experiencing.” Sustainability and development Recently, Pittsburg adopted its first Sustainability Plan, which outlines how the city is going to work on improving its air quality over the next few decades, while also being careful not to set too strict guidelines that might deter certain types of businesses from opening up shop there. “We want to be realistic and development-friendly,” Davis avers. “So, we’re walking that line between improving the quality of life for our residents, but also not setting additional hurdles for businesses and industry that want to locate in Pittsburg.” That being said, Davis says that the city is completely supportive of California’s strict environmental laws and regulations and looks for any opportunity it can to reduce greenhouse gas emissions. “One project that we have here is Calpine Energy’s carbon capture project at the Los Medanos Energy Center, which is a 500-megawatt gas-fired power plant located here in the city,” he says. The $25 million project is testing a technology that could capture 95% of a power plant’s carbon emissions, a process California officials say is critical to the state’s climate fight. Calpine will use a chemical solvent to bind with the carbon dioxide in the plant’s flue gas, a process that purports to be more effective and cheaper than previous carbon capture technologies. “We’re seeing a lot of interesting projects,” Carrera adds. “Calpine is doing carbon sequestration and we’re getting a lot of interest for hydrogen power in our area, and that’s very exciting.” The future of retail Going forward, Carrera says that he wants to see the industrial areas along Pittsburg’s historic waterfront updated to be more attractive to prospective employers. He also wants to re- imagine what the city’s retail centers will look like and how they will be repurposed to meet the challenges of a changing retail environment. “A lot of our retail buildings were built 30 years ago and the scope of retail has changed,