I was saddened, many years ago, when our city's electrical generator was dismantled, making us totally dependent on the grid for our electricity supply. The up-coming switchover to electric vehicles, mentioned in this article, will only further exacerbate this situation until and unless we face the facts and do something to produce our own supply.
As of this writing, Concentrating Solar Power Tower technology seems the best solution from all points of view. The latest versions focus the light generated by the sun with a field of sun-tracking mirrors, upon a tower-mounted central collector, there to melt a salt blend to a high temperature and to store that molten salt in insulated tanks. The molten salt goes through a heat exchanger to boil water to steam, which in turn is sent to a standard steam turbine which turns an electrical generator to generate the power. The molten salt storage system has sufficient volume such that it can generate a full load of power day and night for up to seven days of cloudy weather! State law requires commercial electric companies to buy any excess power we don't use. The main point is that this makes for a distributed system, semi-independent of the Power Grid, that generates no pollution of any kind, other than that required to make its parts, which are recyclable. The mirror field can be constructed such that it won't interfere with other uses of the land. This could be run as a Public Utility (remember those???) by the city, or as private enterprise, or maybe best of all, as an energy co-op, returning excess profits, if any, to its members. We have all the sun in the world, right here in Carlsbad! Let's use it!