Bay Area
San Francisco Foundation Awards First Grants From Its Newly Created SFF COVID-19 Emergency Response Fund

The San Francisco Foundation announced Monday that it has begun awarding grants from its SFF COVID-19 Emergency Response Fund. Less than two weeks after announcing the fund’s creation, the San Francisco Foundation made grants totaling $200,000 to thirty-two organizations working on tenant protections, food distribution, worker protections, and support for unhoused people, among other areas. The donor community responded quickly as well with individual and corporate donors committing to support the fund immediately.
The Emergency Response Fund makes grants of $3,000–$25,000 to frontline nonprofit organizations that are serving: low-wage workers most affected by the crisis; residents who are homeless or in danger of becoming unhoused; people who may not be able to get food during this time; and communities who have been racially targeted as a result of bigotry connected to the pandemic.
The fund was launched on March 17th to provide quick funding to nonprofit organizations in San Francisco, Alameda, Contra Costa, Marin, and San Mateo counties. This first set of grants will be followed by additional announcements.
An essential component of the fund is to get resources to the community quickly.
“We have already been inundated with requests for funding, with more than three hundred applications in the first week alone,” said Fred Blackwell, CEO of the San Francisco Foundation.
“And of course, the needs across communities are extraordinary. There is a great deal of important work being done to address this by donors and philanthropy across the region. One of the critical roles of our foundation is to make sure that small grassroots organizations that are deeply connected to their communities have the resources they need to quickly serve people on the ground.”
“As this situation develops the need will only get greater,” said Ruben Orduña, the foundation’s Chief of Philanthropy, who oversees the foundation’s fundraising activities. “We are asking donors, corporations and other funders for their help to support this work. Their dollars will go straight back into the communities where the money is needed most and to the kinds of organizations providing services and leadership to best address this very difficult situation.”
Donors wishing to contribute to the fund can visit www.sff.org.
Contact: Eric Brown, ebrown@sff.org, 415-733-8589.
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Oakland Post: Week of May 28 – June 30, 2025
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Oakland Post: Week of May 21 – 27, 2025
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Bay Area
Chevron Richmond Installs Baker Hughes Flare.IQ, Real-time Flare Monitoring, Control and Reduction System
While the sight of flaring can cause concern in the community, flares are essential safety systems that burn pollutants to prevent them from being released directly into the atmosphere. They activate during startup and shut-down of facility units or during upsets or equipment malfunctions. The typical flare stack is about 200 feet high so that vapors are well above street levels.

The Richmond Standard
Chevron Richmond recently installed flare.IQ, a real-time, automated system that will improve the facility’s flaring performance.
The technology, developed by Panametrics, a Baker Hughes business, uses sensors to monitor, reduce and control flaring in real time. It collects and assesses data on refinery processes, such as temperature, pressure, gas flow and gas composition, and adjusts accordingly to ensure flares burn more efficiently and cleanly, leading to fewer emissions.
“The cleaner the flare, the brighter the flame can look,” said Duy Nguyen, a Chevron Richmond flaring specialist. “If you see a brighter flame than usual on a flare, that actually means flare.IQ is operating as intended.”
While the sight of flaring can cause concern in the community, flares are essential safety systems that burn pollutants to prevent them from being released directly into the atmosphere. They activate during startup and shut-down of facility units or during upsets or equipment malfunctions. The typical flare stack is about 200 feet high so that vapors are well above street levels.
“A key element in Baker Hughes’ emissions abatement portfolio, flare.IQ has a proven track record in optimizing flare operations and significantly reducing emissions,” said Colin Hehir, vice president of Panametrics, a Baker Hughes business. “By partnering with Chevron Richmond, one of the first operators in North America to adopt flare.IQ, we are looking forward to enhancing the plant’s flaring operations.”
The installation of flare.IQ is part of a broader and ongoing effort by Chevron Richmond to improve flare performance, particularly in response to increased events after the new, more efficient hydrogen plant was brought online in 2019.
Since then, the company has invested $25 million — and counting — into flare minimization. As part of the effort, a multidisciplinary refinery team was formed to find and implement ways to improve operational reliability and ultimately reduce flaring. Operators and other employees involved in management of flares and flare gas recovery systems undergo new training.
“It is important to me that the community knows we are working hard to lower emissions and improve our flaring performance,” Nguyen said.
Also evolving is the process by which community members are notified of flaring incidents. The Community Warning System (CWS), operated by Contra Costa County is an “all-hazard” public warning system.
Residents can opt-in to receive alerts via text, e-mail and landline. The CWS was recently expanded to enable residents to receive notifications for “Level 1” incidents, which are considered informational as they do not require any community action.
For more information related to these topics, check out the resources included on the Chevron Richmond, CAER and Contra Costa Health websites. Residents are also encouraged to follow @chevronrichmond and @RFDCAOnline on Facebook and X (formerly Twitter), where additional information may be posted during an incident.
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