Community Choice - California's wire to energy independence

In California 48 cities and counties have started on the path to energy independence through the process of Community Choice Aggregation; 22 of them (including the largest) have signed on to the goal of getting a full 40% of their energy from renewable sources. Electricity is the largest single contributor to the climate crisis; these reductions will be significant.

Under California's 2002 Community Choice law (AB 117, sponsored by Carole Migden), local governments can purchase electricity for power users in their communities. Bay Chapter participants include San Francisco, Marin County, Oakland, Berkeley, Pleasanton, and Richmond.

This law provides a public process for a city to solicit a new electric-service provider, set higher goals for green power, and use revenue bonds to finance new solar, wind, hydrogen, and conservation facilities, financed through monthly electric-bill payments made by residents and businesses. Community Choice areas throughout the state amount to 17.5% of the sale of electricity by the state's power monopolies.

A key deadline looms, however. PG&E, Edison, and SDG&E are now negotiating five- and 10-year power contracts for the first time since the 2001 "energy crisis". Unless Community Choice jurisdictions adopt implementation plans like San Francisco's in the next few months, the utilities will win state approval of power contracts they are now negotiating - contracts which could lock California ratepayers into new fossil-fuel power-plant contracts for decades. Forgetting that the "energy crisis" was caused mostly by overdependency on power plants fueled by price-volatile natural gas, the utilities are now negotiating for gas-fired power plants run on liquefied natural gas (LNG) imported by tanker from the Middle East, Africa, and Asia. Cities that wait too long to file plans could be delayed for five years, which is a lifetime in politics. Now is the time for us to act.

Under regulations approved by the California Public Utilities Commission last December, your community can switch to and actually build green power - on a scale never before attempted, certainly not in the U.S. Once the implementation plan is in, your municipality can shop around for a new service, and solicit bids from energy companies to build green-power works to serve your community, a rare opportunity to achieve a conversion with a scale and commitment to bring your community within range of the Kyoto Treaty target for the U.S.

San Francisco started the movement in 1999 with a resolution, sponsored by then Supervisor Tom Ammiano, asking the state to pass a Community Choice law (similar to those in Massachusetts and Ohio). Ammiano then sponsored a successful bond measure, Proposition H, to fund energy projects (see preceding page). San Francisco's monumental commitment to 360 MW of green local power (enough for 360,000 apartments) is mobilizing many other cities to follow.

California's energy use today is 12% from green sources, and state law requires an increase to 20% by 2017, but Marin, Oakland, Berkeley, and other cities and counties are now seeking to use Community Choice and bonds to achieve a 40% Renewable Portfolio Standard. A $1.7 million study by the California Energy Commission has concluded that it is feasible for the average California city to go to a 40% renewable portfolio (twice the state target!) without a rate increase, by using revenue bonds to finance green power plants. This will be the greatest urban green-power conversion ever, anywhere.

San Francisco alone will build:

• 31 MW of solar panels on hundreds of large warehouse-scale rooftops;
• 72 MW of fuel cells and other distributed generation;
• 107 MW of technologies, at hundreds of sites, that reduce or eliminate power demand;
• 150 MW of new wind turbines, some potentially within city limits.

That's a 360 MW public-works project to serve a community that uses 650 - 850 MW at any given time. This is a project comparable in scale to a bridge, or to the water and sewer systems that stopped cholera in North America - yet no rate increase whatever will be necessary to achieve San Francisco's 360 MW or the 40% Green Standard. We can get to Kyoto without a rate increase!

WhatYouCanDo

There is a solution to climate change, energy war, and nuclear proliferation. It is energy independence.

Sign up for free e-mail updates at: http:\\local.org to keep up on what's happening in the Bay area. San Francisco is the first city to move forward on Community Choice. Your city could be next. Call your local city councilmembers and tell them to act now!

Paul Fenn