Bay Area showing national leadership with Community Choice energy

Global warming is not just a top international concern; it is a top priority for the Sierra Club Bay Chapter. We are playing a leading role in a broad effort to make the Bay Area a worldwide model with our own unique, ambitious, and powerful solution to the climate crisis.

A major component of the solution comes in the guise of "Community Choice Aggregation" (CCA). CCA is essentially a buyers' pool for clean energy, a way for cities to provide lower-cost renewable energy for residents. Under CCA, a city or county takes control of the purchasing and possibly the actual production of electricity that is then sold to local residents. These CCA power contracts would be advised by the same professional management companies used by the utilities.

Since cities can raise bond money more cheaply than corporations and don't have to worry about profit margins, executive bonuses, or corporate taxes, CCAs can provide power more cheaply than for-profit utilities like PG&E, even after providing for professional CCA managnement. These savings can then be used to purchase additional renewable power or even to build local solar panels or wind turbines. CCAs can deliver larger amounts of clean, safe, local renewable energy at the same or lower prices than what PG&E charges for its natural gas, hydro, and nuclear power.

The Sierra Club is working with local activists to establish CCAs in San Francisco, in Marin County, and among the East Bay cities of Berkeley, Oakland, and Emeryville.

San Francisco

In 2001 the Sierra Club campaigned actively to get San Francisco voters to overwhelmingly approve a municipal bond measure giving the city a large source of capital for renewable-energy projects. Working with energy experts, the city has at last put together a detailed plan for a ground-breaking CCA that will create 360 megawatts of local clean energy and conservation, including the world's largest urban distributed solar network and 150 megawatts of new wind energy. The city will gain 100 new wind turbines and 15,500 new solar rooftops. Under the CCA, 51% of San Francisco's electricity will come from clean, renewable sources by 2017.

San Francisco has been working on this very ambitious plan for about seven years now, and we're almost there. The next step is to hire an Electric Service Provider to oversee the project. If all goes well, San Francisco will make history in the fall of 2008, when we install the first solar panels in what will be the largest urban solar network in the world.

Marin County

Marin County has its own plan to create a CCA among its cities. The county recently got to work with the energy experts of Navigant Consulting to create a detailed plan, which should be released to the public by early 2008. This past October, representatives of renewable-energy industries and financiers met and determined that CCAs in Marin and elsewhere will have plenty of available renewable energy to purchase and sell back to residents. Marin's CCA will "meet or beat" PG&E's electricity rates, and will also provide customers with the option of adding $5/month to their bill to speed up the transition to greater amounts of renewable power.

Amid this steady stream of encouraging news from Marin, the Sierra Club and other groups have been working to ensure that Marin's CCA will be as environmentally strong as possible, focusing on carbon-reduction goals (which can be expected to surpass anything PG&E can achieve) and using co-generation and other clean technologies to accompany any fossil fuels used. The Club is also working to gain greater support among city officials, in particular those from Novato and San Rafael, two of Marin's largest power consumers.

Berkeley, Oakland, Emeryville

The cities of Berkeley, Oakland, and Emeryville are collaborating on their own CCA proposal with the ambitious goal of 50% renewable energy by 2017. The Sierra Club, Bay Localize, and Pacific Environment have taken the lead in creating the Local Clean Energy Alliance to support renewable energy in general and CCA in particular. The Alliance is working to help residents and businesses in the East Bay understand and get involved in our cities' decisions around Community Choice.

By early next year the cities should complete a detailed business plan for their CCA, and the three City Councils will vote, perhaps soon afterwards or perhaps after some delay, whether to proceed with the plan. Oakland has already set aside significant funds from the Williams settlement (a payment from energy companies to settle a lawsuit stemming from the California energy crisis, earmarked for spending on city energy projects) to pay for the next stage of Oakland's implementation.

WhatYouCanDo

Community Choice Aggregation is a visionary way to increase our use of clean, safe, renewable energy, and the Bay Area is truly leading the world in this regard. We're not done yet - we have a lot of work to do before the first solar panels are installed in San Francisco or the first clean energy arrives in the East Bay - but with the help of volunteers, clean-energy advocates, and Sierra Club members across the Bay Area, we're well on the way to making the Bay Area a center of the clean-energy revolution.

To work with the Sierra Club to advance renewable energy, contact or call (510) 848-0800, ext. 316

Brad Johnson