A  panel session called “Community Choice Energy”at the Clean Power, Healthy Communities Conference probed the advantages of an energy model called community choice aggregation, or CCA.  In 2002, a state law (AB 117) passed that allows California cities and counties to combine their citizens' purchasing power to buy electricity from alternative providers. The panel consisted of Paul Fenn, Founder and Director of Local Power , Andy Katz, Board-member of the East Bay Municipal Utility District (EDMUD), and Renata Brillinger, Implementation Manager of the Sonoma County Climate Protection Campaign.

The type of energy supplier most of us are familiar with is the privately owned corporation, or Investor-Owned Utility (I.O.U). Renata Brillinger contrasted this with both the Municipal Utility District (MUD) and a third model, Community Choice Aggregate, which most people in attendance were advocating. According to Brillinger, the advantages of CCAs include rate stability, energy independence, increased renewable energy portfolio, which leads to lower greenhouse gas emissions, and increased competition, which leads to lower rates.

Marin, San Francisco, and Sonoma Counties, as well as several other communities across California, are in the process of experimenting with this model.

“We have two choices," Brillinger said, "Option A, which is business-as-usual,” which means large private utilities monopolizing the energy sector that in turn leads to limited renewables, reliance on natural gas, and price increases.  In fact, a LA Times article this week reported that PG&E wants to increase their their rates by $1.1 billion. PG&E has itself admitted it will not reach the state renewable portfolio goal of 20% this year—it is currently at 12%-13%.

“Or we can choose ‘Option B’,” Brilliner continued, “which is to issue municipal revenue bonds to finance local and public renewable energy.”

In addition to the benefits above, CCAs offer the prospect of minimizing transmission inefficiencies (line loss), by sighting energy generation closer to demand. CCAs can also establish their own tariff structure that can incentivize certain sectors or behaviors or apply criteria to address environmental injustice concerns.  In addition, it keeps dollars and jobs locally, “instead of enriching stakeholders of PG&E, for example,” Brillinger said.

Brillinger said that PG&E is “fiercely opposed” to community choice initiatives and “is trying every trick in the book” including lobbying, threats of CEQA lawsuits (in Marin), richly funded marketing campaigns, and of course the statewide ballot initiative (Proposition 16) that would amend the constitution to require a super-majority vote (2/3) from the community of before allowing a move from a private investor-owned utility to a publicly-owned utility or CCA model.

Paul Fenn, author of the AB 117 bill that established the option of community choice, spoke to the bigger picture and addressed the mentality of the energy giants.

"The narrow approach of focusing just on rates drove the industry into an intellectual collapse," he said.  "They bought into and are clinging to the commodity model, like banking or trading. They talk like banks, think like banks, and they act like banks."

He argued that the major utilities are simply not really interested, or don't know how to implement, a renewable energy model at the local level. “They've effectively de-skilled themselves. They’re illiterate at renewable energy.  If you say 're-localize at the neighborhood level, the rooftop level', they don't want to hear it.  They want to sign off on contracts, then collect the massive windfall."

Ulitmately, in order to reach the state's renewable energy and GHG reduction goals, California has to drastically reduce its fossil fuel production.  "There has to be a massive physical change in our infrastructure," Fenn argued. "If you don't stop the fires, that is, stop burning carbon, you can't reach the targets.  If you do, these industries die."

“There is no getting around the fact that it will harm incumbent suppliers if they don't adapt. Relocalization is suicide from the perspective of big energy supplier.” Fenn commented.

Speaking of PG&E's Proposition 16 campaign, Fenn says, "It's really about the threat from re-localization.  I think we are going to see a huge public blowback reacting to their campaign."

Finally, Andy Katz spoke to the role EBMUD has in local, renewably energy efforts.  Rather than being beholden to its stockholders, as private utility companies are, EBMUD is governed by 7 publicly elected members.

Katz described EBMUD’s resource recovery initiatives, one of which involves the receiving of a variety of food and water waste streams into its facility, whose biogas emissions are then converted into renewable energy to power its wastewater plant. The sludge produced is digested anaerobically by bacteria, which produces methane & CO2 that is captured by the digestor and converted to renewable energy and fertilizer. Surplus energy is sold to PG&E and will soon sell to other agencies.  The EBMUD buys commercial food waste from San Francisco and Contra Costa counties (at about 100 tons a week, expected to double by this spring).

“We have to start thinking of food waste as a resource, as a local sustainability issue,” Katz said.  Typically such food waste simply goes to a landfill unutilized (less than 3% is diverted nationally), where it emits methane gases, which are considered a more potent GHG than CO2.

Katz also said that EBMUD has acres of underutilized land that could be used for solar energy production, over 250MW of electricity, according to Katz.  Referencing San Francisco's recent selling of land for solar generation, Katz said EBMUD is considering the same, and such land could be available to a CCA as well.

“It doesn’t make sense to wait 20 years down the road to utilizes these land resources,” Katz said.  “But we need to look at capital and financing options.”  He suggested EBMUD could provide a regional governing structure for a coordinated community choice aggregate model.

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