PG&E's Bankruptcy and CCA

The bankruptcy of utility giant Pacific Gas & Electric should be understood in the context of decades of

More Zilla, less God

 regulatory bailouts and giveaways suffered by California ratepayers, which taken together already exceed the book value of the utility. Todays "emergency" is more of the same routine. Moreover, its cause, and its solution, should be viewed in context not of climate change (as Washington Post recently did), but of electricity industry restructuring, starting in the late 1990s.

The bankruptcy of Pacific Gas & Electric was not caused by climate change. While this notion is catchy and trending, California has been in a drought for half a century: PG&E's power transmission and gas transportation systems have been causing explosions and fires in more recent years, because its corporate leadership has neglected what should be the core of its business (wires), failing to conduct standard simple activity of trimming trees around power lines, and maintaining their pipes. Why? Because it was distracted by an irresistible opportunity to take advantage of political conditions to capture regulators, and build a new and illegal retail electricity monopoly: a strategy that backfired with bankruptcy after successfully subverting competition in 2001, and today backfires with another bankruptcy after having failed to subvert Community Choice Aggregation (CCA).

PG&E's fox needs removing the CPUC's energy henhouse. Hopefully, California's new Governor will take the lesson from Gray Davis, who was recalled for mismanaging the state's energy crisis by giving in to, and simply bailing out, the utilities in 2003, and make a point of finding opportunity in this crisis. The opportunity would be to get rid of the cause of this bankruptcy and the 2001 bankruptcy, for which the California Public Utilities Commission approved a $9B ratepayer bailout at that time. 

The cause of PG&E's distraction was politicization of its corporate leadership, based on an opportunity to subvert the legislature and corrupt state regulators. Since California's bipartisan legislature deregulated its electricity industry in 1997 and opened the state to competition in 1998, PG&E's brass, having won an equally large bailout of "uncompetitive assets" for endorsing the end of its power monopoly, nevertheless became obsessed with blocking competition, first by new suppliers entering the market, which they successfully blocked, causing a diaspora of would-be suppliers out of competing for customers. Having driven the Enrons and Reliants of the world into selling their power into  spot markets servicing utility "default service" customers, i.e. customers still "owned" by PG&E, PG&E has had a consistent strategy of rebuilding an economic, if not legal, monopoly over retail service. 

Customer ownership has been the strategic football of deregulation from the start. Subverting retail competition also resulted in the manipulation of spot markets, causing the energy crisis and the bankruptcy. At the time, one Nation writer called in an "Energy War." And, once the legislature found a new path out of the energy crisis by creating Community Choice Aggregation (Assembly Bill 117) in 2002, PG&E regarded municipalities, again, as mere competitors to body-block.  Building up to 2010, PG&E spent hundreds of millions of dollars on lobbying, lawsuits and astroturf campaigns to block early CCAs, starting in the Central Valley where it successfully killed the first CCA, and attempting to block Bay Area CCA startups, building up to Proposition 16 in 2010, which failed despite $46M in PG&E campaign spending.

Moreover, the attorneys and board of PG&E learned they could use the state regulators of a permanently weakened CPUC to subvert competition for electric supply, and made the CPUC its handmaiden. PG&E won approvals to resume monopoly-like activities as if CCA didn't exist, such as building new power plants that it would own, self-dealing and gas-for-power swaps with merchant generators, long-term power contract procurement undertaken with rubber stamp approval of contracts that are not even reviewed by commissioners, and multi-billion dollar regulatory reallocations of generation costs to transmission charges in the 2010 General Rate Case. In many of these decisions, CPUC regulators admitted that they were acting in violation of longstanding CPUC policy, and promised not to allow it again. This is widely known as bad parenting. The CPUC was training its corporate dog, Pavlovian style, that it could win by failing. Every high-cost contract would erect a new barrier to CCA. 

Today, PG&E plays victim, claiming that its renewable energy contracts have lowered the cost of renewables for CCAs, who have an unfair advantage now that renewables prices are lower. This is Mickey Mouse economics: PG&E didn't lower the price of renewables; China did. Moreover, CPUC regulators acknowledged that PG&E's contracts were extremely high at the time it approved them, and repeated this acknowledgement when it approved massive increases on the PCIA charge to CCA customers to pay the resulting premium. PG&E is no victim. It is a repeat offender. 

The pattern is clear, from 2004-5 during the CCA proceeding, which focused on the conflicts of interest of PG&E and the utilities in "cooperating" with CCA as required by the CCA law, while also having to maximize returns to Wall Street investors. All in all, CPUC dropped the ball. All of these monopolistic activities increased PG&E's desire to control retail energy, and made it neglect its core business of maintaining the wires and pipelines. Northern California has paid the price. 

It is indeed Groundhog day, 18 years later, and nothing has changed. So if Gavin Newsom is smart and wants to be re-elected, he will make it a point to avoid repeating Gray Davis' mistakes, by using this opportunity get PG&E out of the power business entirely, and to refocus it on its core mission: the grid. Moreover, he will move to strengthen the role of CCAs as the dominant retail power providers that they already are in California. Bailout or no bailout, this should be the "win" for California. Otherwise bailing out PG&E yet again will be merely another repeat-rinse, and California is likely to have another Republican governor in a few years.

For CCAs, CCA activists, and CCA suppliers, however, the question is, what will happen to the economics of CCA if yet another ratepayer bailout is approved by the CPUC? CCA has already been hit hard by CPUC approvals of extremely high cost PG&E power contracts (admitting at the time that they were too high, but approving them anyway), then increasing surcharges on CCAs to pay for them: the dreaded PCIA charge. We just got done paying for the last bankruptcy. All of these shrink the power portion of the bill and thus depress the competitiveness of retail supply.    

One question is how they are bailed out. This will have different impacts, obviously, but either way the overall trend is the same: competition shifting from energy rates to net utility bills: from energy to capacity. The worst case question is, assuming they are bailed out at customer expense, what is the net impact on markets and CCA. Or Assuming they are rescued, is there a different future?

Questions about impacts of the bankruptcy tend to focus on the bailout outcome, but in some ways the competitive landscape outcome is the same either way, based on the fact that bailouts have formed so much of the PG&E bill for the past two decades. One key question is will PG&E's insanely expensive power purchase agreements with renewable generators be invalidated by the bankruptcy, decreasing the extant and oppressive PCIA charge that Jerry Brown's CPUC imposed on CCAs? This is a big one, and would be appropriate, because it is the only upside we see other than getting PG&E out of the power business. However, it is not controlled by state regulators. This is a question of FERC jurisdiction vs. the bankruptcy court: and FERC recently said it can protect the holders of PG&E's high cost contracts: so don't count on it. 

All in all, the question is, if there is a bailout and a new bailout surcharge, will CCAs fold, or will they adapt? On that question, rest assured: CCAs are proven resilient public agencies, so they will adapt. There are over 1500 CCAs out there across the nation with a 20 year history, with few terminations in constantly fluctuating market conditions. CCAs in California have an unusually high level of control and resources that they have only begun to use. 

In some ways, the question is not whether CCAs will go away, but how this second crisis will influence CCA procurement activities and how it will impact California's energy markets. PG&E will either collect bailout costs from customers for the next decade or longer, or will not. Either way there will be strong pressure to get them out of the generation business entirely, and PG&E itself has made statements about some sort of "restructuring." Based on the last bankruptcy, a large surcharge will be added to already oppressive PCIA charge increases of recent years. But considering the likelihood of PG&E's days as a energy generating and procuring company will mean a drop in natural gas sales and a shift of wholesale energy markets to CCAs. Moreover, CCAs should use this opportunity to win more support from the state in their new role, such as backstopping Solar Bonds to invest in California renewables and energy efficiency.

When considering impacts of another bailout, it is important to remember that surcharges are volumetric charges on delivered grid power. Therefore, there are nonlinear benefits from PG&E's ever increasing "surchargization" of the power bill (in which paying a bill will be primarily to pay for surcharges, not energy). The more of the bill is a volumetric surcharge and not cost of energy, the better will look the economics of distributed energy resources that reduce the customer's use of grid power.  Increasing T&D charges will encourage CCAs to undertake a stronger adoption of a customer-ownership-of-energy model, promising an increasing turn to Community Solar, Cooperatives, Community Microgrids, and financed efficiency projects. A "CCA 2.0" focus on consumer electronics such as home area networks and IP thermostats, targeted V2B electric vehicle sharing, and generally the integration of residential and small and medium sized business customer investment in storage, onsite PV, boiler heat capture and other kilowatt-scale distributed power with onsite IP and system level networks, will prove more cost effective, being exempt (as non-consumed grid power) from volumetric surcharges, than surcharge-encumbered conventional supply with Renewable Energy Certificates, which otherwise (stupidly) remains the dominant CCA model.  

How will the utilities focus their strategy? 

PG&E is a very poorly trained dog that is fond of dragging its bottom on the Persian carpet. They have learned that they can win through over-procurement and above-cost procurement, ratepayer bailouts, and surcharge increases on departing customers. They appear to be considering an exit from the power business, speaking of "restructuring." The state and CCAs should support this move. Either way, they will seek to increase transmission and distribution charges. PG&E will continue to consolidate its position as a wires company, and a big part of this will be to get the CPUC to authorize a huge new investment and thus rate increases. One way or another it will seek increases, whether to repay a bailout or to make new customer rate-basing of  their transmission infrastructure, or both. 

How the CCAs will focus

--Turn away from increasingly expensive business model of conventional power with Renewable Energy Certificates, and toward resources that reduce consumption

--Move from in the current approach of in-state RECs and long-term PPAS with regional renewable developers to customer-owned, behind-meter, integrated Distributed Energy Resources

--Take an increasingly flexible approach to grid power procurement, shifting program emphasis towards a long-term focus on integrated DER and onsite integrated renewables development: Solar plus storage, EVs, in-city PV, and other technologies
--Deliver demand response and dispatch, load reform and peak shaving, avoided capacity charges, and lower non-supply savings to the cost of power.  

--Move into non-rate customer savings through focus on load management, and marginalization of procurement as the competitive part of the business model.

Market advice

From an investment point of view, PG&E's bankruptcy underscores the need for CCAs to get operational control over their power. Unconsumed energy cannot be surcharged. Whether a bailout follows or not, this is yet another hint for Community-scaled integrated DER to CCAs in California. Smart investors and CCA suppliers should focus on iDERs integration rather than traditional renewable PPAs, specifically automation, microgrids and flexible storage integrated with onsite renewable power generation and conservation technologies. Expansion of CCA service to heating systems and dynamic EV chargers are also highly recommended. Moreover, more innovative CCA service entities are needed that are responsible for both power and development of iDERs.

CCA Reaching Critical Mass

GTM Research - The "Total Addressable (PV) Market for
 California Community Choice Aggregators" - Oct 2, 2017

Even though Community Choice Aggregations (CCAs) still serve a small minority of communities in the United States, the scale of going green regionally is already registering in national green power industry statistics.  It's about to get a lot bigger.

CCA is already 4% of the national PV project pipeline based on a “green CCA” market that is just getting started and about to expand rapidly in both California and New York. Given the fact that CCA is just now hitting a major growth curve in some of America's largest energy using states, and most new adopters are motivated by a focus on energy localization, this percentage is certain to grow significantly in 2018. 

CCA is finally getting the attention of national industry and media as a major and revolutionary new force in American energy. In October, GreenTech Media announced that CCA has taken over the solar market in California, and the impact is being felt across the country.  “Community Choice Aggregators (CCAs) are positioned to represent up to 45 percent of California’s utility PV demand over the next five years. The total addressable market for CCAs is set to reach 3.9 gigawatts by 2022, but it is also expected to grow beyond that projection, as eight more (county-scale) CCAs are slated to launch in the immediate future."

 Green CCA is not new, and was in fact the original concept, but has taken years to make into the rule rather than the exception among CCA implementors. While the initial growth curve of CCA in Ohio and Illinois was focused on discounts and/or higher renewable energy content using Renewable Energy Certificates (RECs), more recent, and even much dramatic growth curve has been largely motivated by the benefits that can only be achieved by localization: local jobs, climate action, and local economic development. 

In California, truly a revolution in power is already underway, with 85% of all customers of investor-owned utilities expected to be served by CCAs in the next few years. Virtually all of these CCAs are focused on development of local renewables, energy efficiency and meaningful greenhouse gas reductions in addition to greener power: 150,000 GHh switching to CCA could leverage an unprecedented wave of DER development, and cause an historical greenhouse gas reduction.   

New York is the exciting new CCA 2.0 kid on the block. After the State of New York approved CCA as a platform for Distributed Energy Resource (DER) development in 2014, the New York State Energy Research & Development Authority (NYSERDA) has taken the lead role in helping municipalities pursue a DER-centric "CCA 2.0" strategy, creating a "CCA Toolkit" with Local Power's assistance, and forming a special workgroup to advise the state on how to augment energy localization and remove any outstanding barriers in state law and regulation. I am proud to have participated in these processes.

The trend towards green power has even spread back to early CCA states whose early adopters were initially focused on achieving discounted rates for customers, inspired by widespread successes of CCAs to achieve greener power at discounted rates, and also new local benefits associated with local renewables.

In Massachusetts, about 130 municipalities out of the Commonwealth's 351 total are already under CCA service, with the City of Boston recently joining the pack, focused on achieving greenhouse gas reductions. 

More than 250 communities in Ohio are under CCA service, including the nation’s first “green CCA” in Northeast Ohio. Today, NOPEC has 850K customers in 218 communities in 14 counties statewide, all being served 50% renewable power at a discount below utility rates - something that was unthinkable even in California only half a decade ago, but becoming widespread under CCAs, which have been proven able to deliver greener power much cheaper than utilities and deregulated suppliers. This kind of scale creates substantial environmental benefits. In Southeast Ohio, SOPEC has been focused not merely on greener power but on energy localization for the past couple of years, providing the state with a ramming rod for CCA 2.0.

About 600 communities in Illinois are under CCA service. Between 2011 and 2014, 91 Illinois municipalities representing 1.7 million consumers switched their communities to 100% Renewable Energy using CCA. 91 medium sized cities and towns containing 1.7M customers have chosen 100% renewable energy (using RECs), which is a six TWh annual renewable demand boost - the carbon reduction equal to eliminating one million cars! While Illinois' CCA law needs changing to eliminate barriers to CCA investment in local renewables and efficiency, these accomplishments demonstrate both the power of CCA and the political will for significant action in green power.

With the numbers starting to show, national policy groups are beginning to recognize the true potential that CCA has to create significant local benefits like customer equity, community wealth retention, local jobs and economic development, and local pollution reduction, as well as global benefits like greenhouse gas reductions.  NAACP's just featured CCA in its Environmental and Climate Justice Program's Just Energy Policies and Practices Action Toolkit. 

 Watch for some major new leaps in 2018, with emerging CCAs shifting their focus further towards the local, and even behind the meter. As CCAs continue to prove new services like EVs and solar plus storage, solar bonds/green bonds continue to go mainstream, and increasing levels of DER integration prove themselves in the form of community microgrids, and community solar, EV sharing and dynamic charging, CCAs will revolutionize demand-side technologies and customer-ownership the way the have already transformed retail energy. Mark my words: what was a luxury will soon prove cheaper than status quo power, and what was a fantasy utopia will soon become reality.

Honey I shrunk the utility: California's final nuclear plant closure attributed to CCA

The impact of CCA on California is just getting started, but it has already caused a nuclear power plant to become redundant. Pacific Gas & Electric officials said its recent decision to close the Diablo Canyon nuclear power plant was influenced in part by the loss of customers because of Community Choice Aggregation (CCA), under which local jursidictions group power purchases to choose alternative suppliers.

With six Bay Area counties already under service from Napa to San Francisco, and virtually every coastal county of the state now preparing to launch their own local electricity services, PG&E's nuclear baseload power is simply no longer needed. Industry analysts predict that 60% of all Californians served by investor-owned utilities like PG&E will soon be served by CCAs, leading the media to ask, can renewables and energy efficiency replace nuclear power?

Moreover, now that CCA is definitely and permanently transforming California's electricity system, the operative question is, will the CCAs forming up and down the coast from Humboldt to Alameda County, San Mateo County to San Jose, Santa Cruz to Lancaster and Los Angeles County and Riverside, San Diego and Del Mar, realize their founders' dreams of becoming energy independent, building local renewables and energy efficiency, creating local green jobs. and achieving a new business model focused on the other side of the meter? These are palpable local benefits that only get delivered if substantial local buildouts happen, and in a meaningful time frame.

The answer lies in the very activists who are driving each of these efforts in each community. CCA is not just a solution to the energy crisis and climate change: it is an opportunity for democracy to deliver this result. CCA is not an end, but a means to an end. Activists must realize that this unique opportunity to change everything requires more than the conventional campaign, in which winning a vote on a law is the goal, then everybody folds up their tents and goes home.

CCA is a more holistic, comprehensive process that takes years of community deliberation to fully execute. Changing everything takes perseverance on the inside, and activists who see CCA through to launch only are blowing it if they think they are "done" once the program launches. Creating your new CCA program is just the beginning, not the end, of CCA. Now you have to attend to the details of transforming energy. It must involve an active community process. If you want to deliver local jobs, local development, local companies, and local ownership, there is work to do to make those things happen. The physical transformation of energy takes time but it won't happen unless it starts at program launch. No waiting for reserves is called for, because so many ways now exist to finance efficiency and renewables, build-outs should begin at program launch, and local build-out be the centerpiece of the program from day one. If CCA activists, who have successfully made local build-out the central focus of California CCA, will just persevere with their elected officials that govern CCA programs, and hold their feet to the fire, democracy will prevail: we will truly revolutionize energy in this state, as we have promised for so many years. 

New York Gets CCA 2.0

On April 20, the New York Public Service Commission (PSC) approved an order authorizing the
establishment of Community Choice Aggregation (CCA) programs by municipalities statewide, and articulated the necessary program design principles and standards that municipalities must apply in developing and implementing CCA programs for their constituents.

The PSC order adds one of the nation's largest markets for power to the list of U.S. states that allow CCA, including California, Illinois, Massachusetts, Ohio, and New Jersey, with several other states considering similar laws. Local Power Inc. played an active role in educating the PSC and other New York state agencies throughout its process, drafting legislation in 2014 and preparing testimony and comments in the proceeding over the past year, while also advising local advocates on their efforts to win CCA rules to encourage and open a clear path to DER development and community energy in New York.

The order opens a path of activists in Ulster County, Sullivan County and others to follow the lead of Westchester County, which launched its local CCA program under a PSC pilot project earlier this year. Perhaps most significantly, New York's CCA take California's move toward a more ambitious form of CCA foward another step, focused strategically not only on retail choice or greener power, but the development of Distributed Energy Resources, or DER.

The Public Service Commission's order, approved following the lead from NY Governor Andrew Cuomo following disruption of New York's power supply from Hurricane Sandy in 2012, states that while CCA will offer the vast majority of residents and businesses benefits from retail electric competition that deregulated markets have failed to deliver, but "(m)ore importantly, the CCA construct provides substantial positive opportunity for meaningful and effective local and community engagement on critical energy issues and the development of innovative programs, products, and services that promote and advance the achievement of the State’s energy goals....CCA programs can educate, encourage, and empower communities and individuals to take control of their energy future through engagement with existing...opportunities and development of new DER and clean energy programs" with the Governor's Reforming the Energy Vision (REV) and New York's Clean Energy Fund (CEF).

Local Power Inc. is very pleased by this order, and thrilled to see CCA growing both in the scale of the market, and in the wisdom of is intention. We look forward to helping New York communities realize energy independence, develop local economies, create local jobs, and transform customers into owners in coming years under this order, and encourage community energy activists everywhere to take encouragement that our strategy is not only working, but finding its way to the mainstream.

CCA Transforming Electricity in California

California CCA Activity -  Spring 2016 (Local Power Inc.)

How to report on the details of a revolution? As of this year, everything has changed. No longer is California's energy landscape dominated by Investor-Owned Utilities. No longer is CCA just an idea for how things might be different. Things are different. No longer are CCAs just talking about localizing energy. They are actually doing it.

As of today, most Californians know about CCA - in a few years, most Californians will be served by CCAs.

As the Center for Climate Protection's Ann Hancock recently reported, it appears that over half of all Californians are about to become CCA customers. Whereas just one CCA served a population of 261K in 2010, by the end of 2016 San Francisco, the South Peninsula and Silicon Valley  - plus Lancaster - will cover a population of over 3 million: by next year CCAs will cover over 12 million Californians. CCP estimates that the total population of communities launching or exploring CCA to be over 17 million, which comprises some 60% of California's entire population served by Investor-Owned Utilities. Considering that their estimates actually exclude a number of CCAs, these figures are actually conservative.

California's electric pie 2018 - IOU pops. (red) vs. CCA pops. (blue) 

What is more, virtually the entire crop of cities - even, finally, Marin Clean Energy - is strategically focused on energy localization goals: local jobs, demand reduction, carbon reduction, and local economic development. With the launch of Lancaster Choice Energy in Southern California last year, California saw its first CCA formed outside of PG&E's service territory. Boasting one of the most ambitious solar photovoltaic programs in the U.S., its Republican mayor has put Lancaster on the map as one of the nation's greenest cities.  Perhaps most importantly, Lancaster's business model is clearly focused not just on greener power, but on energy localization, local development of renewables, local storage, and strategic demand reduction.

California CCA growth curve from 2010 to 2020 in pops.

The die is, as they say, cast. Sonoma Clean Power is building local solar. San Francisco is launching CleanPowerSF this year, and has already shifted its focus upon localization. The City of San Diego became the first city in the nation to adopt binding targets for its CCA program - the very kinds of targets Local Power Inc. has pushed for. Reading through the solicitation and planning documents of CCAs covering virtually the entire California coast, I must conclude that we have won the war of ideas. The revolution is truly here.

These basic elements describe the Revolution in Power that Local Power Inc. had in mind when we created CCA, and we are even more thrilled to see "CCA 2.0" take hold in California and beyond than we are to see CCA hitting prime time. A great deal of pain and suffering - controversy and acrimony - has paid off.

California CCA Count Rises to 3 Counties in Bay Area - 10 Counties Statewide

Sonoma County has formed the third Community Choice Aggregation in California, joining some 1200 municipalities nationwide now under CCA service. Sonoma Clean Power, whose local towns have already joined 2/3 of countywide electricity demand, will be larger than Marin Clean Energy to the south, and rival San Francisco's CleanPowerSF program in scale. Like San Francisco, Sonoma is strongly focused on energy localization in addition to greener power - on local green jobs, local business benefits, and augmenting local solar finance.

Now there is a new generation of counties all over California, from Del Norte to San Diego, that are in varying stages of public hearings on CCA. The infographic representation of California counties above is based on actual population size. As you can see, Community Choice has already changed energy in California (and already has nationwide), but is about to become a major part of our electricity system.

We at Local Power are committed to making this movement Real - really focused on a demand-side approach, a change of business model from monopoly supply-centered to demand-centered and customer ownership-centered. With the emergence of localization-focused CCAs, we have achieved a huge leap from the green supply paradigm of the 1990's. This is the unique strategic opportunity of CCA in the U.S. - specifically of demand aggregation as a distinctively demand-centric. San Francisco and Sonoma recognize this opportunity, and we hope you understand how profound and unique an opportunity it is for those who want decisive, meaningful action on climate change, and want it now.

Local Power is proud to have played the part we have in shaping the progressive vision of the CCAs in Sonoma and San Francisco, and look forward to working with local officials in California, Illinois, Ohio, Massachusetts, and New Jersey - states where CCAs already serve 5% of the U.S. population. We feel that Community Choice has now earned the title of a national movement, and offers activists, communities, and policymakers in all states an unprecedented chance to achieve the kind of concerted effort and policy alignment that American was once known for - and the power of local government, more than any other public or private, to transform markets and build publicly needed infrastructure.

With San Francisco, a Whole New Environment in California Energy

The past two years have yielded a huge expansion of Community Choice Aggregation (CCA) from just a handful of CCAs in a couple of states into a national phenomenon including major cities like Cincinnati, Chicagoland, and  800 U.S. municipalities now under CCA service. The movement Local Power started has received a profound shot in the arm by recent approval to launch San Francisco's green power program, CleanPowerSF, in which Local Power has been deeply involved for over a decade and prepared many of the elements of the program. This is a long-awaited launch of a program that will have a profound impact on not just the growing California CCA movement but at the national energy policy level. San Francisco will provide intellectual leadership for a growing number of cities that see the logic not just of aggregation, but solar & efficiency finance, and green jobs.

San Francisco's ordinance to launch CleanPowerSF power service in Spring of 2013 also provides for the issuance of Requests for Proposals or RFPs - solicitations to developers of solar, wind, other renewable energy, energy efficiency, and other green technologies for rollout in San Francisco in the near-term (small footprint, easy to permit), medium-term larger projects, and long-term major projects requiring exhaustive state environmental permits. The In City RE/EE rollout will install a portfolio each year based on a financial model, deployment report and solicitation documents Local Power is now preparing for the San Francisco Public Utilities Commission, which operates CleanPowerSF.

An already vibrant movement for greener, more local power in states constituting 25% of the U.S. electricity market is now underway not only in Marin County, but also San Francisco, with dozens of local governments not far behind. Focused on scaled energy localization to make their community not just renewable but locally powered and customer-owned, CleanPowerSF starts with a small amount of power from a global conventional power provider. Our task is to advise the City on how the SFPUC may operate and control wholesale power procurement planned with decentralized demand reduction, in order to achieve a smooth citywide transition to local green power.

CleanPowerSF starts with a 100% renewable power service for a small initial group of early adopters (all residential 30 MW - less than 10% of the aggregated private sector), which will be followed by construction of a new, local, renewable infrastructure to power the CCA, while phasing in commercial customers and remaining residential customers citywide over the next couple of years.

Part of this focus is carbon. The San Francisco Public Utilities Commission's General Manager Ed Harrington spoke eloquently when he remarked to Supervisors that just Phase I of the CCA program (less than 10% of customers enrolled) will provide ten times the greenhouse gas reductions of all City policies of the past ten years combined, at a tiny fraction of the cost. But another rising criterion for municipalities is how to deliver green jobs today - the opportunity to get local jobs because the power generation is being brought to smaller local renewable developments. Localization creates local jobs because smaller companies can win this work, and local labor can be trained and prepared to work for these companies building here in the community.

Many other California communities are seeing green when they consider energy localization - not just global carbon reductions like CleanPowerSF or Marin Clean Energy on the other side of the Golden Gate. It is the green of monthly utility bill dollars not leaving the city or county. PG&E has claimed it is a "local company" compared to Shell North America. But it cannot compare itself to the city of San Francisco, which controls this program and intends to localize its energy supply using its solar "H" bond authority, both to build city-owned plants and to offer financing so San Francisco residents and businesses. This is localism in the true sense - not greenness defined by the logo or corporate identity of a wholesale power supplier like Green Mountain Energy, but greenness defined by  municipal financing, localization, and reducing our dependence on these companies through fundamental change.

Revolution in Illinois

Yesterday, voters in the vast majority of 300 Illinois cities approved Community Choice Aggregation (CCA) programs, adding over a million customers to be served by CCAs nationwide.

In the Chicago area, 80 percent of cities approved the CCA measures, resulting in over a million new customers receiving power service since LPI developed CCA. Several million Americans have received CCA service since the late 1990's when Massachusetts adopted the first CCA law and Cape Cod towns formed the Cape Light Compact. With many major California cities and counties now forming CCAs, and many new CCAs like Cincinnati and Hampshire County Massachusetts forming CCAs on the East Coast, Local Power Inc. may finally announce the existence of a major national movement that already serves a substantial portion of America's electricity demand.

New York Times Features Marin and SF Green Power Fight With PG&E

Katherine Mieszkowsky has written an illuminating article in the Sunday Times on Marin's climate protection efforts - and the efforts of utility giant PG&E to block them. "Through a form of public collective purchasing (Marin) plans to provide a greener alternative to the power from the Pacific Gas & Electric Company, Northern California’s dominant utility....Unless, that is, P.G. & E., which is investor-owned, stops it. At the moment, it is making every effort to that end, jawboning participants, hinting at legal action and, most importantly, backing a voter referendum to nip such plans anywhere in the state....Marin, closely followed by San Francisco, is racing to get its program established because a statewide initiative, backed by P.G. & E. and likely to be on the ballot next June could make it much harder to do so."

Click Here to Read the New York Times article.

Stop the PG&E Power Grab - PAC Formed

Local Power has joined The Utility Reform Network (TURN) and Capitol Consulting to form a Political Action Committee in opposition to PG&E's desperate move to halt the Community Choice movement in California - the so-called "taxpayers right to vote act." As dozens of communities in PG&E's service territory mobilize to win energy independence and implement Climate Action Plans, PG&E's claims that it will spend $50-$100M on its campaign to impose monopoly on Northern California portends a major political fight. We say bring it on - there is no better publicity than negative ads paid by an unpopular power monopoly - the great shot in the foot heard round the world. Visit our new organization, Stop the PG&E Power Grab to learn more.

PG&E "Taxpayer Rights" Initiative Would Suppress Green City Movement

Bill, Initiative Would Block Climate Action Plans: “Taxpayers for The Right to Vote” Would Override City Governments' Authority to Negotiate With Green Power Suppliers

Facing energy mutinies by San Francisco, Marin County and potentially Sonoma County, Northern California energy monopoly Pacific Gas & Electric PG&E has filed a voter initiative posing as Prop 13 style taxpayer populism to require voter approval for San Francisco, Marin and other communities seeking to escape the mostly gas-fired utility utility by switching to and developing green power facilities. An opposition campaign has been formed by consumer and environmental organizations.

Shock Doctrine Populists: Orwellian “Right to Vote” PG&E Initiative Would Block Northern California Communities From Green Power & Climate Plans

PG&E has formed a committee and is now actively seeking to block the most bold, far reaching efforts of any entities in California or the U.S. to ramp up green power development and implement substantial greenhouse gas reduction plans. Community Choice Aggregation (CCA) has facilitiated visionary new projects in the Bay Area over the past decade, championed by the Sierra Club, Greenpeace USA and local groups. From the Morning Report, “Californians to Protect Our Right to Vote,” has major funding From Pacific Gas & Electric Company (PG&E), calling itself "a coalition of taxpayers, environmentalists, renewable energy, business and labor." Sound populist to you?

David Room of the East Bay energy relocalization movement, said believes even East Bay Cities like Oakland and Berkeley might act to oppose threats to their rights to green their power under the state’s 2002 Community Choice law (Migden, 2002). Companies like Continental Wind Power have an interest in CCA so may support counter-campaign, but cities and counties like Marin and San Francisco will be approached for funding, according to CCA Advocate Tam Hunt in Santa Barbara.

For Inquiries about PG&E's initiative, contact “Taxpayers Right to Vote Act,” Robert Pence, Steven S. Lucas, 2350 Kerner Blvd. Suite 250, San Rafael, CA 94901, or Nance McFadden of PG&E – Board member, 77 Beale St, Mail Code B32, San Francisco, CA 94015.

To get involved, visit local.org/coalition.html and hook up.

California's Assessment District Solar Finance law AB811

I got a call from Greentech Media about Local Power's view of AB811, signed yesterday by Gov. Schwarzenegger, a bill sponsored by Palm Desert officials to allow cities to provide their residents with low-cost loans for energy-efficient home improvements.

The bill has many leaders of the new movement of third-party-finance solar photovoltaic system marketers and installers taken aback, and some have verbally said they feel threatened by municipalities financing solar, because part of the Solar PPA industry's service is to finance solar, and by financing it, offer to sell people solar power rather than solar power equipment. Today, Solar PPAs constitute a disproportionate chunk of the huge new growth in solar PV sales in the United States.

I told Greentech Media that Solar PPA businesses who adapt their business models will beat out those who don't; and moreoever, that the municipal re-intervention in the energy business to address Climate Change in a big way is both inevitable and also represents the largest, indeed an exponential, step up in the growth of the photovoltaic market (and green DG, and energy efficiency) since the solar PPAs started up after San Francisco's 2001 solar bonds.

In fact the Solar assessment tax authority of Assembly Bill 811 is one of several new municipal interventions, next to Community Choice Aggregation and the use of H Bonds after San Francisco. AB811 allows cities to offer their residents low-cost loans for big-ticket energy efficient home improvements, such as high-efficiency air conditioners and solar photovoltaics with a long-term payback plan linked to property tax payments. This adds to the arsenals created by H Bonds and CCA to offer a third way: persuading homeowners to consent to a tax on their homes in order to secure (lower than Solar PPA cost) municipal financing of these green, energy related home and small business improvements.

More will come in coming years as cities fully take on the leading role in addressing Climate Change. They are already doing it politically, with the leadership of cities and counties in setting Greenhouse Gas reduction targets in the past decade and a half. As the U.S. and U.S. states follow California's lead in passing AB32 creating a compulsory GHG reduction schedule, the Solar PPA industry and indeed Big Energy will increasingly face a re-entry of municipalities into the energy business in the name not of economic warfare, but saving the world from the Climate Chaos and economic insecurity imposed by Dumb (Big) Energy.