How 10 CCAs Were Bigger than China in 2024

A dozen years of work with San Francisco,  Marin, and Sonoma County, including partnerships with Los Alamos National Laboratory and the California Energy Commission, spawned a Revolution in Power that has replicated massively ever since. We could not be more pleased.

CCA 2.0, which combines the aggregation of energy demand with Green Bonds, is already out-investing China and Canada in the massive Green Bonds realm since Local Power, creator of California's CCA 2.0 model, wrote the landmark Green Bond Authority as part of this new model in 2001. 

The California Community Choice Financing Authority has issued $6 billion in 2024, with a significant uptick in the past 12 weeks, cementing its place as the 10th biggest green bond issuer in the world—larger than either the governments of China or Canada, as reported last week in Bloomberg. helping green bond sales approach previous records. That made US the largest issuer, too! 

Local Power developed the CCA 2.0 model as a way to scale and accelerate climate action while avoiding rate increases for consumers. California CCAs have maintained competitive rates while issueing $15B in Green Bonds and leveraging $20-25B in private financing, approaching $40B in investment in renewables in California and the West and creating over 25,000 jobs. 

By inventing this model, Local Power LLC has proven right: a scaled, accelerated demonstration of the power of municipalities, independent of federal politics, to implement climate action on a global scale, without increasing costs to consumers, through local power and local action. CCA 2.0 is now record-smashing.

In California, the California Community Choice financing Authority (CCCFA) has implement Local Power's CCA 2.0 program design, copying Local Power LLC's groundbreaking work for San Francisco (CleanPowerSF), Marin County (Marin Clean Energy) and Sonoma County (Sonoma Clean Power) from 2001 to 2014 to use CCA to leverage Green Bond financing of new renewable energy facilities to the tune of $15 billion dollars. In California CCAs procure power for more than 14 million customers—over a third of the state's population. Two hundred cities and and counties throughout the state have amassed a total of 346 long-term power purchase agreements adding about 18 MW of new-build renewable energy resources, including over 10,000 MW in renewable energy and over 7500 MW of energy storage. PPAs range from 10 to 27 years in length and average 16 years across all agreements. CCAs  tax-exempt status to lower interest rates and energy costs. 

The California Community Choice Financing Authority (CCCFA), a public agency formed to help CCAs finance clean energy purchases, uses “green bond” prepayment transactions. This approach can reduce CCA PPA costs by 10 percent or more. 

CCCFA has ten CCAs as members - under half of the two dozen CCAs in the California. CCCFA has issued $16 billion in prepayment bonds, equating to savings of approximately $100 million per year for community choice customers or nearly $3 billion over the lifetime of the contracts. according to CCCFA. For reliability, in the past year CCAs  invested  in both stand-alone and co-located energy storage with various technologies including lithium-ion batteries, vanadium redox flow batteries, and compressed air energy storage. CCA providers have also procured 617 MW of long duration storage with an eight-hour discharge capability to help stabilize the grid.

Interest is growing in our latest, newer business model under development for the past decade and now coming to market outside California: CCA 3.0: Climate Mobilization. This is CCA for decarbonizing all addressable carbon sources, and based not only on Green Bonds and third party financing, but on direct investment by customers based on local finance, cooperation and sharing. This is a new level of energy transition beyond even California's great leap beyond even the gargantuan scale of China! Its secret weapon is: an ownership model based on the energy user. 

To learn more about Local Power's Green Bond work, click here

To learn more about Local Power's creation of CCA 2.0 in California, click here

H Bonds Finally Realized: California CCAs issue $5 Billion in Solar Bonds

In addition to founding Community Choice Aggregation, Local Power has long boasted of our founder's invention of the Solar Bond or Green Bond ("H Bond" from Proposition H, the original bond authority adopted by San Francisco Voters in 2001). However, we have long been frustrated by the how very long it has taken CCA programs in the Bay Area and California to implement H Bonds. Climate change does not forgive slowness, and neither do we. 

As we have been telling CCA leaders for over nearly two decades, the buying power of municipal aggregation must combine with municipal financing through revenue bonds to transform a CCA into something much, much more powerful. From 2008 when Marin Clean Energy chickened out, and then San Francisco Supervisors lost their courage in 2013, we were afraid CCAs would never see the light. 

But finally, this past week, Local Power's leadership finally paid off - however belatedly - with the announcement of the issuance of $5 Billion in revenue bonds by CCAs to build renewable energy in California. The "Clean Energy Project Revenue Bond" is a renamed H Bond, the original CCA revenue bond authority written by Local Power and adopted by San Francisco in 2001. Local Power drafted San Francisco's CCA law to combine CCA with revenue bonds for the first nearly twenty years ago, in 2004. Since then, only San Francisco had ever used the authority. But now the H Bond, like CCA itself, has hit prime time. Five billion dollars is very big news indeed: the level of big we have long awaited. Climate change scale: community wide scale.

California CCAs East Bay Community Energy, MCE, Silicon Valley Clean Energy, Pioneer Community Energy, and Clean Power Alliance have all issued clean energy revenue bonds, claiming to save an estimated $840 million for California electricity customers over the next 30 years. Each of the CCAs entered into a long-term power supply agreements for sources like solar, wind, geothermal, and hydropower. The municipal revenue bond or H Bond issuer – in this case, California Community Choice Financing Authority (CCCFA) – issued tax-exempt bonds to fund a prepayment of energy that is to be delivered over the contract length. The CCA energy supplier utilizes the bond funds and provides a discount to the CCA on the power purchases based on the difference between the taxable and tax-exempt rates. This approach was articulated for San Francisco in Local Power's H Bond Action Plan in 2007 and with the help of our attorney Howard Golub and the bond team at Nixon Peabody in 2009. 

Now it is a very real thing at the kind of scale climate action demands, and "CCA 2.0" - the new model for municipal aggregation in California that Local Power LLC invented 20 years ago after coauthoring the nation's original CCA law in Massachusetts - is finally complete. Congratulations, everyone. 

CCA 2.0 now not only provides the most power in California, they are using H Bonds to achieve a whole new level of decarbonization, sustainability, and energy independence.

“CCCFA’s member agencies have now issued six clean energy prepayment transactions ranging from $460 million to $1.2 billion," said CCCSF, which boasts that "this prepayment structure allows California CCAs to reduce long-term costs on clean energy projects by issuing tax-exempt clean energy revenue bonds to prepay for the renewable energy....These transactions have locked in $210 million in savings for customers with the potential to save $840 million over the next 30 years according to representatives."

The California Community Choice Financing Authority (CCCFA) was established in 2021 by Central Coast Community Energy, Clean Power Alliance, East Bay Community Energy, MCE, Pioneer Community Energy, and Silicon Valley Clean Energy.  

Local Power established CCA in California and started, or helped to start, many of the first CCAs in the state to implement CCA 2.0. Local Power LLC has now moved on to "CCA 3.0," which its founders are implementing in states like New York. The CCA 3.0 model brings new, additional leverage to grow the climate impact of CCA in profound and even more powerful ways than CCA and H Bonds. CCA 3.0 activates a new layer beyond just government and finance: people. With people properly engaged and empowered to "Own Your Power," real scaled local climate action will be within the grasp of citizens in Anytown, America. Click on the CCA 3.0 link to get a free white paper on how Local Power's new model for energy transformation might work in your community tomorrow.

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. 

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.

Former State Energy Commissioner, San Francisco Supervisor Blast PG&E before Legislators

Former California Energy Commissioner John Geesman and current San Francisco Supervisor Ross Mirkarimi lambasted energy giant Pacific Gas & Electric for trying to stifle competition and kill customer choice with Proposition 16, a June state ballot measure. So far PG&E has indicated it will spend $35 million in ratepayer funds (already contributing over $10M) to campaign for Prop. 16, which would amend California's constitution to require a 2/3 vote anytime cities wanted to provide an alternative source of electric power from the for-profit utilities. This comes after PG&E was paid billions of dollars from ratepayers, to compensate the utility for all future financial losses from giving customers the right to have a choice back in the late 1990's.  PG&E’s  CEO, Peter Darbee, bungled drafting the constitutional amendment, which could not be repaired by the legislature without extraordinary effort. If approved, Prop 16 would also prevent dozens of California municipalities from providing electricity service to new home buyers or new businesses seeking to open their doors. 
The California Senate Energy Utilities and Telecommunications Committee and the California Assembly Utilities and Commerce Committee had a hearing on Thursday, February 27 on the ballot measure. Geesman provided comments at the hearing on behalf of NO ON PROP 16, TAXPAYERS AGAINST THE PG&E POWER GRAB. Geesman is an attorney who served as Executive Director of the California Energy Commission when Jerry Brown was Governor, as the Chair of the California Power Exchange during the Energy Crisis, as a board member of California's power grid operator, the CaISO, and as an member of the California Energy Commission from 2002 to 2008. He is now co-chair of the American Council on Renewable Energy.

Geesman pubished his biting testimony at his blog, "Peter Darbee's dog of an initiative: 3 tapeworms eating away at the internal logic of Prop 16," on his PG&E Initiative Factsheet blog. He began his speech to legislators with devastating clarity: "Never, in all of that time or in any of those venues (of his 35 year career) have I seen political activity by a regulated utility so far outside the bounds of acceptable conduct as PG&E's sole sponsorship of the Constitutional Amendment politely referred to as Proposition 16." 
The piece speaks for itself and features excellent illustrative art, so I will directly quote Mr. Geesman and encourage you to visit his blog. Geesman told the state senators and assembly members in Sacramento yesterday:

"I am mindful of the contempt for the legislative process, reliance on deceptive wording, and resort to strong-arm tactics that are manifest in PG&E's campaign.  But today I want to take Proposition 16 at face value, and focus your attention on three tapeworms that eat away at the internal logic of the measure itself."

Click Here to View Other Curious Artistic Renderings of PG&E and Prop 16.