Board of Supes Approves Study of Plan to Sell Energy Directly to Consumers
Community Choice Aggregation has been implemented in several regions around the country, such as Massachusetts and Marin County
This is pretty cool. The Sonoma County Board of Supervisors has set aside $150,000 for a study a plan to sell power directly to residents and businesses, bypassing PG&E, in an attempt to wean itself off from large power producers, according to today's article in the North Bay Business Journal.
The concept, known as community choice aggregation (CCA), is already in effect in Marin County and is a way to focus on developing lower carbon energy resources.
Sandy LeonVest
1:43 pm on Monday, April 4, 2011
While Marin County, to its credit, did form a CCA, to say that it "weaned itself" from "large power producers" is inaccurate, and it is hardly "bypassing PG&E." Marin County residents are still dependent on PG&E for transmission, distribution, billing and maintenance. Worse still, Marin Energy Authority (MEA), the "purchasing arm" of Marin Clean Energy, now purchases its "green energy" from Shell Energy North America, a wholly-owned subsidiary of Royal Dutch Shell, with an even worse reputation for poor "corporate citizenship" than PG&E, and one of the worst environmental polluters and human rights abusing corporations on the planet. Thus, MEA is is hardly a model example of "community choice" or even "clean energy policy." The energy mix MEA is purchasing from Shell (and now G2 Energy) may qualify for Renewable Energy Credits (RECs), under state and federal law, but it is still a very corporate project, providing no local generation thus far, no local jobs and very little (real) green energy. Sonoma County residents should watch very carefully to make certain that Sonoma County does not subvert its CCA, as our officials did here in Marin. Sadly, at least so far, Marin Clean Energy is proving to be far better at greenwashing than actually generating green energy.
Sandy LeonVest
Editor/Publisher
SolarTimes (www.solartimes.org)
Karina Ioffee
1:47 pm on Monday, April 4, 2011
Thanks, Sandy, for the clarification. The phrasing was taken from the NBBJ article as Patch has not had time to report on this important story. However, it's a topic that greatly interests us and we encourage you to write a letter to the editor to further elaborate how CCAs work and what Sonoma County should and shouldn't do as it proceeds forward.
Sandy LeonVest
2:21 pm on Monday, April 4, 2011
Thanks, Karina ... No problem.
I gathered that you were relying on the North Bay Business Journal, which, as with the Marin Independent Journal and the Pacific Sun here in Marin, doesn't have its facts quite right. This energy business is some very complicated stuff, something to which I can attest. It's understandable that few have been willing to take on Marin County's (version of) Community Choice Aggregation. SolarTimes has been doing this for five years now, with few resources and a skeleton staff. There's a very important story tucked between the lines of Marin Energy Authority's greenwashing campaign. My hope is that someone in our business (hopefully, with a bigger staff than SolarTimes) is concerned enough about serving the public interest (what we used to call "Public Service Journalism") to dig in and do the kind of investigative work that our little paper simply can't afford to do. Fortunately, I do have a regular column in the local West Marin newspaper (West Marin Citizen), so at least a handful of people here are starting to catch on.
Warm regards,
Sandy LeonVest
Kurt Hahn
3:18 pm on Monday, April 4, 2011
The City of Healdsburg has successfully operated an Electric Utility offering rates cheaper than PGE since the earily 1900's and with the Northern California Power Agency has developed a number of generation sources. Sonoma County rather than following the Marin example might better consider joining NCPA.
dave
9:41 am on Tuesday, April 5, 2011
150K for a study? no wonder the libraries are closing their doors. hey, board of supervisors, hire an inspector for 60K/ year to make sure underground gas lines are safe. make more sense?
Sandy LeonVest
3:05 pm on Wednesday, May 4, 2011
Dave, that was one of the first red flags here in Marin County -- Big Bucks for Navigant Consulting to do a slew of studies ... It went downhill from there ...
Sandy LeonVest
Editor-publisher
SolarTimes
www.solartimes.org