Community Choice energy programs allow local governments to provide cleaner and greener energy as an alternative to PG&E, often at less cost to residents and businesses. But Assembly Bill 2145 would insert a number of roadblocks in the way of consumers and businesses from accessing cleaner electricity.
MCE became the first community choice aggregator in 2010 and currently serves electric customers in Marin County and the City of Richmond. Customers of MCE receive twice the percentage of renewable energy as PG&E for less money. In fact, Marin Clean Energy customers will save $5.9 million this year.
Local communities in Santa Clara County, including Mountain View and Sunnyvale, are considering formation of a Community Choice energy program here. With many of us implementing our Climate Action Plans, a Community Choice energy program is a great tool for reducing our carbon footprint and meeting our climate action goals, while saving money for our residents.
As a local elected official and electric industry professional, I find two remaining aspects of the bill very troubling. I ask our legislators in Sacramento to vigorously oppose this bill.
First, AB 2145 imposes an arbitrary geographic limitation on Community Choice energy, limiting each program to no more than three contiguous counties. As local government agencies, Community Choice energy programs form, and are governed by, a Joint Powers Agency, or JPA, providing local government oversight.
There are many electricity based JPAs throughout the state, and none have this arbitrary limitation on their size. For example, the Northern California Power Agency, a JPA of municipal energy providers throughout northern and central California, includes member agencies in multiple non-contiguous counties.
The three-contiguous-county limitation on Community Choice energy limits flexibility in how these programs can be formed and reduces their economic viability. Local communities should be free to determine what configuration best meets their needs for Community Choice energy, just as they do for any other JPA. To legislate otherwise is not only an affront to local control, it also doesn’t reflect how the electric industry works.
Second, AB 2145 contains a provision that requires community choice energy programs to directly compare their electric rates to the electric rate of the monopoly utility in every communication with the public, prospective or existing customers. This same requirement is not made for the monopoly utility.
For example, this is equivalent to requiring a new fruit stand to advertise the price per pound for apples in the local newspaper, but also to show the price per pound for apples at the existing fruit stand in town. But the existing fruit stand would not have to do the same. No start-up companies in Silicon Valley are forced to communicate with existing or prospective customers in this way. This is an anti-competitive provision and grossly unfair.
There is no need for AB 2145. This bill is bad for consumers, bad for businesses, bad for jobs and the environment, and abrogates local control. California legislators should vote to kill this bill.
Jan Pepper is the mayor pro-tem of Los Altos, a board member of Bay Area Air Quality Management District and has been an electric industry professional for over 30 years. She wrote this for this newspaper.
