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Local CCA could be impacted by legislation

By Jason Hoppin

jhoppin@santacruzsentinel.com @scnewsdude on Twitter

Santa Cruz >> Every Central Coast government has signed up to take a ride.

If it arrives at its destination, the ride could result in a Monterey Bay Community Power, a locally run, tri-county nonprofit that would replace PG&E as the region's primary energy provider.

But backers say the nascent effort, which could both provide jobs and increase the supply of renewable energy powering everything from toasters to televisions, could suffer a fatal jolt if a bill now pending at the state Legislature goes through.

"It's meant to take away local control and choice," said Santa Cruz County Supervisor Bruce McPherson, whose office is home to the burgeoning effort.

The bill, AB 2145, would fundamentally change how community-based power companies operate. Opposition is organizing online and in left-leaning communities such as Santa Cruz County and Novato, while utilities have started throwing their support behind it.

A dozen years ago, the California Legislature allowed local governments to set up local power companies to buy and sell electricity — called community-choice aggregation — delivering electricity over PG&E's transmission lines. By handing locals the power of the purse, the legislation gave communities more control over what kinds of energy they use.

Marin County's CCA, as they are known, is up and running and widely deemed a success. Sonoma County's goes online in May, and San Francisco and the cities of Albany and El Cerrito are exploring the idea.

Santa Cruz County, joined by Monterey and San Benito counties, has been looking into the idea for more than a year. The effort is being led by Virginia Johnson, who has been working for McPherson since she left the Santa Cruz nonprofit Ecology Action.

If a regional joint-powers agreement is agreed on and approved, every local power customer would become customers of the new nonprofit, with customers allowed to opt out and become PG&E customers again. But AB 2145, authored by Assemblymember Steven Bradford, D-Gardena, would require customers to opt-in.

"The gentleman who wrote it knows that that's going to make it very, very difficult for us, because you're fighting against a $16 billion, investor-owned utility that is going to use its marketing arm to make sure its customers stay with them," Johnson said. "I would do the same thing."

Bradford said the bill was about choice, comparing the current system to "cramming," a practice where consumers can be hit with unauthorized charges by companies such as cellphone providers.

"This is just another version of cramming the way it is right now," Bradford said.

A former longtime Southern California Edison employee, Bradford denied the bill is being floated at their behest. The first hearing is set for Monday.

"Not at all. I know the warts and the good of utilities," Bradford said.

While no local money has been plowed into the idea yet, Johnson has managed to stir across-the-board interest by Central Coast communities. Supporters say the power to buy and sell electricity will drive a market for renewable sources such as biomass, not only a step to unlocking a zero-waste future, but a possible jobs-generator if renewable power providers spring up across the Central Coast.

"We keep the money locally," Johnson said. "We generate energy locally and as we take those surplus revenues that would normally go to PG&E, we can use those to pay down the rates and to create local jobs. And for me, when it's environmental and economic, that's interesting."

Patrick Mathews, general manager and chief administrative officer of the Salinas Valley Solid Waste Authority, said recycling alone is not going cut off the streams of waste going to local landfills. His agency is exploring a variety of cutting-edge techniques to separate waste and turn it into energy.

"If we don't look at these types of technologies, were still going to need landfills. That's just the reality," Mathews said. "This will be part of a suite of things so that a community can have a sustainable waste stream."

Salinas Valley Solid Waste already has one biomass project, selling the energy to public utilities in Palo Alto and Alameda County. But there is no local buyer, and Mathews is frank about wanting to create a local market.

"We're interested from the energy side," Mathews said. "Obviously, a project like this could be very beneficial to our industry."

Like Mathews, Ray Friend, a Hollister city councilmember and trained electrician who works for PG&E, is also part of a regional advisory committee exploring the idea. Friend sounded a note of caution, saying issues such the reliability of electricity and consumer cost need to be studied closely.

"I think anything of that scale and that large and with that potential, we should look at," Friend said. "I question a lot of the motives and a lot of the ideas they have, but if they prove the fact that this is a way for cities to get more reliable and cheaper energy, we would be silly not to look at it."

PG&E has met a state-mandate goal of having 20 percent of its energy come from renewable sources, putting it on track to meet a 33 percent goal by 2020.

But Johnson and others think the Central Coast can do better. Half of the electricity that Marin Clean Energy uses to power customer homes, for example, comes from renewable sources.

Johnson has already nailed down two small grants to explore the idea — including one of three community power grants handed down nationwide by the World Wildlife Foundation — and is waiting to hear on a $350,000 state grant that would allow local governments to pursue a feasibility study this summer.

"They want to and they deserve to find out, what are the benefits, and if there are any drawbacks to it," McPherson said. "I think the potential is we can have a lot of benefits, both in the economic and in the environmental sense."