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Here's an interview I did with Woody Hastings of the Climate Protection Campaign and Sonoma Clean Power discussing the major change coming relatively soon that will allow you to choose where you get your power from! :waccosun:
This is good news for you, good news for the local economy and good news for the environment!
Please watch the video and reply publicly with any comments or questions.
Press Release from the Climate Protection Campaign:
County Water Board Votes to Take “All Steps Necessary” to Create Sonoma Clean Power
The Sonoma County Water Agency Board voted today to “authorize and direct staff of the Sonoma County Water Agency to take all steps necessary to implement the Sonoma Clean Power program.” Climate Protection Campaign applauds the Board for moving forward decisively.
“It’s all systems go,” said Climate Protection Campaign Executive Director Ann Hancock. The Santa Rosa-based organization has worked to advance Sonoma Clean Power since 2005. Five years ago, their analysis identified Community Choice as the most powerful tool under local control for reducing greenhouse gas emissions.
Other actions authorized by the board include:
- Signing a letter of intent with First Community Bank and negotiating a final loan agreement for startup funds.
- Negotiating contracts with energy service providers.
- Meeting with city councils to encourage them to participate.
- Refining the Implementation Plan.
- Hiring a marketing firm.
The board voted 4-1 to launch the program for the unincorporated portions of the county. All other action items were approved unanimously.
At the board meeting, Supervisor Susan Gorin said: “Sonoma County can lead the way. Let’s be bold. Let’s move forward and show other communities it can be done.”
Last week, the provisional Sonoma Clean Power Authority staff announced that projected rates for cleaner power from Sonoma Clean Power will be competitive with PG&E’s. This news comes from the agency’s preliminary analysis of power supply bids submitted by eleven private energy service companies.
The Board cited increased renewable energy use, local economic benefits, providing choice and competition, and local control as primary reasons for creating Sonoma Clean Power. In particular, the staff report to the board found that Sonoma County residents and businesses spend $180 million each year on electricity generation, and steering some of that money toward local projects would give the region an economic boost. The report states: “By keeping the generation revenues ‘at home’ and focusing on local programs, Sonoma Clean Power will create local jobs and improve the local economy.”
“We can make great things happen with local renewable energy resources, but only if we control the means for doing so,” said Hancock. “Once Sonoma Clean Power exists, it’s game on for companies to tap local clean power opportunities.
According to analysis of the bids received for power supply, a typical business paying $2542 per month under PG&E will pay an estimated $2462 to $2555 with Sonoma Clean Power. A typical resident paying $96.56 with PG&E will pay an estimated $94.83 to $97.58 with Sonoma Clean Power. These estimates fall well within the acceptable threshold for most consumers, according to market surveys conducted last year.
Sonoma Clean Power is an emerging not-for-profit local electricity service provider. It will, for the first time in years, offer businesses and residents of Sonoma County a choice for electricity service.
If the program is launched in early 2014, as is currently projected, electricity bill-payers in participating cities and the unincorporated portion of Sonoma County will be enrolled into the program. They can choose to stay with Sonoma Clean Power by doing nothing or choose PG&E by opting out of Sonoma Clean Power.
The next step in the process is for cities to decide whether they will give their residents a choice of power suppliers. City councils will be meeting over the next two months to consider joining Sonoma Clean Power.
“We would like everyone in Sonoma County to have the ability to choose,” said Woody Hastings, Renewable Energy Implementation Manager for the Climate Protection Campaign. “Everyone will if their city councils vote to give them the choice.”
At the board meeting, Supervisor Shirlee Zane said, “I am a resident of Santa Rosa and I want the choice.”
If you live in the city limits and want to have a choice of where your electricity comes from, let your City Council know.
Residents and businesses in Sebastopol are only eligible to participate in Sonoma Clean Power if the Sebastopol City Council votes to join the Joint Powers Authority.
If you live in the unincorporated areas of the county you will be automatically enrolled unless you opt out.
But this is all handwaving and expense. Where is this power coming from? How can it possibly be cheaper than PG&E? Is that a guarantee? Will it stay cheaper? Who are the Board members of this new company and how much will they be paid? What local power sources are they talking about? I know of few. Will this new power company help PG&E maintain and upgrade the distribution grid? Will they respond during winter power outages? Or will the new company take away enough PG&E revenue that they'll have to raise rates and cut the level of maintenance our power lines now receive?
The Bohemian looked into the possible sources of power "Sonoma Clean Power" is shopping for. Looks like a rogues gallery of dirty energy to me: https://www.bohemian.com/northbay/th...nt?oid=2424198
I do know that PG&E is the top commercial solar power provider in the country for the last five years in a row: https://www.greentechmedia.com/articles/read/SEPA-Report-Utilities-Ranked-by-Solar-Deployed
So, what do we do? I'm no fan of PG&E given their horrible safety record with natural gas pipelines and overall greediness, but this program looks like a punishment for leading the nation in solar power installations. There are more sources of solar power going online over the next couple of years for PG&E as well. These are projects that are already underway. What do those sources mentioned in the Bohemian article have to offer? Nuclear power and fracked gas and oil? How is that "clean" power? Their nuclear power is considered "renewable" while the "carbon free" hydro power PG&E provides is NOT considered renewable. I don't like the sound of that and I don't like the sound of this whole program.
Somebody please convince me. I want real answers, not mom and apple pie like we got in that interview.
-Jeff
PS. Forgot to mention that ALL of the power companies mentioned in the BoHo article are OUT OF STATE companies. How does sending our money out of state help local power development? Like it or not PG&E is our local power company. Unless we're buying power from local sources we're sending that money out of state. Keep it local, people. Keep PG&E.
Good question, Jeff.
To my understanding, the "board members" are going to be the Sonoma County Board of Supervisors
(a.k.a. the Sonoma County Water Agency).
Question: Do you think it is a good idea that these same five people will have yet even more concentrated power in their hands when and if this proposal is passed?
I'm no fan of PG&E either, but I sure don't like the direction that this is headed.
I, too, read the article in the Bohemian and didn't like what I learned about the four companies which are
being considered for providing power.
I guess we'd better take note of that timeless old adage: "Careful what you wish for." Or you might wish you had your old electric power company back.....
Hi Jeff, All,
There are a lot of great questions packed in here so I will do my best.
First, I would like to suggest that folks read the FAQ and other documents available at www.sonomacleanpower.org There is a lot of due diligence represented there starting with the Feasibility Study that was published in October 2011.
1) all handwaving and expense. Regarding expense, it's really the opposite, this is about taking local control of an existing revenue stream of about $180M, no taxpayer funds used, no expense on the part of Sebastopol at all. The $10 million or so in start-up costs that is being financed by First Community Bank will be paid back relatively quickly via the $180 million or so per year in ratepayer dollars on which the program is based. That's the heart of it, taking local control of that $180M that currently leaves Sonoma County and beginning to keep some of it, and an increasing amount of it, here. It's all made possible by a state law that was passed in 2002.
2) Where is this power coming from? The power comes from the same places PG&E gets it, at least in the beginning. PG&E purchases much of the power it provides on the wholesale electricity market. Sonoma Clean Power will initially obtain most of the power it provides via a contract with an energy service provider. The power will be 33% California Renewable Portfolio Standard-compliant renewable energy (solar, wind, small hydro, etc), where PG&E right now is at about 20%.
3) How can it possibly be cheaper than PG&E? PG&E enjoys a legal monopoly. PG&E's residential electric rates have risen about 4% per year on average for the past 30 years. They are in the process right now of raising rates another 5%. With no competition on generation there is little reason to offer the lowest possible rates. Sonoma Clean Power is a not-for-profit locally-based entity made up of representatives of each city. SCP itself has no shareholder interest to answer to, just the public. Lastly, the 11 bidders are all very eager to enter the California market and compete for a share of the demand for more renewable energy in the mix. There are no guarantees but it will be in the interest of SCP to keep its rates competitive if it wants to survive.
4) Who are the Board members? The Board is unpaid and will be made up of representatives of each city that joins. Each city appoints a representative. It will probably be one of the council members but it does not need to be. They could decide to appoint a citizen.
5) The local resources fall into five main categories: energy efficiency, solar, wind, geothermal, and biomass.
There is not much small hydro in Sonoma County so it's not really worth pursuing. SCP will be able to access $12 to $14M in efficiency funds that currently go to PG&E. SCP can administer its own programs and we think we can do a better job. Currently the rate of solar deployment in the county is about 4MW per year. We can accelerate that rate with better incentives. Right now if you pay a bill to PG&E only about 5% of your power is from the Geysers geothermal. SCP can contract directly for a greater portion of that power, and/or collaborate to help develop the 98MW of new permitted capacity at the Geysers.
6) Distribution grid. Under community choice aggregation, which is what Sonoma Clean Power is, PG&E continues to own and maintain the poles & wires. About half your bill goes to pay for that and that arrangement continues, so there is no loss to PG&E and all of the same transmission and distribution service remains in place.
7) Regarding the Bohemian piece, the main thing to understand is that we are in the process of wrenching ourselves out of 100+ years of fossil and nuclear power, transitioning to the cleaner sources. All of the 11 energy companies that offered proposals are large corporations involved with undesirable energy sources. SCP is not required to purchase the coal or nuclear power and it won't. It is standing written policy that there will be no coal or nuclear in SCP's power mix. See my response piece in the Boho that came out the following week: https://www.bohemian.com/northbay/be...nt?oid=2425175
8) Regarding PG&E and what it has to offer in terms of renewables, much of what they are doing is in response to the emergence of competition from CCAs like Sonoma Clean Power - Marin Clean Energy in Marin and CleanPowerSF in San Francisco. About a dozen other communities around the state are evaluating CCA. Regarding why large dams and nuclear are not included in the renewable energy goals, the state policies are all about expanding the clean power sources we want to expand. There is little possibility, purpose, or desire to build new large dams or nuke plants. SCP is all about advancing clean, local decentralized clean power.
In the end it's about choice, that's why there's that word choice in community choice aggregation. If you don't like Sonoma Clean Power you can opt out and pay your full bill to PG&E. If Sebastopol city council votes against Sonoma Clean Power, it will have no voice on the SCP Board, and all of the residents and businesses will have no ability to make their own choice about how their electricity dollars are spent.
The Climate Protection Campaign introduced the idea of Sonoma Clean Power to Sonoma County in 2005. The reason for that is that CPC's analysis found that SCP is the most powerful tool at the disposal of local government to rapidly reduce greenhouse gas emissions attributable to Sonoma County. That's why I am involved in advocating Sonoma Clean Power.
Hope that all helps.
Woody Hastings,
Renewable Energy Implementation Manager,
Climate Protection Campaign (www.climateprotection.org)
Quote:
Posted in reply to the post by Braggi:
I've been tracking the evolution of Sonoma Clean Power for a few years and am convinced that's it's an important alternative to PG&E's monopoly and could open the doors to the type of locally produced, locally owned and operated distributed power supply we need to have. To me, one of the most compelling reasons to support the program is that it gives us choice about the energy provider we use and puts decisions about rates, incentives for businesses, subsidies for low-income residents and energy efficiency programs into local hands rather than having only PG&E's offerings. And I'd far rather have our locally elected and accountable representatives making decisions about our rates and ratepayer investments than PG&E's stakeholders.
On Tues. June 18th, the Sebastopol City Council will be hearing public comment on this item, and having supporters show up to speak out is important to encourage their leadership and vision and make sure that Sebastopol gets a seat on the governing board of Sonoma Clean Power. The meeting starts at 6pm, but this item will be heard after discussion of the budget, probably 7:30 or later.
Hi Jeff -
I really appreciate you asking these questions, and your openness to hearing peoples' responses. I think Woody did a great job responding to pretty much all the things you brought up, but thought it was worth taking a bit more time to look at the local energy issue.
It's true that the four energy producers SCP is accepting bids from are from out of state. And, as Woody mentioned, it's also true that PG&E also buys much of it's energy from these same kinds of sources. In SCP's initial phases, there may not be a lot of obvious differences in how it and PG&E each get our energy. There are some key differences, though, and these are reflective of one of the biggest differences between these two companies.
As I understand it, SCP has decided it will not purchase power produced by coal, nuclear, or large-hydro. PG&E gets quite a bit of it's power from the latter two in particular, but I don't think that's the biggest difference here. SCP's decision to forgo these easy, cheap energy sources is due to it's responsibility not to share-holders, but to us, the ratepayers and residents of Sonoma County. This is an energy company that will be responsible to Sonoma first and foremost, and will thus do business according to the values of the people who live here.
Now, a power company that could end up serving over 400,000 people refusing coal, nuclear, and large hydro is pretty revolutionary on it's own, but that's not the end of it. Where SCP is really innovative is where it's "profits" are going to go in the longer term.
The details aren't totally worked out yet -- I think in large part because the County is waiting for input from the cities who decide to join in the first phase -- but there's huge support among both residents and the powers-that-be to use a lot of the income from SCP to fund local energy, energy efficiency, and other carbon-reducing projects.
So, over the next several years we could use this money to develop a truly remarkable and local energy grid right here in Sonoma County. If we combine that with best-practice energy efficiency, we could see a huge percent of our energy needs supplied by our own local energy -- and in the process of doing so, we'll have also created a large number of local and un-exportable jobs that pay a living wage.
I don't know what the timeframe for that future really looks like. It depends on a lot of factors -- how many cities opt-in, and when they do so; how many residents opt-out; the energy market; the economy here in Sonoma; and how much pressure we as citizens put on SCP to make these ideas a reality sooner rather than later. There's a lot still to happen, but I've gotta say, I'm pretty excited about the possibilities.
https://i.imgur.com/yv1Iu.png
Sebastopol council ready to join county power agency
https://www.sonomawest.com/sonoma_west_times_and_news/news/sebastopol-council-ready-to-join-county-power-agency/article_a2b59814-d929-11e2-9bed-0019bb2963f4.html
Posted: Wednesday, June 19, 2013 2:46 pm
by David Abbott Sonoma West Editor [email protected]
Decision could come as early as July 2
A divided Sebastopol City Council voted on Tuesday to support Sonoma Clean Power (SCP), with Mayor Michael Kyes and Councilmember John Eder expressing their desire to wait for a report from consultants hired by the City of Santa Rosa before making a decision.
“I would prefer to see what Santa Rosa has to say,” Kyes said. “Not that it would make any difference to us.”
Eder said that it would be irresponsible to make a decision without taking advantage of Santa Rosa’s expenditure, adding that the correspondence he has received from a core “tribe” of local environmentalists has been split down the middle as to support for the project.
The remaining members of the council were emphatically in favor of joining, in order to get a chance to help shape the structure and policy of the independent utility provider.
“Sebastopol has never been a city to wait for Santa Rosa,” Vice Mayor Robert Jacob said. “Sebastopol has to have a place at the table to ask the hard questions.”
So far, only the unincorporated areas of the county and the Town of Windsor have signed on, with Cloverdale, Rohnert Park, Sonoma, Cotati and Petaluma all electing to wait before making decisions to join SCP.
The deadline to join is July 9, thanks to an extension given to the City of Santa Rosa, as the county needs to supply data to potential power contractors by July 15 for final bids. A second opportunity to opt in is not expected until 2015.
“There are several things that will happen the longer we wait,” County energy consultant Geof Syphers said. “Interest rates are rising fast. … Wholesale rates are tracking upward.”
Syphers said that because of the rising interest rates, the cost of the launch has increased by about $30,000 in the past few weeks, but that once the initial three-year contracts are signed, the County has the luxury of observing energy markets to “get the best prices” for ratepayers.
SCP is a “planned Community Choice program for providing green electricity at competitive prices to the residents and businesses of Sonoma County,” according to the Sonoma County Water Agency (SCWA) website.
Expected benefits of the SCP include consumer choice, local jobs, reduced greenhouse gasses and keeping money that would go to PG&E — an estimated $160 million annually — in the local economy.
PG&E would still provide transmission lines and maintenance, as well as metering and billing operations.
A feasibility study, available at the SCWA website at www.scwa.ca.gov, estimates that over a 20-year period, the reduction in greenhouse gasses could be as much as the equivalent of removing 74,000 cars from the roads.
The study also estimates the creation of 100 to 1,100 short-term jobs and 15 to 400 long-term jobs.
Officials expect SCP to begin with about 33 percent renewable sources of energy and to be competitive with PG&E right out of the gate.
Residential rates would fall between 1.8 percent below and 1 percent above PG&E’s rates, while commercial rates would be between 3 percent below and 0.5 percent above.
Start-up costs for SCP would be in the $3 million to $8 million range and Santa Rosa-based First Community Bank has not only agreed to finance $2.5 million for start-up costs and an additional $7.5 million to purchase energy later this year, but the bank has also sent a letter of support to the City of Santa Rosa to try to expedite that city’s decision.
Proponents of SCP point to the success of Marin Clean Energy, a Community Choice Aggregation (CCA) formed in 2010.
CCAs were authorized in 2002 with the passage of Assembly Bill 117, which allows local communities to purchase power from their own preferred sources.
“This allows you to get a hold of a mechanism to create a huge innovation platform,” Climate Protection Campaign (CPC) Executive Director Ann Hancock said in an interview last week. “Our analysis projected this, but Marin has proved it.”
Hancock said the CPC has been studying and advocating for CCA since 2004. She added that Marin went from 17 percent to 27 percent renewables “overnight.”
Power generation from local renewable sources are expected to increase even more when businesses and residents can increase solar generation in order to sell excess back into the system.
“When producing extra power, you’re getting minimal reimbursement (with PG&E),” CPC board member Richard Power said. “With SCP, there is incentive to become a net positive producer.”
Syphers echoed Power on Tuesday night, saying that SCP has the potential to “quadruple the speed” of increasing renewables.
With the vote, city staff will return to council on July 2 with a resolution to join SCP.
“I’m not sure why we haven’t voted on this already,” Councilmember Sarah Gurney said. “We need to be ahead of Santa Rosa.”