The distance local energy goes to bring power to the people
Study comparing energy providers finds parallels to local foods movement
When you go to the grocery store, you can look at an apple and know if it was grown in Chile, Washington or somewhere closer to you by a quick glance at its sticker. But consumers have largely been in the dark when it comes to energy, and how far it has traveled to reach them.
A study published today in the journal Frontiers in Sustainability by UC Davis sheds light on the lengths alternative energy providers go to bring electrical power to customers.
Consuming electricity closer to its source can reduce greenhouse gases lost in the transport of electrons across the transmission and distribution grid. This can help increase efficiencies and create more self-sustaining, equitable communities. Similar goals are often shared by farm-to-table supporters.
“This study provides a quantitative foundation for a local energy movement, akin to the local food movement,” said co-leading author Rebecca Hernandez, an assistant professor in the UCD Department of Land, Air and Water Resources and a founding director of the Wild Energy Initiative in the John Muir Institute of the Environment, and Energy and Efficiency Institute.
The study compared three types of energy providers in California — community choice aggregations, or CCAs; cooperatives; and publicly owned utilities — to learn the distance purchased-energy sources travel to support their consumers, and the makeup of their energy resource portfolio, in 2017. Investor-owned utilities were excluded from the study.
Valley Clean Energy is a local CCA power provider for the cities of Woodland, Davis, Winters and West Sacramento. PG&E is the public power provider.
Madison Hoffacker, a master’s student in the UCD Energy Graduate Group at the time the study was conducted, designed and handcurated the study’s large, spatial dataset. She found that CCAs purchased more than 2.5 times as much renewable energy as other providers. Renewables comprised nearly half of their energy portfolios. However, CCAs also went 2.5 times farther to source that energy. Hoffacker notes that CCAs are young, with beginnings around 2010, and it takes time to build energy portfolios. She hopes the research will help shape future goals of energy providers and raise awareness among customers and utilities alike of the need to look for both renewable and local sources.
“My study was trying to find a way to ensure accountability for different decision makers who have an influence over not only what type of energy is procured but also where we’re sourcing that energy from,” Hoffaker said.
The study found that only about 20% of purchased energy among providers was local. The remaining 80% is what Hoffacker terms “outsited” — energy generated from outside the provider’s jurisdictional footprint. In fact, 42% was drawn from out of state.