S.D. COUNTY MOVES TO JOIN A COMMUNITY ENERGY GROUP
Board OKs talks with San Diego Community Power, Clean Energy Alliance
The San Diego County Board of Supervisors late Tuesday night took a step toward having unincorporated areas of the county join one of two community choice aggregation programs in the region that serve as alternatives to San Diego Gas & Electric when it comes to purchasing energy contracts.
The board, on a 4-1 vote, adopted a set of revised guiding principles and directed the county to start discussions with San Diego Community Power — a five-city CCA that began lining up customers last month — and the Clean Energy Alliance — a CCA consisting of the North County cities of Del Mar, Solana Beach and Carlsbad that begins operating next month.
“I think the big point here is that we really want to focus on the benefits of taking the reins of our energy production,” said Supervisor Terra Lawson-Remer, who joined board Chair Nathan Fletcher in submitting the item.
The board approved six principles that would make up any joint powers authority the county would sign with a prospective CCA. The principles included providing “cost competitiveness” compared to SDG&E’s rates, signing contracts that achieve 100 percent renewable electricity on its books by 2030 and adopting prevailing wage requirements.
“I think this aligns us with a good intent to move forward,” Fletcher said.
Supervisor Joel Anderson, citing the recent blackouts in Texas, called for adding the word “reliability” to the guiding principles, which the
board approved.
“Let’s be bold and say, look, we want clean energy, we want it to be reliable and we want it at the lowest competitive rate,” Anderson said.
Supervisor Jim Desmond, who opposed forming a CCA when the board took up the issue in 2019, turned in the only dissenting vote.
“If we are going to have (a CCA), we should have our own and be generating our energy, I definitely believe that,” he said.
Desmond was also concerned the labor requirements sounded “too close to requiring a project labor agreement” — a collective bargaining agreement with one or more labor organizations
that establishes the terms and conditions of employment for a specific project before hiring is done.
Created by the California Legislature to boost cleaner energy sources such as wind and solar at rates equal to or lower than investor-owned utilities, CCAs purchase power contracts for a given community.
The decisions are made by government officials instead of the incumbent utility.
In addition to purchasing power, community energy programs look to use the revenue they generate from customers to invest in renewable energy projects in their areas.
The establishment of a CCA does not, however, mean traditional utilities go away. SDG&E, for example, will still perform all of the tasks outside of power purchasing, such as transmission and distribution of energy and customer billing.
San Diego Community Power, or SDCP for short, consists of the cities of San Diego, Chula Vista, La Mesa,
Encinitas and Imperial
Beach.
Beginning operations last month by enrolling about 700 municipal customers, SDCP plans to add 72,000 commercial and industrial customers in June and 695,000 residential customers next January. With about 767,700 total customers, SDCP figures to be the second-largest CCA in California.
SDCP’s top executives sent the Board of Supervisors a letter before Tuesday’s meeting, saying the
group was looking forward to talking with the county.
“The proposed Guiding Principles largely mirror SDCP’s own principles,” the letter said.
Two officials with the Clean Energy Alliance, or CEA, phoned in during the public comment period to offer their own pitch.
“We look forward to discussions with county staff on how CEA can help the county meet its climate goals through joining Clean Energy Alliance,” said interim CEO Barbara Boswell.
CEA will serve about 58,000 customers by the time it completes its rollout in June. The alliance plans to deliver a default program that will offer rates for a typical residential customer estimated to be 2.2 percent less expensive than SDG&E’s, with customers having the ability to opt up to cleaner but more expensive programs.
SDCP officials say while rates vary by class, they offer one plan that comes in about 2 to 3 percent cheaper than SDG&E and another option, with power contracts that pencil out to 100 percent clean energy, that costs about the same as SDG&E.
As per state rules, customers are automatically enrolled in SDCP and CEA but if they prefer to stay with SDG&E, they can do so for free.
California’s first CCA was formed in Marin County in 2010. Since then, 23 CCAs have opened, serving more than 10 million customers.