For-profit California electric utilities charge high prices and take minimal climate action. Three state-regulated for-profits, PG&E, SCE, and SDG&E, charge two to three times more for the electricity they deliver than large city regulated counterparts charge. The giant for-profits aim for carbon neutrality in 2040 or 2045. Large locally regulated electric utilities, SMUD and LADWP, aim for carbon neutrality by 2030 or 2035.
California and other states need a way to capture the environmental and economic benefits of community solar. Other states have found a way. California’s CCE industry should ask the California legislature to consider allowing California CCEs to use all or a portion of annual CPUC mandated PCIA charges to put local renewable projects on an equal economic footing with projects that require new high voltage transmission capacity to deliver electricity locally. This will increase CCE capacity and flexibility to address local energy resilience needs and to provide equitable access locally to the environmental and economic benefits of solar electricity.
The Colorado Public Utilities Commission (PUC) has been tasked by the Colorado legislature to recommend whether and how to implement Community Choice Energy (CCE).
California’s CCE experience has been rich in diversity and local/state decarbonization impact. California CCE generation portfolios are on track to become fully decarbonized in the next few years. The California CCE model was conceived and adopted two decades ago. It exploits economic options available at the time but allows little flexibility to capture economic, environmental and energy resilience benefits of local supply and infrastructure investment.
Nevertheless, Colorado and other states can adapt and expand California’s CCE model to facilitate 21st century energy policy implementation. Specific adaptations can result in greater reliance on local renewable electricity sources and electrification of local transportation. By adopting them Colorado can take CCE to the next level of public benefits and impact.
If Colorado adopts community choice, it should set a high bar for future local energy collaboration and fair cost responsibilities. This will give Colorado communities a much better way to meet energy and climate challenges of the 21st century.
California has ramped up a seventy-six billion dollar investment in all types of solar generation capacity over the past decade. California’s retail solar industry enabled half of the total investment. Rooftop solar has been a bright spot for California’s renewable energy transition even as state regulators and California utilities continue to make other energy democracy enablers - community choice, community solar, community microgrids - hard or impossible to finance.
Regulators are now considering rule changes that impose punitive “grid access” fees on rooftop solar adoption, plus drastic reductions in compensation for electricity that feeds into the grid from rooftop solar arrays. The future of energy democracy in California hangs in the balance.
[1] The proposed CPUC decision is not accompanied by case studies indicating how it will work out for ratepayers.
For-profit California electric utilities charge high prices and take minimal climate action. Three state-regulated for-profits, PG&E, SCE, and SDG&E, charge two to three times more for the electricity they deliver than large city regulated counterparts charge. The giant for-profits aim for carbon neutrality in 2040 or 2045. Large locally regulated electric utilities, SMUD and LADWP, aim for carbon neutrality by 2030 or 2035.
Substitution of materials, equipment and low carbon fuels for high carbon fuels is underway and moving forward faster in some countries and economic sectors than others. Substitution of manufactured equipment for fuels adds “life cycle carbon” to historical and on-going GHG emissions. To what extent do GHGs emitted in creating low carbon energy economies retard overall decarbonization progress? Life cycle carbon emissions for the years 2020 through 2029 add up to a minimum of 35 billion metric tons of CO2-eq, or roughly a year’s worth of current global energy related GHG emissions. Overall life cycle carbon emissions will continue to increase after 2029 at least until direct global GHG emissions are brought under control.
Future Bay takes a systems approach to energy efficiency. Their system converts off peak electricity to 24/7 heating, cooling and electricity supply using off the shelf heat pumps and the cheapest and most familiar methods of energy storage, hot and cold water. It exploits basic realities of thermodynamics; for example, that a heat pump works most efficiently when pumping heat across small temperature differences.
Just as the atmosphere’s capacity to absorb GHGs without affecting climate is limited, so is the earth’s capacity to supply materials to replace those that are used only once. In a renewable energy context, there are two basic solutions. First, there is no technical reason renewable energy equipment cannot be built to last decades longer than it otherwise might. How can renewable energy markets and policies reward durability and long, low maintenance project and system operation even as major supply chain industries continue to thrive on planned obsolescence? Second, renewable energy material and component recovery and reuse is feasible but not generally either mandatory or economically rewarding. Will publicly financed renewable energy waste recovery be necessary, and which governments will take the lead in making it work fairly and efficiently?
California and other states need a way to capture the environmental and economic benefits of community solar. Other states have found a way. California’s CCE industry should ask the California legislature to consider allowing California CCEs to use all or a portion of annual CPUC mandated PCIA charges to put local renewable projects on an equal economic footing with projects that require new high voltage transmission capacity to deliver electricity locally. This will increase CCE capacity and flexibility to address local energy resilience needs and to provide equitable access locally to the environmental and economic benefits of solar electricity.
Community Choice Energy (CCE) is accelerating decarbonization of California’s electricity use. CCE service providers are a natural hub for collaborative engagement among local energy stakeholders and investors, including grid owners prosumers, counties and cities. But under current state imposed revenue diversions California CCEs cannot respond to local supply and energy resilience needs and opportunities, nor can they strike an economically beneficial long term balance between centralized and decentralized electricity supply for the areas they serve.
The Colorado Public Utilities Commission (PUC) has been tasked by the Colorado legislature to recommend whether and how to implement Community Choice Energy (CCE).
California’s CCE experience has been rich in diversity and local/state decarbonization impact. California CCE generation portfolios are on track to become fully decarbonized in the next few years. The California CCE model was conceived and adopted two decades ago. It exploits economic options available at the time but allows little flexibility to capture economic, environmental and energy resilience benefits of local supply and infrastructure investment.
Nevertheless, Colorado and other states can adapt and expand California’s CCE model to facilitate 21st century energy policy implementation. Specific adaptations can result in greater reliance on local renewable electricity sources and electrification of local transportation. By adopting them Colorado can take CCE to the next level of public benefits and impact.
A proposed CPUC decision sets aside a long-standing bipartisan policy regarding on-site solar energy. The policy should remain in effect because it is foundational to creation of a just and affordable state-wide renewable energy eco-system. Its underlying premises are valid. The underlying premises of the proposed decision are not. Better informed and more robust on-going and future consideration of the benefits of rooftop solar can be a positive outcome of the current policy tug of war between electric utilities and local clean energy advocates.
California has ramped up a seventy-six billion dollar investment in all types of solar generation capacity over the past decade. California’s retail solar industry enabled half of the total investment. Rooftop solar has been a bright spot for California’s renewable energy transition even as state regulators and California utilities continue to make other energy democracy enablers - community choice, community solar, community microgrids - hard or impossible to finance.
Regulators are now considering rule changes that impose punitive “grid access” fees on rooftop solar adoption, plus drastic reductions in compensation for electricity that feeds into the grid from rooftop solar arrays. The future of energy democracy in California hangs in the balance.
[1] The proposed CPUC decision is not accompanied by case studies indicating how it will work out for ratepayers.
Are California’s energy resilience assets being used to provide energy security for diverse and important sub-sets of individual electricity customers? Yes, but not for all important sub-sets. Has massive deployment of on-site energy resilience assets in California to date enabled their effective use to back up local electricity grids. Not yet. Are energy resilience assets being integrated with grid assets to maximize local energy security? Not yet. Will the doubling of resilient supply assets expected in the next five years materially improve energy resilience in California? Not to the extent it could. Optimally effective use can only be achieved when there is smarter and more flexible local electricity grid operation. The cost of local energy resilience can either be high or modest, depending on whether on-site energy supply and storage assets are used effectively. Especially assets that decarbonize cost-efficiently and result in “resilient decarbonization”. Community microgrids enable effective use of resilient decarbonization assets, but not utility owned solar and battery storage assets. Their role in for-profit utility rate-base building has yet to be demonstrated. The urgent question is whether other stakeholders - cities, counties and states - will overcome utility resistance and lead the way on an affordable energy resilience path that serves all energy users, not just those who have backup on-site.
In California, as much money is being invested in locally beneficial solar projects as in large solar projects that export electricity to other areas. Balanced investment in local and centralized projects doubles the rate of GHG emissions reduction by doubling the rate of renewable energy deployment.
Local renewable energy production is becoming the foundation for local energy resilience.
Can expansion of renewable energy production in the U.S. be accelerated if “wires charges” for community renewable projects are adjusted to account for local energy resilience benefits and actual project-specific transmission grid usage? How much costly and environmentally controversial expansion of regional transmission systems can be avoided by expanding local renewable energy production for local use?
