Community Choice Aggregation

In the early days of the California energy crisis, Paul Fenn, who had served as Senator Montigny's Energy

Advisor, formed Local Power (local.org and localpower.com), drafted new CCA legislation for California. In

a campaign organized by Local Power, the City and County of San Francisco led Oakland, Berkeley, Marin

County, and a group of Los Angeles municipalities in adopting resolutions asking for a state CCA law in

response to the failure of California's deregulated electricity market. Fenn's bill was sponsored by then

Assembly Member Carole Migden (D-San Francisco) in 2001, and the bill became law (AB117) in

September, 2002.

In particular, San Francisco adopted a CCA Ordinance drafted by Fenn (86-04, Tom Ammiano) in

2004, creating a CCA program to build 360 Megawatts (MW) of solar, green distributed generation,

wind generation, and energy efficiency and demand response to serve San Francisco ratepayers.

Specifically, the ordinance combined the power purchasing authority of CCA with a revenue bond

authority also developed by Fenn to expand the power of CCA, known as the H Bond Authority

(Charter Section 9.107.8, Ammiano), to finance the new green power infrastructure, worth

approximately $1 Billion. In 2007 the City adopted a detailed CCA Plan also written primarily by

Fenn (Ordinance 447-07, Ammiano and Mirkarimi), which established a 51% Renewable Portfolio

Standard by 2017 for San Francisco.

Inspired by Climate Protection efforts, CCA has spread to cities throughout the Bay Area, and

throughout the state. In 2007, forty California local governments are in the process of implementing

CCA, virtually all of them seeking to double, triple or quadruple the green power levels (Renewable

Portfolio Standard, or "RPS) of the state's three Investor-Owned Utilities. Marin, Oakland and Berkeley

are also seeking to employ San Francisco-style revenue bonds and implement a 51% RPS by 2017.

Recently, communities in Southern California have started to investigate the feasibility of forming

CCAs because the program allows some flexibility in choosing the mix and sources of power

production. A study was produced by the LGC in February 2009 that evaluated forming a CCA

and has been published to the California Energy Commission website.

In June 2010, Pacific Gas & Electric sponsored a proposition, Proposition 16, to make it more

difficult for local entities to form either municipal utilities or CCAs by requiring a a two-thirds

vote of the electorate rather than a simple majority, for a public agency to enter the retail 

power business.^[1] Although PG&E contributed over $46 million in an effort to pass theinitiative 

(Prop 16's opponents had access to less than $100,000),^[2][3] Proposition 16 was defeated.

For More:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Community_Choice_Aggregation