I was reading Andrew Christie from the Sierra Club’s piece on community choice energy, and I am afraid that I find the subject very confusing (“They’d rather not discuss it,” July 25). That should come as no surprise since I only have a BA from the University of Oregon. I majored in Italian, which pretty much qualifies me to be a waiter in some dumpy trattoria. I have to admit that technical stuff is a challenge for me, so you will have to bear with me on this.
As I understand it, community choice energy means that a person has the opportunity to pay extra money to get power from non-carbon-emitting sources (except nuclear of course). What I don’t understand is how they get that green power to your house. Do they install special lines or something? And what happens when this green power is not available, which is actually most of the time. Does that mean you have to do without power for most of the time? I’m sorry, but I have a real problem with this.
For example, I offer the following analogy: Let’s say you have the opportunity to purchase only clear, spring water for your water supply. Your crystalline water trickles from the spring and splashes down a rocky mountain gully: Bees are buzzing, blooming daisies waft all about in the breeze, birds are chirping, and even the bears are vegan.
This trickle tumbles into a rural stream surrounded by vast, verdant fields and pastures, where the growing flow is flavored with pesticide and chemical fertilizer residue, along with chicken and pig shit until it reaches a river where industrial waste and polluted runoff further flavor the gentle flow.
As it approaches your city, it arrives at a treatment plant, where even more chemicals are added to bring the water to a level that makes it unlikely to kill humans outright (at least before the next election), and your water then makes its way through a network of lines where it picks up residues from lead, copper, and PVC piping until finally your clear, crystalline water arrives at your tap.
It would seem to me pretty stupid to pay extra for that clear spring water, and it seems to me that paying extra for green power is just as stupid, because most of what arrives at your house to be consumed by you will not be green power. In California, most of that power will come from natural gas, which is well known to Andrew since his Sierra Club has taken many millions from a fracking company to promote natural gas as a bridge fuel.
The question is: Just how long is that bridge? I would say decades, the way things are looking.
In summary, it seems to me that community choice energy is simply one of many scams that are created to allow guilt-ridden liberals to pay useless money so they can feel like they are making things better, and to feel better about themselves as they pilot their gleaming and monstrous SUVs over to the recycling center.
Mark Henry
San Luis Obispo
This article appears in Aug 1-11, 2019.
Mark, The Grid: The Fraying Wires Between Americans and Our Energy Future, a Book by Gretchen Bakke, is a fascinating and thorough account of how electricity is created, distributed, managed, controlled and priced. It details in understandable laymans language the fascinating, complex history and developing changes in Americas power grid. It is surprisingly intriguing and captivating for what can be a dry topic. The spring water analogy does not accurately reflect the realities of how power is distributed, purchased and delivered. Getting beyond tribal politics and continuing to pursue an understanding of how the grid operates may provide an appreciation for the attempts of local cities and counties to take over the responsibility for purchasing power for their communities. Of course, you may simply prefer for Pacific Gas & Electric to make all decisions regarding your access to electricity and to watch out for your best interests. The Grid is available on eBay or Amazon for about $10.
The reason that most of our electricity is from natural gas, is because it’s the cheapest way to produce, and when the finally product is the same price, that’s what you get.
The idea with community choice is to make “green energy” a separate product, with a different price, and make it financially viable to produce. Although the delivery method will naturally mix the two products, that doesn’t matter, because it’s the different production that is the point.
Some people have decided that they are willing to pay more for the “green energy” and are doing something about it. Is it a perfect solution? No. But, something is better than nothing.
Since deregulation of power was a total fail, this is the new way to do it.
Mark, I very much appreciate your question and understand the confusion.
The best way to understand the electrical grid is to think of it as a big bathtub of electrons from which each house and business sips from. You are correct to assume there is no way to specify you want electrons ONLY from solar power (unless you have solar panels on your roof, of course, but even then your home is not always producing power). However you are incorrect to assume that clean energy is more expensive. That used to be true, but the cost of solar has been going down rapidly for years and now it’s cheaper to build a solar + storage power plant than a natural gas power plant. Seriously. Plus, Monterey Bay Community Power (MBCP) pegs their rates to exactly equal PG&E rates.
The big clean energy promise of Community Choice energy is that they are adding more clean energy to that bathtub than the incumbent investor owned utilities… and they’re prioritizing clean energy based on the feedback from the communities they serve. In the case of MBCP, their electrons are 100% from greenhouse gas free sources and PG&E, even when you count nuclear is only 80%. (The word “only” in this context is as a comparison to MBCP power, not the rest of the country’s mix… PG&E is actually pretty clean compared to most utilities… and if you decide their mix is right for you, you can opt out of MBCP’s mix )
Community Choice programs have many other benefits besides cleaner power, like more local decision making and direct subsidies for clean technologies here at home, to name a few… but the one you might like the best is the ~5% rebate on your power bill that you’ll receive as a SLO or Morro Bay resident in December 2020!
Mark Henry wrote,(New Times, 8/1-8/2019) “Community Choice seems like a Scam.” Yes in deed it does. But no surprise. Public Utility’s history is filled with scams. Think about it. A company like PG&E or Edison or any owner has a sweet deal. The public has to pay for the product – electricity, water, transport – whatever- at the profit level the corporations wants. These utilities are the lifeblood of our daily lives. What we pay is supposed to be “regulated” by the California Public Utility Commission, a part of California government. The Commission has a long history of deciding in favor of the corporation owning the utility and ignoring citizen pleas for fairness. A “mom and pop” average group of citizens protesting Golden State Utility’s constant raising of water rates in my neighborhood was treated so dismissively the citizen group quit their protest since they were up against experienced attorneys working for the Commission. A recent highly educated group of citizens banding together as “Californians for Green Nuclear Power” protested the outrageous closure of carbon free Diablo Canyon power plant in a severe, five alarm climate crisis. Diablo Canyon is the State’s largest generator of clean, carbon free electricity. The group contained PhDs highly trained in nuclear energy and utility work, but the Commission found in favor of the PG&E Corporation. The Commission ignored key parts of the protest brought by the citizen nonprofit, namely that PG&E ignored State law saying any change in land use on the coast had to undergo an EIR and other hurdles by government agencies. The group stated PUC overlooked this omission to help the corporation do what it wanted – make more money in natural gas generation and other factors.
And remember the Enron scam of our State a few decades ago. That cost ratepayers billions and government let it happen including the PUC.
So Mark Henry is right on the money to question the new initiative of “Community Choice.” None of these “money saving, innovative, etc.” ideas are properly reviewed. Citizens are at fault, too, for not being more involved in government at all levels. Its a “democracy” after all. But some sit back and leave it to government.
I second Mr. Henry’s protest, Get on the alert to ANY scheme to “make your utility wonderful and cheaper.” Community Choice very much included.
William Gloege
1130 E. Clark Ave. 150-223
Santa Maria, Ca 93455
805-332-2610
The more I think about it, the more selfishly I like the CCA. The right thing to do to encourage green sources of energy would be to tax the citizens (of which who collectively agree to the tax through voting) which then subsidize the costs of getting power from renewable energy sources. This way we all do our part.
With the CCA program, citizens individually pay to subsidize the company providing cleaner energy so folks like me can opt-out and pay less, while everyone else knowingly can feel good about putting Solar/Wind energy into the grid or unknowingly pays more for their energy. So in the end, having opted-out of CCA, I feel good knowing I am paying less for “dirty” nuclear energy (sarcasm) than the rest of you. 😛