Community Choice Aggregation
[9] In the US, CCAs are permitted in nine states: Massachusetts, Ohio, California, Illinois, New Jersey, New York, Rhode Island, Virginia, and New Hampshire.
[11] The remaining 33 states are considered regulated, where utilities retain a monopoly on generation, transmission, and distribution of electric power.
[11] In Massachusetts, where the nation's first CCA bill (Senate 447, Montigny) was first drafted by Massachusetts senate energy committee director Paul Douglas Fenn in 1995[13] and enacted in 1997,[14] the locales of Cape Cod and Martha's Vineyard formed the Cape Light Compact and successfully lobbied for passage of the seminal CCA legislation.
Two of the Cape Light Compact founders, Falmouth Selectman Matthew Patrick and Barnstable County Commissioner Rob O'Leary, were subsequently elected to the Massachusetts House of Representatives and Senate respectively.
Between 1995 and 2000, Fenn formed the American Local Power Project and worked with Patrick to draft and pass similar laws in Ohio, New Jersey, and other states.
[21] In 2020, Ohio's capital Columbus approved a city-wide ballot measure, giving it an electricity aggregation plan which will supply it with 100% renewable energy by the start of 2023.
Its vendor, AEP Energy, plans to construct new wind and solar farms in Ohio to help supply the electricity.
In June 2010, Pacific Gas & Electric sponsored a ballot initiative, Proposition 16, to make it more difficult for local entities to form either municipal utilities or CCAs by requiring a two-thirds vote of the electorate rather than a simple majority, for a public agency to enter the retail power business.
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 using solar bonds.
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.
In 2007, 40 California local governments were in the process of exploring 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.
[34] In April, 2014, Assemblymember Steve Bradford (D-Gardena) introduced legislation (AB 2145) that would sharply limit the ability of CCAs to enroll customers.
CCA advocates and a broad coalition of local governments, business, and environmental organization rose up in opposition and defeated AB 2145.
This is an issue for CCAs in the state of California because it allows Investor-owned utility (IOU) to raise prices through a Power Charge Indifference Adjustment (PCIA) or exit fee,[44][45] making it more expensive for customers to join CCA programs because there will be a fee to customers when they choose to stop using bundled services provided by their utility provider and start using a CCA program.
[46] The main issues revolving PCIA is the transparency of the program, accountability of the agencies, and proper valuation of costs associated with the exit fees.
[46] The PCIA has tended to be very volatile and uncertain due to policy and regulatory debates on what level of exit fees is “fair” for both IOU and CCA customers.
[49] Some Community Choice Aggregators hire third-party consultants with experience in energy markets to procure and schedule power.
[58] There are crucial trends, pointed out the CPUC, that threaten California's three pillars of energy policy: reliability, affordability and deep decarbonization.
[59] System fragmentation puts the state closer to a reliability risk of not meeting its clean energy targets: California has 40 load serving entities, which include 19 CCAs.
CCAs tend to employ fewer employees than IOUs and contracts with large multinational corporations are primarily fulfilled through the use of non-union labor.
The CCA provides electricity service to more than 480,000 customer[76] accounts and more than one million residents and businesses in 34 member communities across four Bay Area counties: Contra Costa, Napa, Marin and Solano.
Lancaster Choice Energy (LCE) began providing renewable power to municipal accounts in May 2015 with broad public enrollment beginning in October.
It began supplying power to customers in the Fall of 2016 and is currently the largest community choice energy program in California.
[85] As of June 2017 it was offering its customers a baseline product that is both cleaner (at least 50% renewable and 75% greenhouse gas free) and at a lower cost than the incumbent utility, PG&E.
Their Bright Choice service uses a slightly larger amount of clean energy sources as Pacific Gas and Electric Company (PG&E) but it costs less.
3CE reinvests in the communities it serves by discounting its electric generation rates and providing energy program incentives.3CE is geographically the largest CCA.
This is critical as San Diego's climate plan calls for 100% renewable energy by 2035; more ambitious than the state of California's by ten years.
[94] Critics of the CCA say cities have little or no experience in purchasing or generating electricity and the unpredictable nature of the energy industry can lead to volatility and chaotic conditions.
CCAs can encounter groups lobbying against its implementation, setbacks from IOUs, exit fees, and even disadvantages associated with the opt-out choices.
[114] Another utility provider who took action was San Diego Gas & Electric who attempted to stop local government from implementing CCA programs.
