Starting in 2018 businesses and consumers will have new green power choices. The Board of Supervisors unanimously approved a motion, supported by city, business, and environmental leader, that will launch a “Green Power” initiative offering businesses and residents an opportunity to reduce greenhouse gases, and possibly reduce their rates as well, beginning in 2018.
The initiative, known as “community choice aggregation (CCA),” offers electricity customers new energy options, often at lower rates than what’s offered by their local utility. CCAs allow local governments to purchase electricity in the wholesale power market and sell it to their residents and businesses as an alternative to electricity provided by an investor-owned utility.
CCA electricity rates are often as much as 5 percent lower for homeowners and businesses than the rates offered by investor-owned utilities. Through a CCA, consumers can also help increase the amount of clean energy used in their community, thereby helping to reach, and even exceed state and national clean-energy goals. Other forward-looking states that have established CCAs—Illinois, Massachusetts, New Jersey, New York, Ohio—have found that the CCA helps create quality jobs in local, renewable power and leads to the development of distinctive, local green energy projects, such as solar canopies in urban parking lots or brownfield sites.
“With this ‘Green Power’ motion, the County is kicking off an initiative that will help protect the environment and create jobs in a new green economy,”said Supervisor Sheila Kuehl, an author of the motion.