At a City Council meeting this week, El Cerrito voted unanimously to join Marin Clean Energy’s Community Choice Aggregation (CCA) program. CCA programs are a path for communities to bundle energy from a variety of sources, allowing more renewable energy choices for their utility rate payers. Marin Clean Energy offers “light green” and “deep green” renewable energy options with different rates, with plans to offer an option of all local solar energy in 2015. Rate payers also are afforded an opportunity to opt-out and stay with the traditional energy provider, in this case PG&E. This move by El Cerrito marks the growing number of cities in the East Bay that have joined Marin Clean Energy – it’s now the third after San Pablo and Richmond. An online poll of El Cerrito residents showed widespread support, with many interested in opting for the “deep green” higher rate, 100% renewable energy option.
The Community Choice Energy Working Group of our Berkeley Climate Action Coalition has been tracking progress on this front, and this year, fought hard to defeat a bill that would have crippled local governments’ ability to create new CCA programs. We’re also looking forward to a conference in 2015 that will be a great opportunity to dig into local clean energy efforts like CCA – check out the Clean Power, Healthy Communities conference coming on March 8th. Tickets are available now, and space is limited.
[Photo by Birmingham Friends of the Earth on Flickr]
