For Immediate Release
Media Contact: David Burruto
650-363-4126 or 650-219-0457
REDWOOD CITY – Today, the San Mateo County Board of Supervisors approved funding for a feasibility study as part of the process of creating a Community Choice Aggregation (CCA) agency in San Mateo County.
The effort to form a CCA in San Mateo County is being led by San Mateo County supervisors Dave Pine and Carole Groom.
"Community Choice Aggregation is a proven model for providing clean electric power at competitive rates, reducing greenhouse gas emissions, and developing local renewable power sources," said Pine.
In addition to the County of San Mateo, 15 cities in the county have requested to join the study with the remainder in various stages of consideration to evaluate the potential benefits for each community.
"I'm excited about how many cities want to join us,” said Groom. “This is going to be a very collaborative effort. Getting more renewables in our energy mix is very important to our County."
Community Choice Aggregation (CCA) is a local energy model that sits at the intersection of consumer choice, local control, climate change, and economics. Established by law in six states and authorized by Assembly Bill 117 in California, CCA allows a local government, or group of local governments, to pool the electricity demand of their residential, business, and municipal accounts in order to purchase or develop power on their behalf. Community Choice Aggregation is focused on power generation while power delivery, grid maintenance, customer metering/billing, and customer service functions remain with the existing utility - in our case, PG&E. Through CCA, California communities are achieving significant results including:
- Competitive, often cheaper electricity rates
- Consumer energy choice, where none currently exists
- Significant reductions in Green House Gas emissions
- New renewable power development, local and in-State
- New jobs and energy programs for the community
The feasibility study will be undertaken in the coming months and will coincide with a broad range of community outreach efforts to provide information to local residents, businesses, civic organizations and policymakers about CCA, how it works, and its potential benefits for San Mateo County.
For more information please visit the web site of the San Mateo County Office of Sustainability at http://tinyurl.com/l57zl59