Fenn authored California's 2002 Community Choice law, Assembly Bill 117, allowing municipalities to choose alternative electricity providers for their communities. Sponsored by state Assemblywoman Carole Migden (D-San Francisco), the Community Choice law also removed the state's $300 million/year energy efficiency fund from monopoly utility control and made these funds available to cities to pay for their communities' local energy efficiency programs.

Fenn also wrote San Francisco's 2001 "solar bond" or H Bond authority Proposition H and the 50 MW San Francisco Solar Power Facility proposal for which the revenue bond authority was written. Sponsored by San Francisco Supervisor Tom Ammiano, the project calls for construction of the world's largest urban solar utility on San Francisco rooftops.

Shifting to implementation of these authorities, Fenn wrote San Francisco's May 11 2004 Energy Independence Ordinance, which combines California's Community Choice law with San Francisco's H Bond Authority to create a revolutionary new financing mechanism for renewable energy and demand-side technologies, enabling an unprecedented investment in green power without a rate increase or major public risk, taxes or spending.

After playing a major role in the California Public Utility Commission's proceedings on Community Choice, Fenn was primary author of San Francisco's CCA Program Design, Draft Implementation Plan and H Bond Action Plan (Ordinance 447-07, Mirkarimi/Ammiano/Daly, 2007).

Fenn co-authored the original "Community Choice" law, Senate 447, in 1994, while serving as Director of the Massachusetts Senate Committee on Energy under the chairmanship of Senator Mark Montigny (D-New Bedford), who sponsored the legislation. Fenn helped Ohio and New Jersey in the drafting of their (1999, 2003) Community Choice laws, and has advised state, federal, and British policy and educational bodies on the opportunity to make major gains against the Climate Crisis.

Fenn helped organize the only coalition opposed to California's 1996 deregulation bill in 1996. Fenn has also worked for more than ten years as a consultant to Lucent Technologies, Western Wireless, Motorola, Voicestream, and others in the tender preparation, design and construction of national and regional wireless telecommunications networks in America and Europe.

Fenn is co-chair of the California Sierra Club Energy Committee, faculty at Law Seminars International, and participates sporadically in American politics, writing the platform and editing a campaign newspaper for Jerry Brown's 1998 mayoral bid in Oakland, California, and helping coordinate Ralph Nader's 1992 run for in the New Hampshire Primary. Fenn has published a non-fiction literary magazine since 1993, and is generally involved in politics.

Paul Fenn
Local Power
22888 Highway One
Marshall, California 94940
(510) 451 1727

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