local
power
4281
Piedmont Avenue Oakland, California 94611
local.org paulfenn@local.org jpeters@local.org 510 451 1727
City
Hall, San Francisco
May
16, 2001
Local Power is currently
preparing several California cities to build some of the largest renewable
energy projects in the world in response to the state’s energy crisis. While
continuing in its groundbreaking national work on community-wide electricity
purchasing laws, we view the state’s energy crisis as an unprecedented opportunity
for large-scale community-based conservation and renewable resource
development. Our work consists of educating local governments about building
solar, wind and other renewable resources in the immediate term, offering
technical assistance to local officials throughout a city or county’s
solicitation process, and developing (unprecedented) generic “Community Power”
bidding document and contract templates adapted to the particular budgetary,
risk management, and revenue bonding conditions facing local governments.
As
“Community Choice” legislation (AB48x by Assemblymember Migden-SF) awaits
passage in the state legislature, we are now offering policy guidance and
technical assistance for the energy crisis to city officials throughout
California, focusing our efforts in the San Francisco Bay Area, Los Angeles
County, and San Diego County.
Our
leading project is sponsored by the President of the San Francisco Board of
Supervisors. Tom Ammiano has announced his support of Local Power’s proposal
that the City initiate competitive bidding for construction of a 50 MW solar
photovoltaic “Community Power” network.
This
will be the world’s largest solar utility.
It
will produce six times the output of the Sacramento Municipal Utility
District’s system, currently the largest. Depending on the technology used, the Plant will
cover at least 138 acres of rooftops throughout the city. In terms of scalability, this could serve
50,000 apartments with 1kw systems, 450 large commercial buildings with 125kw
systems, 167 extremely large commercial buildings with 300kw systems, or 50
Walmart-scale monster buildings with 1MW systems. The Plant will serve 5% of the entire
community’s peak electricity consumption, - the threshold for a Stage 2
Alert - and result in a massive
greenhouse gas reduction.
The
1997 Kyoto treaty set a 7% reduction target by 2012, but U.S. greenhouse gas
emissions have increased significantly since then. With the Bush administration
calling for more domestic oil drilling and nuclear power development as the
answer to climate change, the San Francisco Solar Plant will serve as a model
for other cities looking to protect their communities against blackouts and
address climate change at the same time.
We
are now preparing similar proposals for other cities and counties in our
network throughout California. The RFP model, which we call “Community Power”
for its resemblance to Community Choice, is a model for large-scale development
of renewable distributed generation by local governments. (1) Like Community
Choice, the Community Power RFP transfers the risks associated with energy
supply to the private sector, a major parameter for risk-averse local
governments. (2) Community Power can operate under a variety of energy crisis
outcomes for cities, including a Community Choice law, public power takeover,
or neither. (3) In the likely event that the Community Choice bill becomes law
in coming months, Community Power will provide a needed stimulus to trigger
bulk wholesale power competition in a failed deregulated energy market.
California
faces not one energy crisis but two: an electricity price crisis and an
electric pollution crisis. The electric industry is the largest contributor to
global warming. While the U.S. has patently failed in its efforts to reduce
carbon dioxide emissions that have, in fact, increased since the Kyoto treaty,
California’s energy crisis offers a unique opportunity for an offensive
strategy to build renewable energy and conservation on an unprecedented scale,
and to show that there can be a light at the end of the Climate Change tunnel.
Local Power’s efforts to promote Community Choice have already resulted in
Kyoto compliance for one metropolitan area, and the San Francisco project alone
will approach Kyoto-level reduction targets - if not actually meet them.
While
the opportunity to do something about global warming is new to California
cities, the issue is not new. Cities were singled out at the 1992 Rio Summit as
the key government level in the effort to reduce greenhouse gases, in response
to which California cities currently consume more than half of the green power
sold in California for their municipal facilities. Unfortunately – until
Community Choice becomes law - these “Green RFPs” are limited to municipal
facilities. While green-powered municipal facilities comprise 2-5% of a
community’s consumption and are too small to have any appreciable impact on
global warming, they demonstrate a mainstream political will to meet the Rio
Summit challenge at the local level. Given the opportunity with resources and
authority (Community Choice and Community Power), they will do just that.
Since
1996, Local Power has been developing structural, quantifiable solutions for
local governments to meaningfully impact the problem of Global Warming. Paul
Fenn drafted and filed the original Community Choice law for Massachusetts in
1995 when he directed the state’s Senate Energy Committee. Community Choice authorizes local
governments to aggregate their electricity customer base and to contract with a
supplier to provide energy.
The second state to pass the law, Ohio (1999),
demonstrates the significance of large volume purchasing through local
government. Under the state’s Community
Choice law, one hundred cities in the Cleveland area of Cuyahoga County
recently signed a contract for their 450,000 customers with Green Mountain
Power. The contract resulted in three
dramatic outcomes, (1) those cities collectively reduced their output of carbon
dioxide emissions by 30%, (2) did it for a lower price than they had previously
paid for an energy mix of 60% coal and 40% nuclear, and (3) increased Green
Mountain’s national customer base from 100,000 to 550,000 overnight,
representing a massive new opportunity in the green electricity market.
With technical support from Local Power, 12
California cities passed resolutions asking for a Community Choice bill in
1999-2000. Legislation was drafted by Paul Fenn in January 2000 and sponsored
by Assemblymember and Appropriations Committee Chair Carole Migden (D-SF) in
January 2001. AB48x passed the Assembly
Energy Costs and Availability Committee in March with a vote of 19 to 1 and the
Assembly Appropriations Committee in May with a unanimous vote. With broad support this legislation is
expected to become law some time this summer. Local Power’s coalition of cities
and counties for Community Choice now provides fertile ground for the Community
Power project.
City
officials including Oakland Mayor Jerry Brown, San Francisco Board of
Supervisors President Tom Ammiano, Marin County Board of Supervisors President
Hal Brown, and Southern California Cities Joint Powers Consortium Executive
Director Albert Vera, as well as the League of California Cities, the
California Association of Counties, and 30 California cities and counties led
by San Francisco, Oakland, Berkeley, Marin County and the Los Angeles
County-based Consortium (representing 500,000 residents), have endorsed the
legislation, many by municipal and county resolutions. Organizations including CALPIRG,
League of Women Voters of California, Greenpeace, TURN (The Utility Reform
Network), Global Exchange, as well as Ralph Nader, have also endorsed. Industry
groups such as the Western Power Trading Forum and Green Mountain Power now
recognize the need for Community Choice as a key structural reform to AB1890,
and are counted as strong supporters.
Many
members of the coalition of 30 cities and counties endorsing of the California
Community Choice bill are now looking to Local Power for education and technical
support on the energy crisis. Many are now deciding whether to rubber stamp
permits for natural gas fired power plants, or consider alternative energy
sources. Community Power is essentially the second phase of Community Choice,
moving the same solicitation-based model from bulk power procurement to new
infrastructure development. Given the volatility of the state’s wholesale power
market, many cities view local power generation as the first step in
establishing rate security for their communities. The opportunity to pursue a
sustainable energy policy is therefore immediate.
The
Community Choice coalition will prove significant in building public support
for solar, wind, and other renewable resources on a scale that has not been
seen before. Specifically, Local Power is positioned to get projects on the
books that will demonstrate the viability of large-scale renewable energy as a
serious, big business solution to both the energy crisis and global warming.
Paul
Fenn is the
Director of Local Power, based in Oakland, California. Fenn authored the
original "Community Choice" bill, 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). He organized a coalition
of municipalities, consumer, environmental and good government groups in
opposition AB1890 in 1996, acted as advisor in the drafting of Ohio’s Community
Choice law in 1999, and more recently drafted the California Community Choice
bill, AB48x, sponsored by California Assemblywoman Carole Migden (D-San
Francisco). Beginning in January 2001, Fenn organized support among political
leaders in San Francisco to build the world’s largest solar utility (50 MW) in
response to the energy crisis. Fenn also wrote the platform and propaganda for
Jerry Brown's 1998 mayoral bid in Oakland, California. Fenn also has
substantial experience in the design, permitting, real estate acquisition, and
deployment of wireless telecommunications systems such as cellular, PCS and
GSM. He has worked as a contractor for General Cellular, Western Wireless, and
Voicestream in the U.S., and for Motorola, and Lucent Technologies, and the
International Committee of the Red Cross in the Czech Republic, Slovenia and
Macedonia. Fenn received his Masters
degree in Intellectual History from the University of Chicago in 1992.
Julia
Peters,
Manager of Local Power, began organizing and fundraising for political causes
in 1986 as a canvasser with the Ralph Nader-inspired Public Interest Research
Group (PIRG). After serving as the
Administrative Director and then Statewide Canvass Director for the California
Public Interest Research Group (CALPIRG), she was promoted to National Canvass
Director for the Boston-based Fund for Public Interest Research, the training
and technical arm of the PIRGs, in 1991. Before leaving the PIRGs in 1995,
Peters organized political action and fundraising campaigns for national
environmental and consumer protection legislation in 16 states. In 1996 Peters
returned to California to become the statewide field director for the radical
Campaign Finance Reform initiative, Proposition 212. Sponsored by the
coalition, Californians Against Political Corruption, 212 called for $100
contribution limits, mandatory spending limits, and a 75% in-district
contribution requirement on political fundraising. 212 received 49% of the
vote. In 1998 Peters became campaign manager for former California Governor
Jerry Brown's Oakland mayoral bid, which received 59% of the vote in the June
primary in a field of eleven candidates, electing him to Mayor.
Copyright
2001 by Local Power.