In less than a year, three Orange County cities will be in the utility business. Fullerton, Costa Mesa, and Irvine have created a joint powers authority to purchase and distribute electricity to households and businesses in those cities, under what’s known as “community choice aggregation.”
It’s difficult to imagine how this model will result in lower electricity bills, although that’s one of the ways this program was sold to local elected officials who approved the plan. Southern California Edison will still be the primary supplier of electricity and will still manage the distribution. Since SCE only generates 19 percent of the power it distributes to customers, and purchases the other 89 percent, the costs to customers will only go down if this new joint powers authority outperforms SCE in their procurement efforts enough to offset the cost of the new bureaucracy.
As reported by the Orange County Register, “Unbound by long-term contracts many utilities hold, they can adjust the mix to take advantage of lower costs or to favor renewable energy — or both. Additionally, they can be more aggressive than private utilities in encouraging and developing clean local power generation and battery storage.” But which is it? Saving money? Or going green?
The problem with newly formed independent, city owned utilities being “more aggressive than private utilities” in developing clean renewable sources of energy is the existing state mandates are already the most aggressive in the nation, if not the world. California has mandated that public utilities deliver […] Read More
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