Why Marin Clean Energy is a Good Idea Sustaining Marin, posted by Ed Mainland, a resident of the Bel Marin Keys neighborhood, on Nov 26, 2009 at 1:04 am Ed Mainland is a member (registered user) of Pacific Sun
Here's a ten-step checklist to keep in mind as Marin County and most of its cities look toward getting a more competitive, cleaner, greener mix of electricity through Marin Clean Energy rather than the current monoply supplier, PG&E.
1. What's the most powerful way Marin can reduce carbon emissions? Nothing else can come close to MCE's potential. In less than ten years, MCE will yield a 17-percent reduction in Marin County's TOTAL CO2 emissions. This scale can jump-start a genuine DOWNWARD trend in greenhouse gas emissions. Everything else we're doing as individuals, businesses and towns, while valuable, only adds up to slowing the current upward trend.
2. What gets Marin to 100-percent clean, renewable power? Under MCE, by 2016 Marin can expect to be getting 100% of its electricity from qualifying renewable sources such as wind, solar, geothermal, biomass and small hydro. By contrast, the current monoply, PG&E, offers less than one percent solar, three percent wind and four percent geothermal. PG&E won't meet state requirements of 20-percent renewables by 2010 and has demurred from the Governor-ordered 33-percent standard by 2020. Even accepting PG&E’s claim that their problematic nuclear and large hydro are “carbon free,” MCE plans to be 18% “greener” than PG&E even at the start and its lead will only grow from there. PG&E has added renewables in future paper contracts but whether they will materialize remains to be seen. PG&E's actual procurement plans instead emphasize new natural-gas plants, fossil-fuel pipelines and nuclear expansion if possible.
3. Would AB 811 be a better bet than MCE? AB 811 lets homeowners finance energy-efficiency retrofits and solar rooftops on their utility bills -- IF municipalities find them financing. This can help but can't scale up any where near as powerfully and quickly as MCE's mass delivery model to all participating consumers. And MCE will be able to help AB 811-type financing more available to Marin. AB 811 is a very useful supplementary piece to be integrated with MCE but not really a competitor or alternative
4. How is MCE a bargain? Fighting global warming will take a lot of money. The largest source of greenhouse gases in Marin is transportation. Steps being talked about -- new mass transit systems, a widespread switch to electric vehicles, a rider-friendly bike infrastructure, transition town planning -- all come with big price tags. But in respect to electricity -- on which Marin residents and businesses already spend hundreds of millions of dollars a year -- MCE can eliminate virtually all this sector's emissions simply by redirecting where this money goes. That means more funding left over for transportation solutions. And that means cleaner electricity to power the new electric cars, reducing even more carbon.
5. Does MCE offer more local power and control? Once MCE is established and can start investing in its own renewable generation, as much of it as possible (mainly solar) can be built in Marin. Studies show good potential availability. MCE's initial contract makes provision for this step-by-step transition. MCE intends drawing also from other renewable sources located in or near the Bay Area. (There isn’t enough wind in Marin, for example, to site large turbines here and biomass should be located near its fuel supply.) Also, MCE can ensure Marin gets its rightful share of money for expanded local energy efficiency programs like building audits and retrofits. MCE's small staff will all be local, and MCE's Board will continue to be composed of local city council members, answerable to Marin voters, not Wall Street.
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6. How does MCE manage risk and minimize expense? MCE started with extensive feasibility studies, second opinions and independent professional peer reviews during a methodical five-year planning process that concluded in spring of 2009. MCE's next step (going on right now) is to contract with an established power provider as a bridge to get through the five-year start-up phase. A draft contract has been written so that the provider, not MCE, will be at risk for unexpected price shifts, and the provider, not MCE, will be responsible for all the technical aspects of power purchasing, scheduling and maintaining reserves. Most important, the contract has a provision that as quickly as MCE builds Marin's own renewable generation, it can be substituted in place of purchased power. The third step comes once MCE is actually delivering power to customers (planned to start in June 2010.) Once that happens, Marin will be able to use the revenue stream from those sales to guarantee bonds to be sold to finance construction of Marin's own renewable generation. This means Marin won’t have to put at risk the general funds of the County or member cities to build those assets. Even taking this slow, cautious route, it looks like MCE can be the very first CCA in the state to actually deliver power to customers -- IF member cities assent to the program as its being proposed.
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7. Community power is not a new or untested idea. Community Choice Aggregation (CCA) has been up and running in Massachusetts and Ohio for a number of years, successfully saving customers money and giving them greener power and robust energy efficiency services. And public power is actually the oldest, most tested way of delivering electricity in California. Today, one in four California homes gets its electricity from a public agency. This includes most of Los Angeles (LADWP), all of Sacramento (SMUD), Palo Alto, Healdsburg and approximately 40 other cities. During the deregulation mess, while PG&E was going bankrupt and rates were going crazy, customers of public power agencies were unaffected. Further, public power rates in California have consistently averaged about 20% lower than PG&E and the other investor-owned electric companies. Municipalities have long contracted on behalf of residents for cable television services, garbage services, recycling services, even some natural gas. Why not electricity?
8. Is MCE "deregulation" again"? No. In fact, AB 117, which in 2002 granted California's municipalities the right to set up bulk power purchasing and financing of local generation, was enacted by California's legislature as an antidote to both deregulation's failures and the shortcomings of investor-owned utilities. PG&E will continue to provide MCE with the wires, the transmission, the infrastructure repair and the billing services and all the union jobs that go with them. The law stipulates that utilities must cooperate with CCAs.
9. What about Shell? Shell North America is reportedly the lead bidder to become MCE's initial "energy services provider". MCE supporters see securely-financed, asset-rich Shell as a reasonable, short-term expedient or "bridge" to get Marin to its eventual goal of greener, mostly locally generated power. All major energy companies have checkered pasts -- PG&E has its Erin Brockovich pollution scandal, its bankruptcies, its corporate-shielded spinoffs and compliance problems -- and Shell North America, whatever its parent company's record in Nigeria or elsewhere, clearly has the wherewithal to bring in amounts of green power than PG&E evidently can't. PG&E reportedly buys some grid power from Shell, and PG&E's grid mix, like Shell's, contains electricity from out of state. MCE, by contrast, will have Shell "swap in" local power: as Marin brings more local energy on line, Shell will reduce the amount of energy they import into Marin.
10. Give People a Choice. PG&E has long been Marin's only option. There's no competition. It's a monopoly. There's little authentic transparency. With MCE, however, Marin ratepayers will be able to seamlessly choose between alternative sources of their electricity and go where the volts are greenest. Rates will be comparable. Reliability will be identical. Risks are equivalent. May the best product and the best path to the future win out.
Posted by all aboard, a resident of another community, on Nov 26, 2009 at 12:48 pm
Thanks for this clear and concise document explaining the benefits of MEA. Perhaps you should tell MEA to post this as "frequently asked questions" on their website. I'm looking forward to having a choice of providers.
Posted by Sea, a resident of another community, on Nov 30, 2009 at 7:02 am
Ed there still seems to be alot of opposition to MEA. I am one of those people. Ed, I know your intentions are honest, but don't you read or hear what others are saying and the techical questions that go un-answered? Its still about pie-in-the-sky-hype. Your entire article is about the positive. There must be a thousand negatives that go un-mentioned.
Posted by all aboard, a resident of another community, on Nov 30, 2009 at 4:35 pm
Most of the opposition is taken from misleading statements made by PG & E's propoganda machine. It's not pie in the sky at all. In fact, there are many good examples of how well this can work in our backyard, like Sacramento Municipal Utility district, which ousted Pg & E and offers much greener energy at 35% less cost than PG & E. MEA has carefully analyzed the risks of creating a CCA and has taken steps to mitigate them. The real win comes as they create locally owned renewable energy projects. Go tomorrow night and listen to Paul Fenn of Local Power, Inc and you will see how fabulous that will be for Marin.
Also, what PG & E tries to say is that the cost is high, but that is misleading. The amount they quote is the exact same amount we ratepayers would be paying under a PG & E scenerio, it's just instead of it going to shareholder's pockets, it goes towards building our own local renewable energy projects.
Posted by Sea, a resident of another community, on Dec 1, 2009 at 5:24 am
Problem number 5. "It goes toward building our own local renewable energy projects". Would that location be in the Bel Marin Keys vicinity, or maybe in Mill Valley, how about Bolinas or Novato? Funny that SMUD is always brought into the debate. SMUD went broke some years ago trying to bring their nuclear facility on line. Atleast they had a solid vision.
Lets switch the conversation to capasity. How many smaller sustainable power plants will it take to match what the current power company can deliver and or broker. O.K. so it will be a mix of sustainable power and non-sustainable. So how will you ever know what type of electricity your burning up in your home?
Why don't you people talk about conservation? NEVER is conservation discussed. Green and sustainable are good things, but there is alot more at stake. I'm waiting to be won over to your side. Its just that at the moment I'm not hearing or seeing anything solid to change my mind.
Posted by Edward Mainland, a resident of the Novato neighborhood, on Dec 2, 2009 at 11:42 am
Let's all try to keep the facts in mind as best we can.
SMUD didn't "go broke trying to bring their nuclear facility on line". In fact, they incurred large costs getting out of the nuclear business while building reliance on other, more benign energy sources. This is now acknowledged by most analysts and SMUD ratepayers to have been a wise strategic decision.
Each Marin ratepayer can tell what type of electricity he or she is consuming by looking at the little leaflet "Power Content Label" that comes in the mail with each month's gas-electricity bill. Mine tells me, for example that PG&E, the incumbent monopoly electricity supplier, is giving me zero solar, three percent wind, 20 percent nuclear, two percent coal, 47 percent natural gas and 16 percent large hydro. PG&E solar has been zero as long as I can remember.
Conservation is at the top of the electric-power "loading order" set forth by California Energy Commission (CEC), followed by efficiency, distributed renewables, industrial-scale renewables and lower-carbon fossil fuels, in that priority hierarchy. Conservation and efficiency should and can be at the top of any plan for local power. MEA and most everyone else acknowledge this.
Marin's electricity "load" is relatively small: MEA's "load" reportedly will approximate 170 MW. MEA's studies show abundant renewable sources, both inside and outside Marin, both potential and actual, to meet that size load. To the extent that robust conservation and efficiency measures can cut waste and consumption, it becomes even easier to meet the resulting smaller load. "Waste not, want not" needs to be our mantra.
At yesterday evening's (December 1) well-attended public panel discussion on MEA at Mill Valley Community Center, Marinites learned for the first time that Local Power Inc. has submitted a credible full-requirements-service bid for MEA's initial "electricity service provider" contract. Not only would this exceptional bid bring powerful Sempra into the game to provide renewables at market (equivalent to Shell and other major bidders), it provides for the first time a detailed plan and timeline for creating local renewable energy sources. It outlines step by step what renewable sources could be tapped, who would provide them, and when they would be brought on line.
This bid is responsive to many of the questions Marinites have been raising: for example, it avoids the contention Shell has engendered as a primary provider, remedies the alleged lack of detail about ramping up local distributed power in MEA's planning so far, visibly provides for more local jobs, suppliers and business opportunities, and outlines how local renewable power sources can get going right away rather than being deferred until later in MEA's trajectory. It projects 76 percent renewables by 2015 and corresponding greenhouse gas reduction.
MEA's Board of Directors would do well to qualify Local Power's bid for immediate consideration and more detailed examination, on a par with the several other major bidders in contention. This is very important.
We may be seeing in Local Power's approach the salvation of what most people realize is perhaps Marin's last and best hope to do something really significant locally to reduce human-caused carbon emissions. These gases, most scientists say, are likely to disrupt our local, national and world climate severely unless something is done quickly.
The MEA Board should step beyond formalistic process concerns to look squarely and realistically at this proposal that promises truly to get MEA on a track that most of Marin can enthusiastically support.
However one may spell "capasity"(sic.) or "capacity" (see above), a healthy amount of local generation must be MEA's prime directive and eventual end game in order to fully realize the potential of California's community choice law AB 117 (2002).
Posted by Sea, a resident of another community, on Dec 3, 2009 at 9:38 am
Ed, thanks for your post. I lived in Sacramento when SMUD first tried to put their Nuclear plant on line. This was in 1972 or 1973 or there about. It was met with nothing but opposition. I know they spent millions putting it on line and then defending the concept.Its really ashame because we should know by now, it is the future for clean renewable production of electricity.
Regarding the "power content label" which will acompany billing, I would assume. How can one know it is 100% accurite? There would never be a way to know this, only what the bill claims. Seems to me that the power content label could be manipulated to show what ever the power company wanted to show. In other words the consumer will never really know.
Its really too bad that others are not adding to this conversation. In some ways it tells me something about the future of MEA. Its a nice thought and a worthy concept, but can it happen now?
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Here's a ten-step checklist to keep in mind as Marin County and most of its cities look toward getting a more competitive, cleaner, greener mix of electricity through Marin Clean Energy rather than the current monoply supplier, PG&E. 
