Solar horizon

Energy proposal heads for a key vote

By Matthew Hirsch

City officials are inching toward approval of the community choice energy plan, an initiative that would let San Francisco buy and sell electric power and compete with Pacific Gas and Electric Co. The idea, which first appeared in City Hall in 1999, goes to the Board of Supervisors Finance and Audits Committee Dec. 15.

"We're getting to the point where we can make it happen," Sup. Tom Ammiano told the Bay Guardian. A final vote on the measure is expected early next year.

Environmental groups including Greenpeace and the Sierra Club say that by embracing community choice, San Francisco would have a shot at developing the world's largest urban array of solar-power installations. Others view it as a preliminary step toward public power.

Sup. Ross Mirkarimi, who's led the community choice initiative through difficult negotiations in his first year in office, said it's "a very smart step, but ultimately the Holy Grail is municipalization."

But for all the reasons activists have supported community choice since Ammiano introduced it, when Willie Brown was mayor and Ammiano was the lone progressive on the Board of Supervisors, the city has never been as close to carrying out the plan as it is now. After several months spent carefully building political support for community choice, the sponsors believe they have lined up the votes to pass it and are close to an agreement on how to get it quickly up and running.

That's a long way from where the initiative stood early this year, mired in a long-running disagreement between Paul Fenn, the expert who drafted Ammiano's community choice law, and the San Francisco Public Utilities Commission (SFPUC), the agency that's supposed to turn the concept into reality. It got to the point where Ammiano jokingly renamed the plan, which is known formally as community choice aggregation. He started calling it "community aggravation."

But in recent months, Fenn and the SFPUC appear to have smoothed over most of their differences. The dispute revolved mostly around the laws and regulations that affect community choice. Had it not been resolved, the rift could have undermined the public perception of community choice, which will have to compete for customers with PG&E.

Grassroots organizing has also helped accelerate progress on the community choice initiative, which some consider to be a model for how local governments can address global warming.

Todd Chretien, who helped write the successful College Not Combat initiative on the November ballot, was part of a diverse coalition that rallied Dec. 7 at City Hall for passage of the community choice plan. He said climate change and militarism are bringing together people who've generally agreed on political issues in the past but haven't really been working together.

"Global warming is like the war in Iraq, an enormous political catastrophe," Chretien said. He said events like Hurricane Katrina and the recent United Nations Climate Summit have affected community organizing the same way the antiwar movement boosted activism during President George W. Bush's second term in office.

Though the community choice initiative has picked up in recent weeks, Mirkarimi said it could still be a few more months before the Board of Supervisors finally approves it and sends a bid to the California Public Utilities Commission for its authorization. "I am certainly not going to bellow out victory until it is firmly in hand," Mirkarimi told us.

The remaining issues still under negotiation include how much of the initial cost for community choice should be financed by the city's General Fund and whether or not the city should invite the private sector to help craft a proposal it must send to state regulators.

Fenn is pushing the city to invest as much as $2 million up front. He says the initial investment would give the city a larger stake in the equipment used to generate renewable energy, like solar panels and wind turbines.

"The question is, how much is the city going to buy in?" Fenn said. Most of the long-term costs will be paid with revenue bonds that San Francisco voters approved in 2001.

The community choice budget has been a sticking point in negotiations, largely because the city is expecting an $80 million budget deficit next year. So has the idea of getting more information from energy suppliers, which Fenn opposes.

Laura Spanjian, SFPUC assistant general manager, said she prefers to get more data, telling us, "We're really talking about a three- or four-month difference in timing." E-mail Matthew Hirsch at matthew@sfbg.com.