Take that, PG&E!

And congratulations go out to San Joaquin Valley Power Authority, which has reached a settlement agreement with PG&E over how the utility company has been behaving itself with regards to Community Choice Aggregation (CCA.) Best part: PG&E has to pay.

I’m giving a nod to the Associated Press here, which described SJVPA as a “public electricity cooperative,” because that’s essentially what a CCA is – a group of cities and counties getting together to buy or build their own power, and then run it through the grid that’s already established. Many CCAs say they can bring us cheaper, greener power. According to Tim Rosenfeld, who's working on Marin's CCA, "Public power can simply do things cheaper than investor-owned utilities." For example, he says, the cost of financing a new power plant is about 5.5 percent for a municipality issuing a bond, and it's more like 12 percent for a private company. "Apples to apples, building the same power plant we have a huge cost advantage," said Rosenfeld.

As one might imagine, PG&E has some issues with CCAs because it means losing customers, and they’ve been lobbying hard against them throughout their service territory. They were so effective in San Joaquin that Fresno and Tulare backed out of the deal, meaning the SJVPA had less customers.

As we reported last year, SJVPA filed a complaint with the California Public Utilities Commission, which had already decided that it was a conflict of interest for utilities to expound on the pros and cons of CCAs, and if they were going to bitch about it they better do it with their shareholders’ piggy banks. SJVPA had evidence to the contrary and now they’ve settled with PG&E. The terms: PG&E agrees to make sure their investors pay for the marketing and lobbying and that said lobbying will be “truthful and non-misleading” – which makes my job more boring. Best part: they’re also paying up to $450K of SJVPA’s litigation fees.

The other interesting aspect of this is PG&E admits they changed horses midstream.

According to a statement from SJVPA, “PG&E originally testified before the CPUC that it would be neutral toward CCA, and would refrain from marketing against CCA programs. However, in early to mid-2007, PG&E changed its position, contrary to its original position of neutrality, and is now marketing against CCA. The agreement is intended to address the negative effects associated with PG&E’s change of position, which SJVPA believes disrupted SJVPA’s efforts to implement Community Choice.”

Which might be interesting for the attorney general’s investigation of all these shenanigans.

The agreement still needs CPUC approval, but with signatures from both parties already it looks like the fight is over – until it comes here. The agreement explicitly states it only applies to PG&E and SJVPA. (Though there’s a 30-day public review period for interested parties to file supporting comments. Dennis – you there? Anyone over at the City Attorney’s office reading this?)

But seriously, this is great news for San Francisco and our buddies in Marin, Berkeley, Oakland, and Emeryville that are also pursuing CCAs. Marin, which formally launched their plan today, has been feeling plenty of heat from PG&E, including a 42-page rebuttal (PDF) to the county’s CCA plan “that had such choice lies that natural gas prices are going down,” said Richard Schorske of the Marin Climate and Energy Partnership, a group assisting with the launch of the CCA.

Marin’s CCA, called Marin Clean Energy, is even more excellent than ours. They’re purchasing and producing 100 percent renewable energy, but will have two options for customers: “light green” (24-50 percent at PG&E’s current rate) and “deep green” (100 percent for $5/month more.) Either option gets you more renewables than PG&E currently offers, and according to John Corcoran of Marin Clean Energy, the idea to offer 100 percent “originally came from the community. [People were saying] what if we want to pay extra for 100 percent renewable? So that became an option.”

So cool. And Marin is doing its homework in preparation for a massive spin campaign from PG&E. At today’s launch of the CCA they had snappy, simple brochures outlining the plan and organizers tell me they went with “Marin Clean Energy” for a name, first of all because it’s true, but also to get away from the cumbersome, hard to define moniker, “Community Choice Aggregation.”

So far the county supervisors are for it and the eleven cities that would be a part of the CCA will be deciding to join over the next few months. “Marin Clean Energy will offer us an opportunity to revive our community,” said Kathy Severson, CEO of the Mill Valley Chamber of Commerce. She said she’d be advocating for it to other Chambers and businesses in the area. So unlike SF, where PG&E practically owns our Chamber.

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