SLO Clean Energy will host a free public workshop to explain the benefits of a Community Choice Aggregation (CCA) program on Oct. 24, from 6:00 p.m. to 7:00 p.m. at the San Luis Obispo City/County Library – Community Room, 995 Palm Street, San Luis Obispo.
Guest speaker Jamie Tuckey, communications director at Marin Clean Energy, will present on Community Choice Aggregation (CCA), a market-based approach to energy that allows communities (a group of cities and counties, an individual city, or any combination) to pool together participating electricity customers for purchasing and generating power on their behalf. Marin Clean Energy is California’s first clean energy CCA, starting operations in 2010.
Tuckey will describe Marin County’s CCA program as a case study for exploration and formation of a similar program within the communities of San Luis Obispo County.
Written into state law in 2002 to foster competition and innovation in energy, CCA is proving to be an effective path toward resilient communities and local economic development: it can provide long-term electrical rate stability, energy efficiency programs, leverage of electricity revenues for local projects, increases in renewable energy use, and local jobs. CCA programs provide pathways for investment in community energy resources with many benefits of that investment retained by the local residential, agricultural, business and municipal ratepayers.
Tuckey will be available for this workshop because she will be the keynote speaker at the Central Coast Sustainability Summit on Oct. 23 in Santa Barbara. SLO Clean Energy member Eric Veium will participate in a breakout session at the Summit in which he will describe San Luis Obispo’s efforts in moving toward a community choice energy program.
The next step for the cities and county of San Luis Obispo in the exploration of a CCA program is to conduct a feasibility study with the participating communities. SLO Clean Energy is an all-volunteer group of local citizens committed to supporting San Luis Obispo communities in pursuit of a local, clean energy economy.