Por DOUG CURLEE | Mensajero de La Mesa<\/p>\n
The city of La Mesa has decided, after four years of effort, that it\u2019s time to start the process of actually setting up a Community Choice Aggregation (CCA) program to take control of energy costs.<\/p>\n
CCAs are becoming the way to go for increasing numbers of local governments interested in renewable energy supplies, to meet state requirements for lowering the use of fossil fuels by 2045.<\/p>\n
This is part of the overall La Mesa climate action plan passed by the City Council in March of 2018 \u2014 in fact, it\u2019s the major portion of that overall plan.<\/p>\n
The city\u2019s Environmental Sustainability Commission held an open meeting on June 17 to tell interested citizens what they might expect to see when this all goes into effect.<\/p>\n
On July 15, the commission will present its draft plan to actually make all this happen.<\/p>\n
Scott Anders, of CCA 101, told the audience that things will change for them on their utility bills once the CCA is up and running.<\/p>\n
\u201cThis will place control of your electric rates in the hands of local governmental agencies,\u201d he said. \u201cThey will be able to buy power from sources other than SDG&E, if they can find a better rate somewhere else.\u201d<\/p>\n
Solana Beach, which has already adopted a CCA, is already planning to buy power from CalPine, an independent energy company.<\/p>\n
Some audience members were a little shaky about the possibility of local elected officials setting the rates for their power bills.<\/p>\n
David Harris was typical.<\/p>\n
\u201cCould you clarify who really runs them? We don\u2019t really trust government that much,\u201d he said. \u201cBuying and selling things is not something they\u2019re really good at.\u201d<\/p>\n
Anders replied that the law mandates it be done that way.<\/p>\n
\u201cUltimately, CCAs will make money for the cities running them, but that may not happen at first,\u201d he said. \u201cThis is a new program, a new effort to make renewable power available for all, or as many as participate in the program.\u201d<\/p>\n
If you\u2019re thinking that SDG&E will suddenly disappear, think again. SDG&E will likely turn out to be the major supplier of power, just as it is now. The utility will be one of the major sources of purchased power. It will just have to compete for the city\u2019s business with others.<\/p>\n
However this works out, SDG&E will still handle the paperwork \u2014 the billing and collection of utility payments from citizens.<\/p>\n
This will be automatic for most customers. When the City Council formally adopts the plan, all current SDG&E customers will be automatically enrolled in the CCA. Anyone who does not wish to participate will have to formally opt out, so they can return to SDG&E alone.<\/p>\n
This is going to be expensive to start out. The city will have to hire staff people to actually run this program, and that cost will initially come from the city budget.<\/p>\n
There is a good chance other East County cities \u2014 specifically Santee \u2014 are interested in joining in this effort. One way to handle the expense involved is to form a Joint Powers Authority whereby costs incurred could be defrayed with funding from the various cities.<\/p>\n
If all this works, the cities involved believe the CCA will eventually make money for the cities involved \u2014 money that La Mesa plans to use to implement other sectors of its climate action plan.<\/p>\n
Steve Grooms, who actually helped the Sustainability Commission bring this to where it is now, supports the idea, but admits, \u201cthe devil is in the details, isn\u2019t it?\u201d<\/p>\n
City Councilman Bill Baber, who sat on the Sustainability Commission, thinks it\u2019ll work.<\/p>\n
\u201cI completely support the concept,\u201d he said. \u201cI\u2019m all in favor of it. But we have to make it work in reality.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u2014 Doug Curlee is a freelance writer and former television news personality.<\/em><\/p>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" By DOUG CURLEE |\u00a0La Mesa Courier The city of La Mesa has decided, after four years of effort, that it\u2019s time to start the process of actually setting up a Community Choice Aggregation (CCA) program to take control of energy costs. CCAs are becoming the way to go for increasing numbers of local governments interested […]<\/p>","protected":false},"author":766,"featured_media":226442,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_seopress_robots_primary_cat":"11548","_seopress_titles_title":"Commission holds CCA open forum","_seopress_titles_desc":"","_seopress_robots_index":"","jnews-multi-image_gallery":[],"jnews_single_post":[],"jnews_primary_category":[],"jnews_social_meta":[],"jnews_override_counter":[],"footnotes":""},"categories":[11547,11548,11551,11550],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-226441","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-features","category-la-mesa-courier","category-news","category-top-stories"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/test.sdnews.com\/es\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/226441","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/test.sdnews.com\/es\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/test.sdnews.com\/es\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/test.sdnews.com\/es\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/766"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/test.sdnews.com\/es\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=226441"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/test.sdnews.com\/es\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/226441\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/test.sdnews.com\/es\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/226442"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/test.sdnews.com\/es\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=226441"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/test.sdnews.com\/es\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=226441"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/test.sdnews.com\/es\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=226441"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}