Marin Clean Energy

County: Marin

Population: 250,750

Summary

Marin Clean Energy (MCE) is California’s first Community Choice Aggregation (CCA) program, officially launching Phase I service on May 7, 2010 to more than 7,000 residential, commercial and municipal customers. Phase II to MCE’s remaining more than 70,000 customers will begin sometime in mid-2011. CCAs empower local communities to purchase their own electric energy, set rates and provide a wide range of energy efficiency and other related programs and services tailored to meet their customers’ unique needs. Among Marin Clean Energy’s main objectives is increasing use of renewable energy, reducing greenhouse gas emissions and dependency on dirty fossil fuels, providing stable rates and reliable service, and promoting development of local green power generation and technologies.

Program Highlights

  • MCE delivers 25% renewable energy from wind, hydro, geothermal and other sources, almost double that provided by the competitor investor-owned utility and at competitive rates.
  • Besides its high amount of renewable energy, MCE’s electricity is 78% fossil free - compared to just over 50% for the local investor-owned utility.
  • MCE also offers a 100% renewable energy product – Deep Green – for a small additional charge (1 cent/kWh).
  • MCE plans by 2015 to increase to at least 50% the proportion of renewable energy it provides to customers who are not enrolled in Deep Green.
  • MCE is an element of Marin County’s Climate Action Plan to achieve a greenhouse gas reduction target of 15% below 1990 levels by 2020.
  • MCE offers a net-metering program in which customers can get paid for generating their own energy from roof-top solar and other sources.

Lessons Learned

  • Early, ongoing and consistent education and communication are critical, including to customers, the general public and key opinion leaders and decision makers.
  • Building community support is essential in advocating local governing bodies to participate and support the program.
  • Establishing early, strong relationships with the California Public Utilities Commission, which provides rule-making for CCA, is absolutely critical.
  • To the extent possible, clear communication with the existing utility can be helpful in facilitating a workable relationship.

Resources To Learn More

The Rest of the Story…

Marin Clean Energy was formed after more than six years of intensive and exhaustive public study, research, input and review, with analysis from numerous energy and finance experts. The County of Marin initially began studying the program in 2002 after the passage of AB 117, the state law authorizing the formation of CCAs. These efforts were led by the County of Marin Planning Department and Marin’s Sustainability Team and backed by Marin County’s Board of Supervisors.

Along with the County of Marin, seven cities, including Sausalito, San Rafael, San Anselmo, Mill Valley, Fairfax, Tiburon and Belvedere, voted in 2008 to form a joint powers authority – the Marin Energy Authority – to govern and run Marin Clean Energy. The County received a grant from the Bay Area Air Quality Management District that helped fund the formation of the JPA, as well as the development of a business plan and implementation plan for MCE. It is the intent of the Marin Energy Authority to promote the development and use of a wide range of renewable energy sources and energy efficiency programs, including but not limited to solar and wind energy production at competitive rates for customers.

Initial studies identified that Marin’s peak demand is 240 MW, about 1/80th of the overall demand served by the private investor-owned utility. Marin’s research also found that community choice aggregation programs in Ohio and Massachusetts, and municipal utility providers throughout California, generally can over time provide power at rates up to 20% lower than existing private utilities In addition to avoiding costs related to marketing and ensuring shareholder returns, the ability for CCAs like Marin Clean Energy to use tax exempt bonds provides a major opportunity and important advantage over competitor utilities in developing local renewable energy sources that can keep customers rates lower.

Public outreach has been a huge component of the MCE effort. In order to keep the public and decision makers well informed, staff presented and shared information at city council meetings, public events and fairs, local community groups and chambers of commerce, local schools, and homeowner associations. Staff also held at least one Public Study Session for each city and town in Marin. Other outreach activities included: updating the MCE website, email outreach to over 2,000 recipients, maintaining a public calendar of events, and preparing press releases at key points.

Case Story provided by BAAQMD and the Marin Energy Authority, June 2010

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