GOOD energy bills need support RIGHT NOW

From: Charles Kalish [chkalish [at] ix.netcom.com]
Sent: Thursday, March 01, 2001 5:30 PM
To: Mary Bull
Subject: Important Bill In Legislature

The following announcement comes from Local Power, a serious player in the municipal power advocacy community:
SPECIAL ANNOUNCEMENT:

CALIFORNIA COMMUNITY CHOICE BILL
AND LOCAL POWER DISTRIBUTION WHEELING AMENDMENT
AWAIT LEGISLATIVE HEARING IN SACRAMENTO AS EARLY AS NEXT WEEK

Assemblywoman Carole Migden (D-San Francisco) announced her sponsorship of the California Community Choice bill (drafted by Local Power last year) on February 15 at a press conference organized by CalPIRG, the California Public Interest Research Group. A hearing will be announced shortly and could be as early as next week. This is a heads up to get you involved if you want Community Choice passed.

Local Power has also submitted an amendment to AB48x to facilitate \"distributed generation\" in urban areas, such as solar, wind, small hydro, fuel cells, etc.. This amendment will be heard at the same time. An explanation of this key measure is below.

.................................................................

WE THINK THE MEASURES HAVE A GOOD CHANCE BUT COULD USE YOUR HELP RIGHT NOW

WRITERS........If you are inclined to write a short letter in support,
fax it with your signature and letterhead to Paul Fenn at fax 925 377 0746 by this Friday (March 2). He will bring it to the hearing and file it with the Committee.

TALKERS........If you want to lobby by phone during the workday
call our sponsor Assemblywoman Carole Migden\'s office to register your support for AB48x and the Local Power Distribution Wheeling amendment at 916 319 2013. Ask that your message be left for Chief of Staff Alan LaFaso, with whom we have been working.

MARTYRS......If you want to testify as an individual or representing a group at the hearing
(no scheduled date yet but will likely be held next week , perhaps Wednesday, expect it to take a full day after receiving short notice, rides to and from San Francisco are available) , call Paul Fenn at 510 451 1727 by this Friday.

....................NEED BRUSHING UP?
The attached WORD files at the bottom of this email are the CA Community Choice Bill Fact Sheet and the Distribution Wheeling Amendment Fact Sheet. If you want a copy of the bill or the amendment language emailed to you, call Paul Fenn at 510 451 1727 or paulfenn [at] local.org

DON\'T have the time? CRASH COURSE ON COMMUNITY CHOICE BILL

...........................POLITICAL FACTOIDS about COMMUNITY CHOICE BILL

...........CALIFORNIA CITIES ASKING THE CA LEGISLATURE FOR A COMMUNITY CHOICE BILL
Apart from finding a sponsor highly regarded for her ability to pass bills, Community Choice has been requested by resolution by the northern cities and counties of San Francisco, Oakland, Berkeley, Marin County and Fairfax, as well as the southern cities of West Hollywood, Lomita, Carson, El Segundo, Hawthorne, Culver City, Lawndale, as well as their Joint Powers Agency, the Southern California Cities Joint Powers Consortium.

...........NGOs SUPPORTING CA COMMUNITY CHOICE BILL
CALPIRG, The Utility Reform Network (TURN), the Coalition for Local Power, Western Power Trading Forum, David Brower(d), Ralph Nader, Public Power Now!, Public Citizen and Southern California Cities Joint Powers Consortium endorse Community Choice.

..................WHAT IS THE LOCAL POWER \"DISTRIBUTION WHEELING AMENDMENT\"?
Local Power has also proposed an amendment to AB48x providing for Distribution Wheeling tariffs by Utility Distribution Companies and establishing jurisdictions and guidelines for the metering (and thus billing) of \"Distribution Wheeling\" transactions. This would allow a city (for example) to assign power on a real time basis from a solar cell or other local generation at one location in a city to \"load points\" elsewhere in the city on the same distribution system (such as industrial motors turning on and off ). Such processes as \"load shaving\" and \"load shifting\" will prove key to the successful application of distributed renewable energy. The language would enable many forms of distributed generation to develop, but would be particularly valuable for Community Choice cities to jump-start unprecedentedly large scale urban solar, wind, fuel cell, small hydro and other local power projects needed to deliver the statewide \"conservation\" called for by this summer. This amendment will be heard at the same time as AB48x.

...............WHY CALIFORNIA MARKET FAILED
The key failure of Californias non-aggregated Consumer Choice market has been the inability of any individual consumer, whether industrial, commercial or residential, to find an alternative supplier without extremely large-scale aggregation of demand. The result was a withdrawal of would-be competitors into spot market trading and an electric ghettoization of the worlds seventh largest economy. Californias rate shock resulted from two years of market failure that made virtually the entire state hostage to a backup system designed for a minority of unprofitable-to-serve consumers. Before the crisis became official, AB1890s prohibition against Community Choice forced 95% of Californians and 87% of electricity load to receive default service from the former monopolies buying power on the spot market. Not only do these statistics clearly indicate the failure of the deregulated market, they also reveal why the Power Exchange is so vulnerable to collusion: because AB1890 prevented market diversification and made nearly all Californians captive to spot market power.

..............WHY COMMUNITY CHOICE CAN MAKE IT WORK
Community Choice is the structural solution to this failure. Local governments are authorized to aggregate all market non-participants in their jurisdictions into city-negotiated contracts, much like cable television or garbage services have been negotiated for decades, but with an opt-out clause for consumers who are able to participate directly in the market. Groups of contiguous municipalities may join together, and county governments may coordinate consenting municipalities in regional power contracts.

...................EVIDENCE THAT COMMUNITY CHOICE ACTUALLY WORKS
Although Community Choice is law in only 2 of 23 states with deregulation (Massachusetts 1997, Ohio 1999), a single urban area implementing Community Choice in Ohio now accounts for fully half the residential customers in the nation that have access to non-monopoly power! In recent weeks 100 Community Choice Cities surrounding (not including) Cleveland doubled the number of American residents nationwide that have found a non-monopoly power supplier. These cities chose Green Mountain Power in a six year contract to serve 450,000 electricity customers, expanding Green Mountains national customer base from 100,000 to 550,000! While not perfect (lacking distributed generation) Green Mountains proposed mix will change these 100 communities from a 60%/40% coal/nuclear power mix to 98%/2% natural gas/renewable energy including small hydro wind and solar, a significant greenhouse gas reduction.

....................MORE GREEN ENERGY FACTOIDS
Community Choice will also offer major opportunities for conservation and green power. Even without Community Choice, Californias municipalities currently purchase more than half of all green power sold in the state, and that is buying merely for municipal facilities under the Community Choice prohibition. Municipal facilities rarely make up more than 5% of an average citys consumption. By empowering local governments to negotiate for the other 95%, Community Choice offers a dramatic opportunity to fight global warming. The Community Choice legislation also entitles municipalities to their pro-rata share of state-collected conservation surcharge funds, so that conservation programs can be used to leverage green power supply contracts rather than being reduced to a marginal role under control of the former monopolies, who after all make more money, the more electricity we consume.

Thanks for your help,

Paul Fenn
Local Power
510 451 1727
paulfenn [at] local.org
http://www.local.org
4281 Piedmont Avenue
Oakland, California 94612