Dive Brief:
- The county of Napa is the second non-Marin County member of Marin Clean Energy, California's first provider of electricity to local residents, which offers ratepayers 50% to 100% renewables-sourced electricity in place of Pacific Gas and Electric's 20% renewables-sourced electricity.
- The county of Napa could soon add as many as 16,000 new electricity customers for MCE, the pending addition of the city of San Pablo could add another 10,000, the cities of Benicia and El Cerrito are being considered for membership, and Santa Barbara and San Francisco have expressed interest.
- Currently, MCE consists of Marin County, all 11 of Marin's municipalities, and the City of Richmond, a total of 125,000 retail customers for whom the Napa County addition will bring an estimated 3% rate reduction, with another 1% reduction possible if San Pablo joins.
Dive Insight:
Membership in MCE will save the City of Richmond about $60,000 per year and its West Contra Costa Unified School District $66,000 per year, but officials say the biggest reason for joining was to get more renewables.
Napa County will be able to increase its renewables consumption by approximately 72,000 megawatt-hours per year and officials say better use of the county’s many self-generation sites was key to joining MCE because PG&E made it “very complicated.”
Napa is too small to set up its own energy authority under the state's community choice aggregation law. MCE does not accept new members until an analysis verifies the addition will not increase its customers’ rates.
AB 2145, soon to be considered by the state Senate's Appropriations Committee, would limit the size of energy authorities like MCE to no more than three contiguous counties.
