Hello all!
As part of a benefit to our incredible ASES Chapters, we host a quarterly policy jam where we invite a speaker to share their insights on anything related to renewable energy policy. Yesterday, we had a great presentation from Paul Fenn, Founder & President of Local Power, where he dove into how we can implement an energy transition. Please feel free to check out the notes and recording below!
January Policy Jam Description:
Join us for our Chapter leaders' quarterly policy Jam in January 15. ASES is proud to host Paul Fenn as our guest speaker. Paul Fenn, Founder & President of Local Power, has over twenty-five years of success developing a new energy program that allows communities to become energy independent and sustainable, saving Americans billions of dollars, causing many Gigawatts of new renewable energy developments and resulting in record greenhouse gas reductions. After coauthoring the original municipal aggregation law in Massachusetts twenty-five years ago, and drafting a second generation "CCA 2.0 law" in California in 2000, Fenn drafted San Francisco's 2001 landmark Green Bond authority, Prop H, approved by voters after a campaign by cofounder Julia Peters. Since 2001, Fenn's group has focused on program implementation to "re-engineer the grid:" creating strategies to lower the cost of localizing energy with renewables. In recent years, Fenn wrote a third generation "CCA 3.0" model for climate mobilization in 2020. Fenn team came up with a strategy for Ann Arbor, Michigan to create a https://localpower.com/AnnArbor.pdf Sustainable Energy Utility, and wrote a business plan for a $1B "In-City Buildout" of renewables and energy efficiency in San Francisco. Fenn's team proved the feasibility of a localization-based carbon reduction strategy for Sonoma County, California's CCA launch, and created a "Localization Portfolio Standard" for Boulder, Colorado. Fenn is also recognized for major campaigns in the process, such as the successful 2010 defeat of PG&E's $67M Proposition 16 to hamstring California's CCA law. Fenn holds a Masters degree with PhD fellowship from University of Chicago and has articles and books published on energy and political theory.
Paul Fenn's Presentation: How to implement an energy transition
Zoom Recording
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Community choice aggregation (CCA)
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Focused on the energy transition, energy independence. How do you ramp up an exelleration of scope/scale at a community level.
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CCA's retain 90% of customers - this gives them power to shop and set conditions on service
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The grid is the problem: it's the main barrier to renewable energy development
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Grid interconnect is the main bottleneck and centralized solutions would require 3-4x the existing grid, will not happen
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Expanding grid raises prices for all & makes problem worse
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Net metering has reached its limits, and a bypass is needed
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We need to onsite renewables that don't need to export onto the grid to have adequate ROI
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False concept #1
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False concept #2
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Buying "power" "in the market"
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When you choose a green supplier - you brought brown power with REnewable eEnergy Certiciatiosn (RECs)
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To reduce carbon - use less supply. Less heating fuel, less vehicle fuel, less grid
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Insall local measures, for less heating fuel, less vehicle fuel, less grid
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Reasons for change are clear:
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Negative: cyclical fuel crises, wars, global markets, weather events, need resilient local energy, energy poverty
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Posiitive: Cheap solar, bidirectional EV chargers, geothermal loop heat, nanogrids, appliance automation, need for equity
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Main barrier to energy transition - isolation
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Why is facing climate so hard? Other barriers to physical change
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Multiple layers of innovation are required - lack of market power, knowledge, resources/runding, revenue control/security, capacity/staff & high cost of engineering
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Deregulation - you, financier, and the power plant owners
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Municipal aggregation CCA 1.0 - group, the broker, the financier, the power plant owners
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CCA 2.0 - took out the broker and replaced it with the municipality. The municpality hired a bank to sell green bonds. PPAs for new renewable energy facilities. Hugely successful!
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CCA 3.0 - build renewable energy supply, but eliminate demand. It would not just use municipal revenue bonds to build solar farms, but engage customers in owning onsite renewable systems. It would not just decarbonize electricity, which is one third the carbon emissions, but decarbonize the other major sources well: power, heat and landfill/sewer waste. - in the process of implement 3..0 in New York State.
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Group, the broker, co-ops, the financiers, the power plant owners
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We need to limit demand! Engage people to owning onsite systems. We need to decarbonized electricity and all four sources.
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Physical change=reduce load
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How to overcome barriers?
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Community wide aggregation, loan financing, formation of groups, design of systems, negotiation with developers, tracking of performance
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Organize an energy transition by:
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Community by community, integrating four interoperable addressable carbon technologies, centered on voluntary choice of customers, neighbor sharing encouraged, municpal leadership required
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Goal: meet or beat rates, offer new choices of DERs
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Stop using RECs, build nonexporting nanogrids that integrate power, heat, transportation, and waste hydrogen. Maintain competitive rate while offering advanced onsite energy to all residents, businesses, municipality, use the local municipal planning process with community engagement for a bottom-up solution that is cost effecitive and voluntary
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Ella Nielsen
Membership & Engagement Director
American Solar Energy Society
Boulder CO
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