CalCCA Reading Room
Welcome to the CalCCA Reading Room! Like your favorite nook at the local library, the Reading Room is a quiet place to take a break and immerse in topics of interest. Here, you’ll learn about the ways CCAs are working to address pressing issues in their communities, the state of California, and beyond. We’ll be adding new items to the Reading Room’s virtual bookshelves on a regular basis so be sure to return again soon. Happy reading!
A Decade of Powering Community Choice: The CalCCA Story
In the early 2010s, as Community Choice Aggregation was just beginning to take root in California, a small group of energy leaders gathered on weekly calls to share knowledge and chart a path forward. Representing the state’s first CCA programs, they compared notes on what was working, what wasn’t, and how to navigate the road ahead.
There was a palpable sense of excitement. CCAs were emerging as innovative, community-driven players in California’s energy landscape. But alongside that momentum came growing scrutiny on the legislative and regulatory fronts, raising early concerns about how these new entities would be shaped, and challenged, by the state’s evolving policy environment.
SB 1138: Lowering the Cost of California’s RA Program
California’s resource adequacy (RA) program is a critical tool to ensure load-serving entities (LSEs) procure the resources that are needed to keep the lights on. A shortfall of RA supply in California has created challenges for LSEs including Community Choice Aggregators (CCAs), resulting in increasing penalties. CalCCA believes the California Public Utilities Commission (CPUC) needs to take immediate action to address this persistent energy market challenge, one that has been building and worsening for years. Ultimately it is ratepayers that are paying a high price for California’s ongoing RA supply problem.
California’s RA shortage makes it difficult, if not impossible, for every LSE to meet its RA requirements. Specifically, the demand for RA in California exceeds the available supply, even after accounting for imports and expected additions of resources, as this recent stack analysis notes: California’s Constrained RA Market: Ratepayers Left Standing in a Game of Musical Chairs.
Pathway to a Regional Market
On the last day of California’s 2024-2025 legislative session, Governor Gavin Newsom signed into law Assembly Bill AB 825, paving the way for the creation of a Western regional energy market.
AB 825 had a bumpy ride to the governor’s desk but ultimately received near-unanimous approval of the Legislature. The bill is widely viewed as one of the most consequential energy sector initiatives California has seen in decades.
Green Bond FAQ
Frequently Asked Questions: CCA Green Bond Prepayment Transactions
1. Why are CCAs using green bond prepayment transactions?
Prepayment transactions allow CCAs to reduce the cost of long-term renewable energy contracts by using tax-exempt financing, leading directly to lower utility bills for customers.
The Road Ahead: Tackling the Affordability Challenge
How can we keep the lights on without breaking the bank? That question was front and center this May as energy leaders from across California gathered in Irvine for the CalCCA Annual Conference.
At the heart of the conference was a powerhouse plenary panel, “Brass Tacks: CCA CEOs on the Industry’s Current State and Future Direction,” featuring five CalCCA board members. Moderated by Robert Shaw, CEO of Central Coast Community Energy, the panelists pulled no punches about the state of the energy industry and how their organizations are planning for the future.
RA Stack Analysis and Interactive Dashboard
Resource adequacy (RA) supplies in the California Independent System Operator (CAISO) balancing area have been tight in recent years. CalCCA’s RA White Paper demonstrated razor-thin margins when comparing RA requirements with the available RA supply for 2023 and 2024. The “stack” analysis presented below compares RA requirements with available supply under California’s new slice-of-day (SOD) program to reveal the current conditions of the market, with a focus on overall grid reliability.
Powering AI: The Energy Demands of Data Centers
Artificial intelligence is one of the hottest technologies right now, but it is also one of the most energy-intensive. Behind the recent surge in AI technology is an immense increase in energy demand to power the data centers that make AI possible.
California, an epicenter of the burgeoning AI industry, is home to 32 of the top 50 AI companies worldwide. Silicon Valley is deploying significant resources to develop AI, largely through new data centers that require significant energy to bring on line and operate.
Improving RA Transactability
California’s resource adequacy (RA) program is a critical tool to ensure load-serving entities (LSEs) procure the resources that are needed to keep the lights on. A shortfall of RA supply in California has created challenges for LSEs including Community Choice Aggregators (CCAs), resulting in increasing penalties. CalCCA believes the California Public Utilities Commission (CPUC) needs to take immediate action to address this persistent energy market challenge, one that has been building and worsening for years. Ultimately it is ratepayers that are paying a high price for California’s ongoing RA supply problem.
California’s RA shortage makes it difficult, if not impossible, for every LSE to meet its RA requirements. Specifically, the demand for RA in California exceeds the available supply, even after accounting for imports and expected additions of resources, as this recent stack analysis notes: California’s Constrained RA Market: Ratepayers Left Standing in a Game of Musical Chairs.
Pathways Initiative
SB 540, sponsored by Senator Josh Becker (D-Menlo Park), Chair of the Senate Committee on Energy, Utilities, and Communications, and Senator Henry Stern (D-Los Angeles), is an outgrowth of the Pathways Initiative and would allow for the creation of an expanded western electricity market overseen by a regional organization (RO), an independent entity with specific protections for individual state policies and the public interest. The bill authorizes the California Independent System Operator (CAISO) and California utilities to participate in energy markets governed by the RO once CAISO demonstrates that several statutory requirements are met.
Making California’s Electricity More Affordable
It’s no secret that California’s electricity bills are sky high. What’s not so well known, however, is that ballooning investor-owned utility (IOU) transmission and distribution (T&D) expenditures are the main driver of dramatic bill increases shouldered by California ratepayers in recent years.
From 2017-2022, the average T&D rates for California’s three main IOUs doubled, from 7.5 cents per kilowatt hour to almost 15 cents per kilowatt hour, according to the Energy Information Administration.
As electricity rates continue to skyrocket, more and more lower-income households must choose between paying their electricity bills or paying for food, medicine, rent, and other essentials.
How to Help California’s Grid? Go Virtual
At first glance, there’s nothing atypical about the small gray house located on a quiet residential street in Richmond, Calif. But look further and you’ll see that it’s the first piece of a revolutionary new type of power plant. Unlike traditional plants, you won’t find any massive cooling towers or transmission lines. That’s because this electrified home is part of a virtual power plant, or VPP.
VPPs are flexible energy sources that can be used to reduce load or provide power to the electric grid, just like typical power plants. But instead of the energy coming from one central source, it comes from a bunch of smaller, distributed energy resources (DERs), such as home solar panels, residential battery packs, and electric vehicles.
CCAs Get Pumped on Heat Pumps
To achieve decarbonization, nearly everything powered by greenhouse gas-emitting resources must transition to cleaner alternatives—from gas furnaces that burn fossil fuels to heat homes to air conditioning units that release atmosphere-warming refrigerants. Fortunately, when it comes to heating and cooling buildings, a clean technology already exists to get the job done: electric-powered heat pumps.
Combining great efficiency and a cleaner fuel source, heat pumps offer the opportunity to reduce residential greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions by 36–64%, according to the National Renewable Energy Laboratory. But despite their wide-ranging benefits, heat pumps are currently not very popular compared to traditional heating and cooling appliances, making up only 16% of space heaters in U.S. households. If climate and decarbonization goals are to be met, heat pumps need a boost to experience rapid adoption.