Tackling the Affordability Challenge
How can we keep the lights on without breaking the bank? That question was front and center as energy leaders from across California gathered in Irvine for CalCCA’s 2025 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.
As these executives see it, the path forward requires more than clean energy. It demands grit, foresight, and a laser focus on keeping costs in check for the Californians who need it most.
“You’re seeing real stories of folks once a month having to figure out whether they want to pay their electric bill or fill up the pantry with groceries. It’s a real issue,” said Don Eckert, CEO of Pioneer Community Energy. “People are suffering with the high energy prices that continue to go up.”
Electricity costs are a primary concern for Pioneer, despite saving its customers $108 million since 2018 and maintaining the lowest residential generation rates in California. While Pioneer achieves this by offering a 10% discount on average compared to PG&E’s electricity generation rates, Eckert noted, it is hard to make that felt when the majority of customer electricity bill charges are for transmission, distribution, and other costs that CCAs do not control. “We’ve been very aggressive in our discount to PG&E,” Eckert said, “but to be real, we’re only a third of the bill.”
CCA CEOs (left to right): Robert Shaw/Central Coast Community Energy (moderator), Ted Bardacke/Clean Power Alliance, Don Eckert/Pioneer Community Energy, Lori Mitchell/San José Clean Energy, Karin Burns/San Diego Community Power.
Being Proactive Is Key
In strategizing how to achieve manageable bills, the CEOs repeatedly touched on the idea of being proactive in securing cost-effective clean energy resources and managing risks. Ted Bardacke, CEO of Clean Power Alliance (CPA), relayed how his agency made the decision to take a share of the risk in its recent request for offers for renewable energy contracts.
Facing uncertainties from tariffs and the status of Inflation Reduction Act credits, CPA decided to incorporate price-flexibility language into its contracts with developers. The language allows for a moderate change in contract price if tariffs are higher or lower than expected when the primary equipment to build an agreed-upon energy project arrives. This means that a project could end up being slightly more or less expensive for CPA, but it also incentivizes developers to work with CPA even during these uncertain times, helping to avoid price increases from a lack of available energy resources.
Bardacke highlighted that CPA developed this strategy proactively. CPA “didn’t just say ‘Developers, come tell us what you want.’” Instead, Bardacke said, “We’re going to take the pen, we’re going to put out a standard pro forma that talks about the risks we would like to share.”
Lori Mitchell, director of San José Clean Energy (SJCE), echoed the importance of forward-looking action to handle uncertainties, particularly around the rise of data centers and similar large loads in SJCE’s area. “You’re talking at least 100 MW,” Mitchell said of some large commercial customers. “It’s something that you have to procure in advance for; PG&E needs to build out that distribution infrastructure to serve them. So, we’ve really taken a proactive approach of partnering with PG&E to make sure that happens.”
For CCAs, preparing for significant load growth is key to preventing unexpected cost or service shifts for all customers. “Really understanding this load forecasting with the investor-owned utility is going to be so important because affordability is such a challenge right now,” Mitchell said. “And when you have these large-load customers coming on line, the last thing all of us want to do is to buy it before they’re actually there and using this load, right? Because then we potentially have invested in supply that we don’t need.”
Turning Challenges into Opportunities
With proper foresight, CCA leaders view challenges and risks as avenues of opportunity. Mitchell pointed out that the 100 MW procurements further the economies of scale that CCAs have already achieved by procuring for their smaller customers. Larger loads to procure means having to find more energy to contract, but it also means having more negotiating power and leverage when creating contracts. Additionally, Mitchell noted, some large customers can shift load from one data center to another in minutes, which means they can be a strong tool for demand response and relieving pressure on the grid.
San Diego Community Power (SDCP) is also capitalizing on challenges, as evidenced by its recent launch of the San Diego Regional Energy Network (SDREN). The new network provides programs “designed to make energy efficiency and electrification more accessible and affordable,” according to SDCP CEO Karin Burns. It also may fill future voids given San Diego Gas & Electric (SDG&E) has signaled plans to exit energy efficiency programs.
SDREN is poised to generate $124.3 million in energy efficiency resources for the region through 2027.
Managed by SDCP and the County of San Diego, SDREN will administer 10 programs that aim to facilitate residential and business energy efficiency upgrades, workforce training in green careers, and reduction of customer energy bills. “We’re really focused on launching the REN and making it successful,” Burns said.
Indeed, while the road ahead won’t be easy, CCAs are looking forward and charting courses to find the best ways to meet the needs of their customers and provide them with affordable, clean, and reliable energy.
In concluding the panel, Shaw remarked how, in the CCA world, “There are a ton of challenges, and I think the wonderful opportunity that you’ve heard from each of these four is each of those challenges really is an opportunity to engage.”
