Hollister residents will be able to take advantage of clean, renewable energy without having to mount solar hardware on their homes starting in spring 2018.
Council members Monday unanimously approved a resolution that allows local residents to choose where they get their energy.
Monterey Bay Community Power is a future joint-powers authority comprised of agencies in Monterey, Santa Cruz and San Benito counties. It allows participating communities to choose where their power comes from at rates equal to or better than PG&E.
The joint powers authority is expected to form in April and will start supplying energy to customers in spring 2018, according to the staff report.
“The goals of the (program) are to reduce greenhouse gas emissions, provide electric power and other forms of energy to customers at competitive prices in Monterey, Santa Cruz and the County of San Benito,” City Manager Bill Avera said during the meeting. “In addition, the program seeks to reduce energy consumption, stimulate the local economy by creating local jobs and promote long-term, electric-rate stability for residents in the tri-county area.”
Startup costs for Monterey Bay Community Power are between $2 million and $3 million, according to the staff report. Participation requires a credit guarantee in the form of a letter of credit, cash collateral or interagency agreement. Since the future board will have 11 seats, each seat on the board would be given around 9 percent of the credit guarantee burden.
The staff report stated five jurisdictions with populations over 50,000 will have permanent seats on the Monterey Bay Community Power board. Those jurisdictions are Santa Cruz County, Monterey County, Salinas, Watsonville and Santa Cruz. San Benito County will also have a permanent seat on the board because it has a relatively large geographic area.
The other five seats on the board will rotate among jurisdictions. This includes one shared seat for San Juan Bautista and Hollister.
The project’s website states that surplus revenue that normally goes to PG&E will stay in the community to help fund renewable energy projects, create jobs and stimulate the economy.
Monterey Bay Community Power Program Manager Gine Johnson shared new information with council members at Monday’s meeting. Johnson previously gave a presentation to the council at an earlier meeting.
“Community choice energy agencies established in California recently hit a threshold of $1 billion of investments in renewables statewide,” Johnson said, “which is really exciting because that’s what it was meant to do: drive good, local renewable projects and make us self sufficient. The second piece of information I thought you’d be interested in is Sonoma Clean Power, acknowledging they have lots of hydro and that’s cheap, just lowered their rates by 10 percent. So it was possible for them to offer greener power, 80 percent greenhouse gas-free, and have really low rates.”
Residents in participating communities will automatically opt into the community choice energy model. Residents will have the choice to opt out and use PG&E as the default option.
Mayor Ignacio Velazquez shared his thoughts on the community choice energy program.
“I’m a big believer in competition, especially when it’s fair,” Velazquez said. “I can see this actually working if the board remembers that the objective here is to keep prices low and provide clean power. I think we can get there. There’s just, as with all boards, we just need to make sure that they don’t lose focus.”
