Gerald Braun
Can San Diego Drive Electricity Prices Down ...

For-profit California electric utilities charge high prices and take minimal climate action. Three state-regulated for-profits, PG&E, SCE, and SDG&E, charge two to three times more for the electricity they deliver than large city regulated counterparts charge.  The giant for-profits aim for carbon neutrality in 2040 or 2045.  Large locally regulated electric utilities, SMUD and LADWP, aim for carbon neutrality by 2030 or 2035. 

Can San Diego Drive Electricity Prices Down While Neutralizing Carbon?
Energy Transition
Gerald Braun
Integrated Implementation of Community Solar ...

California and other states need a way to capture the environmental and economic benefits of community solar. Other states have found a way. California’s CCE industry should ask the California legislature to consider allowing California CCEs to use all or a portion of annual CPUC mandated PCIA charges to put local renewable projects on an equal economic footing with projects that require new high voltage transmission capacity to deliver electricity locally. This will increase CCE capacity and flexibility to address local energy resilience needs and to provide equitable access locally to the environmental and economic benefits of solar electricity.

Integrated Implementation of Community Solar and Community Choice
Analysis, News, Energy Transition
Gerald Braun
Can Colorado Take Community Choice Energy to ...

The Colorado Public Utilities Commission (PUC) has been tasked by the Colorado legislature to recommend whether and how to implement Community Choice Energy (CCE).

California’s CCE experience has been rich in diversity and local/state decarbonization impact. California CCE generation portfolios are on track to become fully decarbonized in the next few years. The California CCE model was conceived and adopted two decades ago. It exploits economic options available at the time but allows little flexibility to capture economic, environmental and energy resilience benefits of local supply and infrastructure investment.

Nevertheless, Colorado and other states can adapt and expand California’s CCE model to facilitate 21st century energy policy implementation. Specific adaptations can result in greater reliance on local renewable electricity sources and electrification of local transportation. By adopting them Colorado can take CCE to the next level of public benefits and impact.


Can Colorado Take Community Choice Energy to the Next Level?
Op-Ed, Analysis
Gerald Braun
Community Choice Electricity is a Better Way to ...

If Colorado adopts community choice, it should set a high bar for future local energy collaboration and fair cost responsibilities. This will give Colorado communities a much better way to meet energy and climate challenges of the 21st century.

Community Choice Electricity is a Better Way to Meet 21st Century Challenges
Blog, Analysis
Gerald Braun
California Energy Democracy's Last Stand

California has ramped up a seventy-six billion dollar investment in all types of solar generation capacity over the past decade. California’s retail solar industry enabled half of the total investment. Rooftop solar has been a bright spot for California’s renewable energy transition even as state regulators and California utilities continue to make other energy democracy enablers - community choice, community solar, community microgrids - hard or impossible to finance.

Regulators are now considering rule changes that impose punitive “grid access” fees on rooftop solar adoption, plus drastic reductions in compensation for electricity that feeds into the grid from rooftop solar arrays. The future of energy democracy in California hangs in the balance.


[1] The proposed CPUC decision is not accompanied by case studies indicating how it will work out for ratepayers.

California Energy Democracy's Last Stand

Battery Storage

Life Cycle GHG Emissions of Energy Transition Materials and Equipment

Life Cycle GHG Emissions of Energy Transition Materials and Equipment

Substitution of materials, equipment and low carbon fuels for high carbon fuels is underway and moving forward faster in some countries and economic sectors than others.  Substitution of manufactured equipment for fuels adds “life cycle carbon” to historical and on-going GHG emissions.  To what extent do GHGs emitted in creating low carbon energy economies retard overall decarbonization progress?  Life cycle carbon emissions for the years 2020 through 2029 add up to a minimum of 35 billion metric tons of CO2-eq, or roughly a year’s worth of current global energy related GHG emissions.  Overall life cycle carbon emissions will continue to increase after 2029 at least until direct global GHG emissions are brought under control. 

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Toward a More Circular Renewable Energy Economy

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Toward a More Circular Renewable Energy Economy

Just as the atmosphere’s capacity to absorb GHGs without affecting climate is limited, so is the earth’s capacity to supply materials to replace those that are used only once.   In a renewable energy context, there are two basic solutions.  First, there is no technical reason renewable energy equipment cannot be built to last decades longer than it otherwise might.  How can renewable energy markets and policies reward durability and long, low maintenance project and system operation even as major supply chain industries continue to thrive on planned obsolescence?  Second, renewable energy material and component recovery and reuse is feasible but not generally either mandatory or economically rewarding.  Will publicly financed renewable energy waste recovery be necessary, and which governments will take the lead in making it work fairly and efficiently?