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

Energy Resilience

California Experience Implementing Community Choice Energy (CCE)

California Experience Implementing Community Choice Energy (CCE)

Community Choice Energy (CCE) is accelerating decarbonization of California’s electricity use. CCE service providers are a natural hub for collaborative engagement among local energy stakeholders and investors, including grid owners prosumers, counties and cities. But under current state imposed revenue diversions California CCEs cannot respond to local supply and energy resilience needs and opportunities, nor can they strike an economically beneficial long term balance between centralized and decentralized electricity supply for the areas they serve.

Resilient Decarbonization Requires State and Local Leadership

Resilient Decarbonization Requires State and Local Leadership

Are California’s energy resilience assets being used to provide energy security for diverse and important sub-sets of individual electricity customers? Yes, but not for all important sub-sets. Has massive deployment of on-site energy resilience assets in California to date enabled their effective use to back up local electricity grids. Not yet. Are energy resilience assets being integrated with grid assets to maximize local energy security? Not yet. Will the doubling of resilient supply assets expected in the next five years materially improve energy resilience in California? Not to the extent it could. Optimally effective use can only be achieved when there is smarter and more flexible local electricity grid operation. The cost of local energy resilience can either be high or modest, depending on whether on-site energy supply and storage assets are used effectively. Especially assets that decarbonize cost-efficiently and result in “resilient decarbonization”. Community microgrids enable effective use of resilient decarbonization assets, but not utility owned solar and battery storage assets. Their role in for-profit utility rate-base building has yet to be demonstrated. The urgent question is whether other stakeholders - cities, counties and states - will overcome utility resistance and lead the way on an affordable energy resilience path that serves all energy users, not just those who have backup on-site.

Solar Power Cost, Benefit, and Deployment Capacity Shifts

Solar Power Cost, Benefit, and Deployment Capacity Shifts

A New Opportunity for California Cities and Counties. Property owners in most of northern California now recapture their on-site solar investments in as little as 5-6 years and continue to save money for another 20 years. Their communities benefit as well to the extent local governments act to capture reliability, resilience and equity benefits a thriving local solar industry makes possible. California counties and cities with mature local solar deployment capacity are seeing sustained double digit annual on-site solar expansion. It is as if an exceptionally talented and productive player just began playing for the local team – a player with the ability to lower energy costs, increase energy resilience and enable more equitable access to locally produced zero carbon electricity.

Local Climate Action and Adaptation Planning

Local Climate Action and Adaptation Planning

Local climate action and adaptation is a relatively new planning consideration. Carefully planned and implemented, it can strengthen local economies, create local jobs, increase county and city tax revenues, and improve essential services. Local planning is essential because of local differences that cause large local deviations from statewide average energy usage patterns, transportation infrastructure, renewable resource opportunities, environmental concerns, and demographics.