[Sustain] SF Guardian Report On Historic CleanPowerSF Victory

[Eric Brooks]

Hi all,

Here is the excellent SF Guardian report about the CleanPowerSF victory 
Tuesday.

http://tinyurl.com/9tk9nwb

Historic, veto-proof vote launches CleanPowerSF
09.18.12 - 6:24 pm
Steven T. Jones

The San Francisco Board of Supervisors today cast an historic vote that 
was more than a decade in the making, approving the CleanPowerSF program 
– which challenges PG&E’s monopoly by offering 100 percent renewable 
energy directly to city residents – on an 8-3 vote that would be enough 
to override an implied veto threat by Mayor Ed Lee.

The outcome was far from certain throughout the two-hour hearing as 
conservative Sups. Mark Farrell and Carmen Chu led efforts to undermine 
the program, which was the final work product of retiring San Francisco 
Public Utilities Commission Executive Director Ed Harrington, who 
previously served as the city’s controller for 17 years.

The pair of supervisors offered a series of amendments challenging the 
state requirement that city residents must proactively opt-out of such 
community choice aggregation (CCA) programs if they want to remain with 
PG&E, offering convoluted language that would have required people to 
opt-in to the program before its launch, and requiring that the $13 
million in reserve funds from the SFPUC be covered entirely by 
CleanPowerSF customers, which could increase its rates.

“It looks like the amendments would be harmful to the success of the 
program,” Sup. Eric Mar observed, prompting Farrell and Chu to flash 
broad conspiratorial smiles at one another.

Sup. Scott Wiener, who was undecided and considered a key swing vote in 
reaching a veto-proof majority, said he also had concerns about the 
opt-out requirement and wanted to better understand how the amendments 
would work and whether they were legal. “For me, I’m not interested in 
putting any poison pills in here,” he said.

Wiener posed questions about the amendments to Farrell and to 
Harrington, who said it was possible for the SFPUC to have CleanPowerSF 
customers repay the initial allocation of reserve funds over time but 
that he wasn’t sure how the opt-in change would work without sabotaging 
the program.

“It harms the ability to have an intelligent conversation with people,” 
Harrington said, noting that rates are based on the number of customers 
in the program, so it would be nearly impossible to survey everyone’s 
potential interest without being able to tell them how their bills would 
be affected.

As it is, the SFPUC has already done extensive surveys of which 
neighborhoods and demographics are likely to be interested in taking 
part in CleanPowerSF, initially paying about $10 more per month for 100 
percent renewable energy (PG&E’s portfolio includes less than 30 percent 
renewable). “We’ve done extensive surveys already,” Harrington said. 
Based on that research, the city is initially rolling out the program to 
less than a third of city residents, who will be repeatedly notified 
about how to opt-out, anticipating about 90,000 customers remain in the 
initial program.

The program has been repeatedly tweaked over the last eight years that 
it’s been in development, during which time Marin County launched a 
successful version of the CCA concept that was developed in San 
Francisco by legislators Tom Ammiano, Carole Migden, and Mark Leno.

“I feel pretty comfortable trusting Ed Harrington on whether the numbers 
add up,” said the measure’s chief sponsor, Sup. David Campos, arguing 
against the Farrell/Chu amendments, later adding, “With Ed Harrington 
leading this charge, this is as good as it gets. If you don’t like CCA 
under Ed Harrington, you’re not going to like CCA.”

Farrell claimed to support CCA in concept, but he strenuously objected 
to the opt-out requirements that Migden included in the enabling state 
legislation, which she had argued was the only way to make CCAs viable 
against PG&E’s proven willingness to spend tens of millions of dollars 
to sabotage would-be competitors.

“It’s the wrong way to legislate, the opt-out. It’s smells of coercion,” 
Farrell said. Campos countered that, “The best thing we can give the 
consumers in San Francisco is a choice, a meaningful choice.”

Wiener ultimately made a motion to delay the item by a week, something 
Mayor Lee yesterday told the Chronicle he wanted, in order to further 
study the opt-out issue, telling Farrell that his amendment “feels a 
little seat of the pants to me.”

Campos and other progressive supervisors who were supporting 
CleanPowerSF argued against the continuance, noting that it has been 
years in development and sitting in board committees since January, 
while the Farrell/Chu amendments weren’t offered until this meeting had 
already begun.

“This is not going to change because we wait a week to make a decision,” 
Campos said. “The terms of this deal are not going to change.”

The motion for a continuance failed on a 4-7 vote, with Wiener joined by 
Farrell, Chu, and Sup. Sean Elsbernd (who offered no comments throughout 
the hearing).

Then, as the vote on the Farrell/Chu opt-in amendment came up for vote, 
Wiener said, “I don’t feel comfortable voting for amendments that I 
don’t know what they’ll do,” and it failed on a 3-8 vote.

Sup. Malia Cohen had earlier indicated a willingness to support the 
other Farrell/Chu amendment: saddling CleanPowerSF customers with paying 
the SFPUC back for reserve fund costs – which Harrington indicated could 
be dragged out over many years to minimize the impact on rates, and 
which might not be necessary at all if the initial program exceeds 
expectations.

That amendment was then approved on an 8-3 vote, with Sups. Jane Kim, 
Christina Olague, and John Avalos opposed. Another set of amendments 
that would keep low-income city residents out of the initial rollout and 
take other steps to reduce their rates if they opted in – which was 
developed by Kim, Olague, and Sup. Eric Mar – was unanimously approved 
by the board.

Then it was time for the big vote on creating the CleanPowerSF program, 
approving the contract with Shell Energy Northern California to 
administer it, and authorizing the initial $19.5 million expenditure. 
Would there be eight votes to override a veto by Mayor Lee, who has been 
under pressure by PG&E and their downtown allies to kill the program?

“To be perfectly candid, I struggled mightily with this contract,” 
Wiener said, reiterating his concern about its opt-in requirement, 
noting that the measure wasn’t perfect, even though it was significantly 
improved from earlier versions. It sounded as if he were about to vote 
against it.

“What we have the opportunity to do is move forward with clean power,” 
Wiener said, noting that even Marin County supervisors who initially 
opposed its CCA have come around to supporting it. “This is something I 
believe we should try.”

And with that, the board voted 8-3 to launch the program in mid-2013, 
with Chu, Farrell, and Elsbernd opposed.

Campos said he was “pleasantly surprised” by the vote, while key 
supporters say they are cautiously hopeful it will stand up during next 
week's final supervisorial approval on second reading and in a veto 
override vote, if that becomes necessary. Campos said he was thankful 
for the work of Harrington, who got a standing ovation after the vote as 
the board recognized him for his long service to the city.

Earlier in the meeting, Harrington told supervisors that while the 
program isn’t perfect, and it contains some risks that he considers 
reasonable, there is no other way the city has identified to meet 
ambitious greenhouse gas reduction goals it has set for itself over the 
last decade. It is city policy to reduce emissions by 25 percent below 
1990 levels by 2017 and 80 percent below those levels by 2050.

“This program before you has the only chance of reaching those goals. 
There’s nothing else,” Harrington said. He also said “it’s an incredibly 
efficient way to spend money,” noting that the city has spend $90 
million on solar and other renewable energy projects that power fewer 
than 7,000 homes, whereas this $19.5 million will power 90,000 
households, possibly without ever tapping into that $13 million reserve 
fund set aside to cover any losses by Shell, which will buy renewable 
energy, a role the city hopes to eliminate as it develops its own projects.

Harrington said the ultimate goal of CleanPowerSF is to develop a large 
enough customer base that the city could use revenue bonds to finance a 
wide variety of renewable energy projects – many using solar arrays 
along city-owned property connected to its water system stretching all 
the way to Hetch Hetchy Valley – that would pay for themselves.

“The real issue is can you build a facility that will have this rate 
structure support it?” Harrington said.

That’s the real power and potential of CleanPowerSF – finally taking 
action to address global warming, which will have a huge impact on San 
Francisco and future generations – as supporters noted in a rally 
outside City Hall before the meeting. Sen. Mark Leno said that he 
doesn’t usually weigh in on proposals before the board, but that, “This 
is an exceptional time and this is an exceptional vote. This is the time 
that we need to address our inconvenient truth.”