There is a very interesting item on this Tuesday’s City Council agenda, and that is the issue of Community Choice Energy. Community Choice Aggregation (CCA), also known as Community Choice Energy (CCE), is an alternative to the incumbent investor owned utility energy supply system. Instead, local entities in California and other States pool together the buying power of individual customers within a defined jurisdiction in order to secure alternative energy supply contracts.
Community Choice (passed into law in California in 2002) gives cities the choice of purchasing energy from a variety of providers, including those who produce renewable energy. According to the Sierra Club there are 47 California communities served mainly by community choice aggregation (CCA). In Southern California, one of those aggregators is the Clean Power Alliance, which contracts power directly from renewable resources like wind and solar farms for several cities, including Oxnard, Thousand Oaks, Ventura, and West Hollywood. Aggregation allows cities to pool demand to reduce prices and make clear their long-term interest in renewable electricity generation. In this program, regional investor-owned utility Southern California Edison still operates the region’s transmission lines and delivers the clean electricity to residents and businesses.
Newer CCEs in California increasingly focus transition to local renewable energy sources rather than grid power. This could be good for Long Beach for a number of reasons.
1) Could give Long Beach the opportunity to purchase power from ‘greener” sources than those we have historically obtained energy from. Ratepayers would have to option to purchase 100%, 50% or 2/3rd clean energy.
2) Could make Long Beach more resilient against the problems that can beset large power providers that require a lot of infrastructure and transmission lines to deliver energy. That is because, with CCE, our energy would come from a variety of sources. For example, it would give Long Beach the option to have community solar programs that could relieve the power grid.
3) Could drive down the costs of power since energy sources would complete with each other. As well as speed up the creation of clean renewable energy that with time will reduce cost.
The threats associated with climate change are very serious, currently much of California is on fire due to extremely hot weather, Greenland’s ice sheets are melting and ocean temperatures are warming, which is acidifying our ocean. Expected sea level rise will have a significant impact on Los Cerritos Wetlands. Community Choice seems like a practical way to help move us off of fossil fuels and on to renewables. I’m planning to tune in to the City Council meeting on Tuesday to learn more, and I hope you will too.
AB 1788
AB 1788 would ban 2nd generation anticoagulant rat poisons in California. The banning of these poisons would protect raptors throughout California, including the raptors of Los Cerritos Wetlands. The sad chain of events is that hawks, eagles, owls and other animals eat poisoned rodents, thus the poison gets in their system and they sicken and die. An easy way to break that chain is to outlaw these very dangerous rodenticides.
This ban on these products, after passing several committees in the State Senate is headed to a full floor vote this week. Therefore I need you to contact either State Senator, Lena Gonzalez, (who represents most of Long Beach) or State Senator Tom Umberg, (who represents the eastern parts of Long Beach as well as Seal Beach and Los Alamitos), as soon as possible. After all, local voters in the district are the most potent force there is. If you don’t know which representative is yours, you can find that information here.
All you need to say is that you are a voter in their district and you support AB 1788 to ban 2nd generation anticoagulant rodent poisons because wildlife, pets and children are important to you! Here is a list of supporting groups of AB 1788, some interesting facts about the problem and how AB 1788 is the solution. As you can see, we are in good company.
Legislature Bill AB 1788 has already passed several hurdles -1) Three Assembly Committees and the full Assembly last year2) Three Senate Committees. It passed the critical 3rd Senate committee just on Thursday!
Let’s help get AB 1788 past this important hurdle by sending a quick email to either Senator Lena Gonzalez or Senator Tom Umberg. They are both good people who support Los Cerritos Wetlands. Please take this simple action to help protect the charismatic raptors that call Los Cerritos Wetlands their home.