It was amazingly predictable. California lawmakers created a “green” energy program called Community Choice Aggregation that gives cities and counties the power to buy and sell electricity in local communities now served by investor-owned utilities such as Southern California Edison. They promised lower rates and the expanded use of renewable energy.
As the California Choice Energy Authority explains, “While the price and environmental benefits of CCAs are readily apparent, an important aspect of these remarkable programs is that they can also provide far greater control for municipalities who choose to create their own CCA.” Yet as the Orange County Power Authority plans its rollout, we don’t find CCA advantages to be apparent at all.
Instead of lower rates, the authority is automatically enrolling residents in participating communities (Fullerton, Irvine, Buena Park and Huntington Beach) in a plan that costs 7 percent more than their current service and making it tough for residents to opt out.
The agency isn’t creating more renewable energy – it’s simply “brokering power that would’ve been sold by someone else,” as Orange County Supervisor Doug Chaffee pointed out. OC’s power authority also has failed to improve community control.
In June, the Orange County Grand Jury zinged it for a lack of transparency and for operating without “sufficient expertise to oversee the very complex decisions involved in energy planning and transactions.”
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Last week, the agency board “approved over $200 million in power purchases without hardly any public discussion or details of the purchases, which were announced just before the holiday weekend,” according to the VoiceofOC. As a result, the county is threatening to withdraw from the agency unless it agrees to a thorough audit.
Huntington Beach and Buena Park have passed votes of no confidence in the agency’s operations and Irvine authorized a limited audit over concerns about startup costs. Don Wagner is the only county supervisor who voted against the audit and remains staunchly supportive of this big-government fiasco.
He ought to know better. When has creating a new government bureaucracy resulted in anything other than broken promises and higher costs?