The Biggest Green Power Thing in America

2023 will one day be known that a major new model for renewable energy blew past the pack. True, it took a quarter century of preparation to make this happen, but Local Power LLC is nothing if not patient. No one noticed, but everyone is talking about it.

Every one of our community energy aggregation models, from Municipal Aggregation in Massachusetts to Community Choice Aggregation (2.0) in California, has taken years to show results. Local Power's Green Bond model took 15 years for San Francisco to start using CCA 2.0, our second generation CCA model, took from 1998 to 2014 to complete! But within the next ten years, something bigger than anything so far has happened. CCA 3.0 in New York, which we started in 2014 to create a replicable model for all major forms of carbon, has already taken a decade, too. Everybody asks, can you speed it up?.

And indeed, the records that CCA broke last year were based on models first approved by various governments 20 years ago. But it is the fastest gun in the West as far as transforming energy overnight.

You don't know about it because your eyes are fixed upon the hare. But look at the results! CCA is bigger than the largest players in renewable energy. CCA 2.0 programs in California were the largest issuer of Green Bonds in America last year, building $10B of $30B in new renewables, while maintaining competitive rates for tens of millions of Californians. An energy transition without economic pain? Not only that, California CCAs took nine of the top ten spots of all US utilities, on a list that includes megautilities like PG&E, National Grid, and the Tennessee Valley Authority, for renewable energy customers above regulatory minimums. In fact, California CCAs got more than ten times the customers of the next ten on the National Renewable Energy Laboratory's list.

You don't know this because it was not achieved by a billionaire. The media is less excited about municipalities than billionaires. But CCA 2.0 municipalities in California have blown the entire renewable energy establishment out of the window.

As the creators of CCA in California, we have bragging rights, if not billions of dollars in our pockets. With us, municipalities have the victory, if not the prize, in climate action and energy transformation in the U.S... CCA 2.0 is not just the record breaker for building and buying renewable energy, but it blew past every US utility, all of which have had many decades to get there but have never done so. CCAs have done so in remarkably little time! It is the tortoise, not the hare, who is fastest: communities organized democratically, not corporations, regulated or not, serving isolated consumers, that have transformed energy.

You ain't seen nothing yet. CCA 3.0, our new model, has in our estimation thirty to fifty times the punch of CCA 2.0. Finally, we have both a proven, replicable model for climate action without rate increases or taxes, and a mature model, developed over thirty years of successful demonstrations, that makes CCA 3.0 even bigger, better stronger and faster than California municipalities' great achievement.