The CEOs of California’s two regional energy-choice programs will stop in Davis next Thursday at a free, open public forum in Community Chambers at 6:30 p.m. to talk about a system of allowing communities to choose more renewable sources of energy than Pacific Gas & Electric Company does now.

The city has been evaluating what’s called a community choice energy model ever since it decided to investigate forming a municipal electric utility in 2013.

Dawn Weisz, CEO of Marin Clean Energy, and Geof Syphers, CEO of Sonoma Clean Power, will share the struggles and triumphs of starting a CCE with forum attendees, with the goal of answering any questions that arise.

State law authorizes cities and counties to purchase electricity on behalf of their residents and businesses. If a CCE is created in Davis, PG&E will still administer and deliver gas and electric power to homes.

Weisz and Syphers are set to talk about renewable energy options, as well as the cost structure for various levels of renewable sources of energy in their communities. The CEOs also plan on sharing the bumps in the road they encountered along the way.

The city’s Community Choice Energy Advisory Committee, appointed by the City Council, is charged with studying the subject and making recommendations to the council by the end of May about whether and how to move forward with a CCE.

While the “whether” may be a foregone conclusion given citywide public support for more choice in renewable energy, the “how” will be a different proposition.

The city could go it alone, forming its own CCE on the model that the Southern California city of Lancaster is doing. Lancaster’s deputy city manager recently gave a talk to the advisory committee while he was in the region.

The forum workshop is a part of the advisory committee’s effort to get the CCE idea in front of residents and get questions and concerns.The forum will present the pros and cons, including staying with the status quo and relying totally on PG&E, which, by the way, is one of the greenest investor-owned utilities in the nation. Still, PG&E’s renewable energy portfolio is a shadow of what the two regional CCEs can deliver, up to 100 percent renewable energy.

In Marin Clean Energy’s case, customers can choose from 51 percent renewable energy, which in some cases provides a slight discount on standard PG&E rates, to 100 percent renewable energy, which usually costs a few dollars more each month than standard PG&E rates.

PG&E still handles the billing and turns the power on and off when you move as well as maintains the power lines, owns the utility infrastructure and handles outage issues.

PG&E records show that it generates 22 percent of its power from renewable sources (biomass, geothermal, some hydroelectric, solar and wind), 10 percent from large hydroelectric and 22 percent from nuclear. Natural-gas power plants and unspecified other sources that do not include coal make up the other 46 percent of PG&E’s energy portfolio.

There’s little PG&E can do about Davis forming a CCE or joining an existing one by law, as opposed to engaging in a long legal battle in court as it threatened to do when the city tried investigating forming its own electric utility.

That could still be in the cards for Davis as an option even if it does go with a CCE first.

CCEs like Sonoma Clean Power have found local ways to produce electricity, such as turning the rooftops of hangars at the San Rafael Airport into a solar power farm.

For more information about the advisory committee, and a primer Q & A about community choice energy and the city’s efforts, look on the City’s website at: http://city-council.cityofdavis.org/on-going-committees/community-choice-energy-advisory-committee

— Reach Dave Ryan at [email protected] Follow him on Twitter at @davewritesnews

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