By Woody Hastings, CCP | February 10, 2016 California ranks number one in terms of modernizing its electrical grid for the 21st century according to a new study by the GridWise Alliance in collaboration with Clean Edge. The study also finds that the number of smart meters capable of two-way communication surpassed that of old-fashioned … Read more
By Bill Skoonberg (Guest blog contribution to The Climate Center) Ever wonder what you can do to address the climate crisis? The folks at The Climate Center have been working on that question since their founding in 2001. In 2005, they identified Community Choice energy as the single most powerful tool available to local governments to … Read more
by Woody Hastings | September 16, 2015 The 2015 legislative season came to a close on Friday September 11th. Several bills that the Center for Climate Protection endorsed were either extended as two-year bills that will be taken up again when the next session begins in January, were enacted with significant amendments, or were … Read more
By Woody Hastings Lancaster is well known in renewable energy circles as the first city in the United States to mandate solar on all new homes. In May, Lancaster achieved another big milestone when it began operating the third Community Choice energy program in California. Lancaster Choice Energy is live! It took Marin and Sonoma … Read more
May 20, 2015 | by Woody Hastings Recently I visited the California Independent System Operator (CAISO) – my first visit ever. I always wondered why CAISO was located in Folsom, California. I learned that Folsom is one of the least seismically active areas in the State, yet still close to the centers of policy decision-making. … Read more
A two-year struggle to defeat an insidious piece of legislation in Sacramento, Assembly Bill 976, has come to a happy conclusion. On September 27 Governor Brown vetoed AB976 and added a brief signing statement (see below). In this statement the Governor echoed what community choice proponents drove home repeatedly in committee hearings and elsewhere. The … Read more
If you ever get the chance to drive by the ever-colorful Ace Sebastopol Hardware Center, look up. You can’t see the forty kilowatts of solar panels installed on the roof that power the entire place on sunny days, but you can see the small, community scale wind generator that has been installed. This is a … Read more
