The Journal Does Community Choice Aggregate

The North Coast Journal takes a look at the Community Choice Aggregate power option. This supposedly allows the county to buy power at wholesale cost for residents and pass the savings to consumers. I covered the Times- Standard's story on this a while back.

Some of what proponents say has me confused, if not downright suspicious. Arcata's Mayor Michael Winkler: "It's not only good for the environment, but also begins to keep the roughly $500 million per year that we spend on energy in Humboldt County in the county creating local jobs and circulating our energy dollars in our local economy,".

I'm not sure how he can reasonably suggest that. This plan means the entity buying power can buy it from anywhere, not necessarily local. That in itself seems odd to me. Even if you're buying power from an outside company, you're still really using PG&E's power from King Salmon, at least for the most part. You don't have an exclusive power line from some "green" source far away.

How does that really change anything? It doesn't keep our power any more local than it already is. It does offer the chance to buy power from outside the county. How's that keeping the money "local". And his assertion that it's good for the environment? We mostly use PG&E's natural gas up here. Something not green enough about that?

Natural gas is relatively cheap, compared to supposed more "green" power sources such as wind and solar. I have to wonder if the savings here are akin to passing up $1.00 per unit, in favor of other green power at $3.00 per unit, but only paying $2.00 per unit by buying it wholesale?

Third District Supervisor Mark Lovelace seems to have the more sober view of the proposal: "What are the community benefits to achieve?" he asked. "Is it maximum savings? More renewable energy? [Incorporating] local biomass? Those could be at odds with each other."

Exactly.