Mayor Lee and supervisors spar over Clean Power SF after PUC rejects proposed rates

Mayor Edwin Lee defended the San Francisco Public Utilities Commission’s decision this week to reject proposed rates for the City’s Community Choice Aggregation program, saying the commission was fulfilling its charter duty to protect ratepayers.

The exchange came during question time at the San Francisco Board of Supervisors on Tuesday, when multiple supervisors pressed the mayor about what his office is doing to implement the Clean Power SF policy the Board approved last year.

The disagreement centers on how much of the electricity mix the program would purchase as directly bundled renewable power versus renewable energy certificates, known as RECs. Lee told the Board that the package presented to the commission included only 25 percent “true renewable energy” and relied on 75 percent RECs, a change he said degraded the program’s environmental benefit and raised costs for local customers.

"The Public Utilities Commission's primary charter mandated duties are to protect the rate payers," Mayor Edwin Lee said. "After getting lobbied very hard by some advocates and members of this board to approve a program, the commissioners ultimately decided that…