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LAFCO reviews consultant report on Clean Power SF; staff seeks comments by Nov. 7
Summary
LAFCO staff presented a large consultant draft assessing a local Clean Power SF community choice aggregation plan, asked for comments by Nov. 7 and outlined a path to a final report and a potential joint meeting with the CPUC; SFPUC and public speakers urged attention to small-scale projects and affordable opt-in options.
LAFCO received a final draft consultant report and asked stakeholders to submit comments by Nov. 7 as staff prepares a final version for the December meeting.
Jason Fried, LAFCO staff, told commissioners the report is large — "a 190 pages in length, but there is a nice shorter executive summary" — and that staff is primarily seeking corrections and factual clarifications before returning a final document. Fried said consultants identified potential local projects and job-creation opportunities but had difficulty modeling energy-efficiency program impacts without defined rate structures. "One of the things that you'll probably end up finding is that we should probably ... set rates so we can actually move a program forward and actually learn better about how jobs can be created," he said.
The report has been shared with the California Public Utilities Commission, the city's Department of the Environment (staff contact: Cal Broomhead) and an economics reviewer, Ted Egan, Fried said. He proposed convening a joint meeting between LAFCO and the CPUC — potentially in January if the comment timeline holds — so commissioners could question CPUC staff directly.
Barbara Hale, assistant general manager for power at the San Francisco Public Utilities Commission, said regulators have shown interest in related matters and she was "optimistic that we'll see something before the end of the year" on PG&E's green tariff proceeding that could affect options available for local programs.
Public commenters generally welcomed the report while urging changes to priorities. Eric Brooks of the San Francisco Green Party said the consultant material showed the SFPUC could run purchasing and customer service in-house but that the report "seem[ed] to deemphasize a lot the idea of a lot of small solar and behind-the-meter efficiency installations" in favor of large projects. Judd Holtzman of 350 San Francisco urged LAFCO to lead scoping for the next, more detailed analysis and pushed for a cheaper "light green" option to be available from the outset so customers would have an affordable choice.
The item was informational; Fried will collect comments through Nov. 7, incorporate factual corrections where needed and return a final report to the commission at a subsequent meeting. A joint meeting with the CPUC and additional public engagement were listed as possible next steps.
