City pauses CCA outreach after suppliers decline to bid; DER outreach will continue
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Summary
City staff told the commission they are pausing Community Choice Aggregation outreach because energy suppliers are not bidding amid unclear state guidance, but they will continue outreach for distributed energy resources (DER) and meet with the state Department of Public Service to seek clarity.
Siobhan, the city’s sustainability planner, told the commission the Community Choice Aggregation (CCA) outreach must be paused because suppliers are not currently bidding to serve CCA programs and outreach conducted now would not meet Public Service Commission timing rules. “We’ve decided that we’re going to pause the CCA outreach at the moment because it’s not going to count towards our program, and we’re going to have to restart it anyway,” she said.
Siobhan and other staff framed the problem as market and regulatory uncertainty rather than a local decision to abandon CCA. Commissioners and staff cited the recent denial of Sustainable Westchester’s reapplication and general vendor hesitancy as major factors shaping supplier behavior and pricing decisions. “They’ve made that decision based on Public Service Commission decisions on other programs,” one participant said.
City staff said the pause does not affect the DER program, which the commission views as the core value of the overall initiative. Siobhan described the DER administrator role as a mediator and consultant, not an energy procurer: the administrator will help residents assess projects, design options and financing and match neighbors for cooperative projects rather than negotiate long-term supply contracts. “They’re basically serving as a sort of, like, consultant for the residents,” Siobhan said.
Staff also stressed practical downsides to doing DER planning without CCA, chiefly that utilities would not be required to share household usage data under a non-CCA approach. Rebecca Evans, the city’s director of sustainability, said that access to utility data makes it easier to design neighborhood-scale projects and to target opportunities where multiple nearby households have similar loads. She added the city will meet with the Department of Public Service the next day to press for clarity on the state’s regulatory approach. “We are meeting with DPS tomorrow … to try and get some clarity on what and why they are regulating some things the way that they are,” Rebecca said.
City staff said Local Power — the program administrator under contract — remains engaged under a separate DER consulting contract that is funded for now, but long-term continuity could depend on future funding and vendor decisions. Commissioners urged staff to publicly explain the pause in CCA outreach while emphasizing that DER outreach and other pieces of the program will continue.
Next steps: staff will meet with the Department of Public Service, evaluate alternative utility or purchasing models if CCA cannot move forward, and prepare public communications explaining the pause and the separate DER activities.
