SONOMA CLEAN POWER
Bright lights, big cities How Sonoma Clean Power’s EverGreen service helps local municipalities meet their low-carbon goals
By Mallorie Deming
C lean, renewable energy for everyone—it’s not just an idea, but a reality for thousands of Sonoma and Mendocino County residents and businesses. Back in 2014, Sonoma Clean Power (SCP) unveiled its EverGreen service, becoming the only utility in California (actually the U.S.) offering 100% renewable and locally generated energy around the clock. Using solar energy during the day, and geothermal energy at night,
Power is generated for all cities within Sonoma and Mendocino counties, with the exception of Healdsburg and Ukiah; both have their own city-operated public power utilities program. The value of going EverGreen Anyone can opt in to the EverGreen service, which is 100% renewable, an upgrade over the baseline service, CleanStart, at 50% renewable and 91% carbon-free. EverGreen comes with a higher price, with customers paying an additional 2.5 cents per kilowatt hour of usage. According to SCP, the cost of the
this clean-power concept is made possible by our area’s abundant natural resources—both above and below the surface. “It’s all about how [the energy] is made,” says Patrick Slayter, who served 12 years on the Sebastopol
premium EverGreen service for the average residence is roughly an additional $13 per month over CleanStart, depending on household usage, time of year and other determining factors. “The idea that SCP would be able to offer 100% renewable electricity without any reliance on natural gas power plants to back it up at night was really aspirational,” says Slayter. Slayter also urges those
City Council, mayor for four of those years, as well as serving as Sebastopol’s representative on the Sonoma Clean Power board of directors, with two years as chair. “If [a city] can reduce electricity being made in a non-renewable way and replace it with electricity made in a renewable way, it puts us in a better place,” says Slayter, one of the earliest advocates of Sebastopol joining SCP’s 100% renewable program. In total, nine cities and counties have joined EverGreen: Sebastopol, Sonoma, Cotati, Rohnert Park, Petaluma, Santa Rosa, the town of Windsor, and Sonoma County and Mendocino County. A geothermal gold mine Below the surface in Northern California, there is access to geothermal energy—a low-carbon energy generated by heat within the Earth’s crust. “Geothermal is very renewable,” says Dave King, former board member of SCP and Petaluma City Council in the early days of the agency. “It is power generated from steam that comes out of deep hot rocks,” he explains. “We sit between Lake Mendocino and Lake Sonoma— basically the Saudi Arabia of geothermal. “It’s renewable, it's clean and it's local,” he adds. “If projects can be done locally like that, it's good economically for the region.” King is one of several former Petaluma City Council members who were an integral part of EverGreen’s rollout. SCP is a community-owned not-for-profit agency, governed by a board of directors made up of elected officials from cities and counties who are members of the agency. In 2015, King was on the board as Petaluma’s representative for SCP and later became vice chair until 2022. “In the beginning, not all of the eligible cities and counties were part of Sonoma Clean Power,” he says. “But it was fairly quick for most to join on, [later] expanding into Mendocino County” in 2017.
The Geysers Geothermal Field near Clear Lake [Courtesy usgs.gov]
considering solar as the primary way of lowering their carbon footprint to look into the EverGreen service to provide their power at night and through the winter or as an alternative to rooftop solar altogether. “For homes, it’s much more cost effective to have EverGreen than solar on any single house,” he explains. “The amount of embodied energy in a standalone rooftop solar system on a smaller house is significant. Large scale solar is more efficient and cost effective for the net reduction of greenhouse gas emissions.” Goodbye greenhouse gas The EverGreen service eliminates almost all greenhouse gases from electricity use—which can result in a major shrinking of the energy carbon footprint it takes to operate a municipality. “To me, the great benefit of EverGreen is that municipalities like Sonoma County started to realize that we could switch our service to 100% locally produced renewable,” says Slayter, adding that it goes a long way toward helping cities and counties meet their greenhouse-gas- emission goals. When cities like Sebastopol and Sonoma switch to EverGreen, it provides clean energy for a vast array of electricity needs—think streetlights, city offices, etc. “This allows them to meet state-mandated requirements for GHG,” says Slayter. “To get that level of reduction any other way would cost a lot more.” n
4 NorthBaybiz
2025
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