SPONSORED SPECIAL SECTION | SONOMA CLEAN POWER
Sonoma Clean Power at 10: The fight for clean energy From rolling blackouts to renewable energy today—a brief history of Sonoma Clean Power
By Cerrissa Kim
S onoma Clean Power is celebrating 10 years of bringing clean energy to the residents of Sonoma and Mendocino counties, as the public power provider serving about half a million residents. Now, more than a decade in (the official launch day was May 1, 2014), 87% of eligible homes and businesses in Sonoma and Mendocino counties are customers—an indication of user satisfaction and SCP’s success in providing cleaner electricity, like solar and geothermal power, aimed at reducing carbon and greenhouse gas emissions at comparable costs to traditional providers. But the road to cleaner power has been long and sometimes
fiasco was the motivating factor in the recall of then-Gov. Gray Davis, who was voted out of office in 2003.) In response to what became known as “the energy crisis,” the state legislature in 2002 passed Assembly Bill 117, an energy game-changer for Californians. Authored by North Bay Assemblywoman Carole Migden, the law allowed local jurisdictions to form a community choice aggregator (CCA)—a local agency which could purchase electric power on behalf of residential and commercial customers, to be delivered via the supply infrastructure already in place through traditional utilities like PG&E. The aggregation advantage Without the profit motive of investor-owned utilities, Community Choice Aggregation enables local agencies to offer cleaner energy choices at competitive rates. Any city, county or combination within an investor-
Geof Syphers, SCP CEO
rocky—marked by an energy crisis, opposition from utilities and the ever- encroaching threat of climate change. Here’s how Sonoma Clean Power came to be. Community Choice—born under punches The advent of Sonoma Clean Power and clean-energy providers like it was never a sure thing. In fact, only a few years before SCP launched, the reliability of the energy industry in California was hitting its low point. The seeds of the problem were laid in 1997, when California, by way of Assembly Bill 1890, deregulated its
owned utility’s distribution territory can form a CCA. While CCAs provide electric generation, utilities like PG&E remain responsible for gas, the poles and wires for electric delivery, meter readings, billing and repairs. (Customers can also opt out of a CCA and have their energy needs fully served by an investor-owned utility.) Once AB 117 was on the books, several communities launched feasibility studies, risk assessments and community outreach about community choice. Moving fastest was Marin County, which launched
energy market in the hopes that more competition would lower prices. What it led to, instead, were regulatory failures and manipulation of the market by companies like Enron in their quests to increase profits. By 2000, state residents became all-too familiar with the term “rolling blackout”—when high energy demand coupled with limited supply, led utilities like PG&E to schedule temporary power cuts to certain areas in order to reduce demand. The public was incensed and faith in such companies as PG&E and other investor-owned utilities hit an all-time low. (Some say the energy
the first community choice program in California in 2010. Marin Clean Energy (now simply MCE) faced its share of challenges along the way. In addition to educating a community that had come of age under the traditional for-profit utility model, Marin fought pushback from PG&E—which funded a ballot measure that, if passed, would have set the bar so high for CCAs it would have been virtually impossible for them to form. When that initiative, Proposition 16, was rejected by voters in 2010, the Sonoma
Timeline
2014: SCP launch
2000: Gov.v Davis during the energy crisis
2002: Assembly passes AB 117
May 1, 2014 : Sonoma Clean Power launches service
2002: AB 117 passes—California communities can legally form CCAs
2000: Energy Crisis reaches peak
2010: Marin Clean Energy becomes first CCA in state
2016: SCP and five other CCAs form California Community Choice Association trade association
46 NorthBaybiz
May 2025
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