Sonoma County starts new public (clean) power agency
Wine yards in Sonoma County, California (source: flickr/ Tim Wilson, creative commons)
Alexander Richter
19 Oct 2013
Sonoma County in California creates new power agency, Sonoma Clean Power, that is to source 70 percent of its power from carbon-free resources, with a total of 33 percent to come from wind, geothermal, biomass and small-hydro.
In an interesting development in California, Sonoma County founds with Sonoma Clean Power, a new public power agency.
Sonoma County is located in Northern California and is one of the largest of nine San Francisco Bay area countries. The county has a population of around 480,000 people with the county seat and largest city being Santa Rosa, with one of the largest geothermal fields of the world, the Geysers, nearby. The Geysers geothermal field stretches over the counties of Sonoma, Lake and Mendocino in California
The agency has set up green power targets in its initial sketch of the agency’s work and it is expected to serve first – mostly commercial – customers by May of next year. Terms dictate the agency to derive around 70 percent of its electricity to come from carbon-free sources.
The largest utility out West, PG&E currently derives 51 percent of its supply from green energy sources.
Sonoma Clean Power is likely to derive a bit less than half of its carbon-free power from renewable sources, including wind, geothermal, biomass and small hydroelectric projects.
While this sounds great, there are questions on how “green” the agency will be, as it plans to use renewable energy credits. Renewable Energy Certificates (credits) are by definition (U.S. EPA) tradable, non-tangible energy commodities in the U.S., representing proof of 1 MWh of power having been generated from an eligible renewable energy resource, which includes geothermal.
This allows the agency to “package a premium payment for undelivered green power with contracted electricity from a conventional source”, with an expected 16 percent of overall supply to be made up from renewable energy credits.
As it is a cost-saving tool, planned to be transitional, it could be seen as “greenwashing”. But nevertheless it will eventually create more investment into actual green energy generation, particularly – so the article – on a local level.
Generally, this is a great approach to create another buyer of clean power in California that could at least create some competition in the power market and provide a “green” option for companies buying power in California.
Now “four energy supply bidders, national or multinational power companies, are competing for the initial power contract. According to Press Democrat this could be worth up $130 million annually by 2017, based on current enrollment from the county and five participating cities and assuming a 20 percent opt-out rate by customers who prefer to stay with PG&E.”
At least it creates another potential buyer of geothermal power generated in California or even in neighbouring Nevada.
Source: Press Democrat
