SCP stakeholders gather for the launch of Sonoma Clean Power in 2014. [Image courtesy Sonoma Clean Power]
Sonoma 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 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 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 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-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 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 County Water Agency (now Sonoma Water) formed a steering committee to study the risks and benefits of operating a CCA. Two years later, in December of 2012, the Sonoma County Board of Supervisors approved the formation of Sonoma Clean Power. By 2013, a board of directors was established and Geof Syphers was named CEO—the switch to cleaner energy was about to be flicked.
Lights on!
On May 1, 2014, a makeshift sign lined with LED lights commemorating the start of service was plugged in—and the era of Sonoma Clean Power was born.
Geof Syphers, CEO of SCP, has been with the agency since its planning stages. Among its most important accomplishments, he says, are allowing customers to save on electricity costs about 80% of the time—compared to what they would pay using PG&E—and launching service to customers in 2014 with an option to choose SCP’s innovative EverGreen service, the nation’s first 24/7, 100% local, 100% renewable electric service.
He is also proud that SCP has been instrumental in getting state power providers to promote electric vehicles. “Sonoma Clean Power was the first power provider in California to work with local dealerships to provide a bulk discount program,” says Syphers. “Over three years, the Drive EV program has helped customers lease or buy more than 1,250 electric cars and distributed over 4,000 free home chargers.”
Former Petaluma City Councilmember Dave King served as that city’s first representative on the SCP board. He asked for the assignment because he thought it was an excellent opportunity to work toward countering climate change locally, he recalls.
“I believe SCP has been instrumental in California’s attempt to reduce carbon and combat climate change,” says King. And, like many supporters, he understands the importance of that work continuing through the years to come.
New initiatives
Funded by a $9.7 million grant from the California Energy Commission, the 10,000-square-foot SCP Customer Center opened in 2021 in downtown Santa Rosa as an interactive educational space that showcases energy-saving solutions and offers free classes on home renovations and cooking without using gas—all with a goal of helping customers transition away from fossil-fuel appliances in their homes. Architect Patrick Slayter, an early SCP board member representing Sebastopol, today sends many clients to the SCP Customer Center to get information about clean energy appliances, HVAC systems, information about EVs, rebates and incentives, and more. It’s initiatives like the Customer Center that keep SCP ahead of the game, he says. Slayter credits Sonoma Clean Power’s reputation as a leader and innovator within the industry, in large, part to its “world-class staff.”
“Experts with decades of experience in energy procurement, programs, energy industry analysis, marketing and management are members of the Sonoma Clean Power team, led by their CEO,” says Slayter.
Over the next two years, SCP is forecasting the agency will help Sonoma County residents save over $100 million on electricity, equating to about $450 saved per household in that timespan. Syphers says upcoming initiatives include the GeoZone project which aims to build 600 megawatts of new, renewable power for the community while demonstrating the viability of geothermal technologies which can be used worldwide. He also says SCP is focused this year on three pieces of legislation to lower risks associated with new geothermal construction, and ensure California gets its fair share of jobs, tax revenues and more.
Perhaps most important of all, Syphers says after years of paying other companies to construct renewable energy sources, “In the coming decade, SCP will start to build our own.”
With energy demand increasing, SCP’s focus on affordability, meeting the energy needs of customers, and the continued transition to affordable cleaner energy is an investment in communities that benefits everyone.
