Woody Hastings- Moving CA to Clean Power

Some no-brainers take a while to find their place in the public mind.

Take for example the concept of community-generated electric power. Officially called Community Choice Aggregaton (CCA), it allows cities or counties to replace a large portion of the electrical power they've been getting from the mega-monopoly utility, produce it themselves from clean renewable sources, and get paid for it by the utility's rate payers in the communities that choose to go with it.

Renewable sources are exactly what the name implies- wind, solar, geothermal, and whatever new technologies make use of the heat or motion of earth and sky, to generate power without mining the earth, without throwing off radiation or CO2.

When Sonoma Clean Power (SCP) was approved in April 2013, it became the latest community choice power initiative on the California scene, with several more already in the works. Supervisors approved it for the unincorporated part of Sonoma County (north of San Francisco). Cities also have the option to take part in the program.

What the local governments like about SCP is the local jobs likely to be created in in assembling large scale solar-electric generating capacity, and the revenue from electric bills that will stay in the local economy rather than trickling up to Wall Street (more than $220 million per year, currently paid to PG&E by Sonoma County ratepayers).

In this 30-minute interview, ShiftShapers host Daniel Kerbein talks to Woody Hastings, Renewable Energy Implementation
Manager at the Climate Protection Campaign, located in Sonoma County. He has been an outspoken advocate and spokesperson for community-generated electricity, and in particular, Sonoma Clean Power. The conversation provides an overview of what Sonoma Clean Power is, and how it will work as it goes forward and is implemented.