2024 Year In Review

Challenges, Victories, and Movement Building Highlights

In 2024, where one door closed, many more opened. The Local Clean Energy Alliance (LCEA) rose from mourning the loss of long-time LCEA Coordinator Al Weinrub to find itself reinvigorated with new staff and a firm footing in growing energy democracy. With your support, we advanced community driven resilience hubs, advocated for equity in electrification, challenged the state’s gutting of rooftop solar incentives and fought against false solutions like nuclear energy.

We are honored to stand with you in this work, and are excited to share some of the year's highlights below.

Thank you for championing Clean Power to the People!

In solidarity,
The Local Clean Energy Alliance team

P.S. As 2024 draws to a close, please consider a tax-deductible year-end gift to continue LCEA's critical work in the new year and beyond. We are grateful for your support!

Labor & Environmental Justice Victory at Ava Community Energy –

The Most Comprehensive Community Choice Workforce Resolution in California

In early 2024, the LCEA as part of the Workforce & Environmental Justice Standards Alliance – an alliance of labor unions, workforce development, environmental justice, and community choice advocates – was successful in passing a unity position with Ava Community Energy (formerly East Bay Community Energy). The resolution highlights important priorities related to local jobs creation, standards, innovation, location, environmental stewardship, and much needed benefits to low-income and communities of color.

 The resolution addresses the need for more localized clean energy job creation, which has been a contention with Ava Community Energy, as more of Ava’s recent contracts were outside of the state of California. The resolution also highlighted the need for Ava to be transparent with the numbers and quality of union jobs created.

The Workforce & Environmental Justice Alliance was created to hold accountable California Community Power – a statewide network of Community Choice energy agency CEOs. When this network refused to commit to workforce standards, the Workforce & Environmental Justice Alliance passed resolutions one Community Choice program at a time. Read the full approved resolution here:
Ava Community Energy Workforce & Environmental Justice Project Selection Criteria

A Campaign Breakthrough for Community Driven Resilience Hubs

The Local Clean Energy Alliance has been hard at work in advocating for expanded resources for resilience hubs in Ava Community Energy territory. Our community engagement and advocacy with Ava Community Energy is the start to bridging the gap between community driven resilience hubs and a Community Choice public agency. We have come a long way since our initial advocacy in 2020! You can check out our Community Driven Resilience Hubs webinar from September 9, 2020 when we were engulfed in wildfire smoke, and in the middle of a heatwave with rolling blackouts and a global pandemic.

We have influenced decision makers to instruct Ava Community Energy staff to agendize a resilience hub study session to learn more about these community based hubs that we have been advocating for and their roles in climate and energy resilience. In addition, the agency issued a new grant program for Community Organizing and Capacity Building for Resilience Hubs. The Local Clean Energy Alliance and our longtime ally, Emerald Cities Collaborative, have applied to do the community engagement work and our application is currently pending a decision. This is a huge victory, and we will continue to need your help to move this policy advocacy forward so Ava Community Energy can learn from our grassroots community and create a program that provides funding and resources for our resilience needs.

Take Our “Clean” Power Back – We're Going to the California Supreme Court!

The Center for Biological Diversity, Protect Our Communities and the Environmental Working Group are asking the California Supreme Court to hear our case opposing the California Public Utilities Commission’s (CPUC’s) decision to cut the financial benefits of rooftop solar by 75% replacing previous Net Energy Metering rates with a new Net Billing Tariff. The LCEA and the California Alliance for Community Energy (CACE) have joined that action as friends of the court (amici curiae).

Petitioners are asking the Supreme Court to hear the case because the California Appeals Court refused to hear the case, giving “unique deference” to the CPUC, which assumes their decisions are not subject to being heard in California’s courts.

LCEA and CACE were helped by a Bay Area legal team of students and their professor with a letter to the Supreme Court as to why we would like to join the petitioners. The letter points out the cozy relationship between the CPUC and Investor-Owned Utilities (IOUs) like PG&E, and how it has resulted in decades of CPUC decisions that favor the IOUs and hurt Californians. Also included is the fact that the CPUC decision violates two of the mandates in the CPUC code that apply to changes to Net Energy Metering; ensuring that rooftop solar grows sustainably and taking into account all of the benefits of rooftop solar.

Both the petitioners and the amici curiae point to the fact that in 1998 the California legislature passed a bill that specifically points out the importance of holding CPUC decisions accountable in California’s courts.

An attorney and two legal clinicians submitted the Amici Curiae (Friend’s of the Court) letter requesting that LCEA and CACE be allowed to join the three petitioners when the case is heard.

The California Supreme Court will hear the case and it’s currently pending.

Fierce Fight to Oppose PG&E’s Nuclear in Ava Community Energy

And the Board of Directors' Disastrous Decision to take the “Carbon Free” Bait

Ava Community Energy (formerly East Bay Community Energy or EBCE), the public electricity agency Community Choice program serving Alameda and San Joaquin Counties, considered accepting PG&E’s Diablo Canyon nuclear energy into its power mix.

Community Choice programs in California were created to give the public the power to choose where our electricity comes from and what kind of energy it is (under California Assembly Bill 117 in 2002). In East Bay–Alameda County, the community effort led by the East Bay Clean Power Alliance has advocated for local clean energy investments from our local Community Choice agency, Ava Community Energy, with an emphasis on affordability, creating clean energy jobs, community wealth, less remote transmission, and combating climate change. Equity has been at the center of this effort since the beginning.

Ava Community Energy staff has pursued adding PG&E's Diablo Canyon nuclear energy to our Community Choice program for years. We see nuclear energy as a false solution to the climate crisis. It delays and distracts from critically overdue local investments like solar microgrids and community shared solar. It ignores the desperate cries for solutions for environmental justice communities that have borne the brunt of environmental racism, a lack of good jobs and disinvestment. PG&E’s Diablo Canyon nuclear plant is nearly forty years old which is the lifespan of a nuclear power plant. When you extend the life of an aging plant, that poses increased risk to the workers and surrounding community. Nuclear fallout can be a far greater concern impacting communities beyond our coast.

Results: In May, the Community Advisory Committee (CAC) voted against taking nuclear power (5 against, 1 in favor, 2 abstentions). Disturbingly, the Board of Directors decided in favor of accepting nuclear power and chose the option of Scenario 2 (accepting nuclear power, reducing their "unspecified" power sources, and offsetting that with hydroelectric power). The LCEA team is disappointed but not surprised by this vote.

However, we are grateful and proud of the community presence in the meeting and our allies on the Board. We are very impressed by the public comments and letters people sent in making their opposition extremely clear. In this second fight against PG&E's nuclear power from Diablo Canyon, we garnered 314 individual signatures and 36 organizations signed on in opposition. Despite the Board's harmful decision to take nuclear power from PG&E, we count our continued community organizing and advocacy since the agency's initial attempt in 2020 as an example of resistance and accountability.
 

Hayward Equitable Electrification Collaborative - Spanish Community Outreach

The Hayward Equitable Electrification Collaborative is a partnership between the Local Clean Energy Alliance, California State University East Bay (CSU East Bay) and the City of Hayward Environmental Services. This collaborative effort engaged Public Health students from CSU East Bay who served as community outreach workers in Hayward.

These interns were integral to the Hayward Electrification Project which aims to equitably transition households from natural gas appliances to all-electric alternatives.

This work cannot happen without language access and meaningful community inclusion. The Latino/Hispanic community comprises approximately 39.7% of Hayward's population, so their input is crucial.

Our collaboration focused on engaging Spanish-speaking communities in Hayward, and our bilingual student interns actively canvassed various neighborhoods to gather feedback.

Our interns collected 100 surveys. Notably, our findings revealed that only 13.88% of the Spanish-speaking community is familiar with electrification, highlighting a crucial gap in awareness.

Additionally, a significant majority (87.50%) of respondents either possess or are aware of gas appliances in their homes, underscoring the prevalence of this issue. Moreover, 91.38% of surveyed individuals identify as renters, shedding light on unique challenges in adopting electrification and the need for tenant protections to prevent displacement.

We then invited 20 respondents to participate in a focus group based on these surveys. Participants were encouraged to share additional information, voice concerns, or suggest better community engagement strategies. During the two focus groups conducted, a recurring theme emerged among renters: a lack of support from landlords or property management regarding unit maintenance and repairs. Participants expressed frustration over landlords' reluctance to invest in repairs or their imposition of limits on tenant-initiated improvements. However, despite these challenges, the feedback on electrification was overwhelmingly positive, providing a beacon of hope for the project's success.

Additionally, participants highlighted a need for more information on this topic from the City of Hayward. Most relied on PG&E for updates, receiving information primarily through their monthly utility bills. This underscores the need for the city to proactively engage with this demographic through various channels such as flyers, signs, social media, radio, and TV. They also expressed a desire for access to energy-efficient appliances in their homes, signaling a clear opportunity for the city to meet their needs and promote sustainable practices.

LCEA continues to influence equitable electrification and building decarbonization through our state and national networks.

New Leadership at Ava Community Energy

CEO Howard Chang Announced with Direction to Work Collaboratively with Stakeholders

In early 2024, several community stakeholders including LCEA were invited to take part in a 360 evaluation of the now former Chief Executive Officer (CEO) of Ava Community Energy. After the 360 evaluation, the CEO's contract was ended and Ava's Board of Directors began a search for a new CEO.

At the June 12th Ava Board meeting, the Board announced they had made a final decision on the next Ava Community Energy CEO. By a unanimous vote, they selected Howard Chang, who has been Ava Community Energy’s Chief Operations Officer for the past 7 years.

This is an exciting opportunity to develop a relationship with a new CEO. We will continue to advocate for Ava Community Energy to expand its commitment to clean energy and community resilience. We are optimistic that the CEO change and Howard’s tenure signals a new commitment from Ava Community Energy to be more transparent with its work, respectful to its constituency and collaborative with the community it serves.

New Leadership & Staff at the Local Clean Energy Alliance

Jessica Guadalupe Tovar (she/her/ella) is the Executive Director for the Local Clean Energy Alliance and started as an organizer 10 years ago. Growing up in East Los Angeles, she has dedicated over two decades to her work as an environmental justice organizer across urban, rural and indigenous communities in California and Arizona.

In 2003, Jessica interned with the Environmental Justice and Climate Change Initiative, collaborating with various organizations nationwide on climate justice issues. In the mid 2000s, she was an organizer for Communities for a Better Environment in Richmond, California, where she played a key role in mobilizing opposition to the expansion of the Chevron oil refinery.

Congratulations to Jessica on successfully completing her first year as the Executive Director for LCEA. Her contributions are vital to advocating for resilience hubs in Alameda & San Joaquin County, promoting energy democracy and inspiring the next generation of organizers to win Clean Power for the People. In her personal time, Jessica enjoys comedy, gardening, traveling and spending time with her family.

Ayla Peters-Paz (she/her) is an Energy Democracy Organizer for the Local Clean Energy Alliance focusing on community driven resilience hubs. She graduated from UC Berkeley with degrees in Society and Environment and Political Economy, with a minor in Global Poverty and Practice. While at Berkeley, she wrote her thesis on the impacts of mechanization on the health and economic wellness of farm workers in the California Central Valley.

She was also a key member of Science Talk at Cal, an annual conference that brought together journalists and science writers to discuss scientific literacy and combat media misinformation.

Ayla has worked in various nonprofits and government agencies across the Bay Area, addressing issues such as environmental health in Bayview Hunters Point, youth organizing for environmental justice, and grant funding for environmental justice projects in frontline communities. In her spare time, Ayla enjoys Irish country dancing, rock climbing, and scaring herself with horror films.

Hernando Sanchez Jr. (he/him) is an Energy Democracy Organizer for the Local Clean Energy Alliance from the Bay Area and alma mater of California State University, East Bay in Public Health. Hernando led Spanish community outreach with the Hayward Equitable Electrification Collaborative—a partnership involving CSU East Bay’s Public Health Department, the City of Hayward Environmental Services Department, and LCEA.

He is our representative on state and national networks for equitable building decarbonization. In addition he coordinates our youth program and provides support for our resilience hub campaign. As a leader and advocate, he continues to empower and educate disadvantaged communities, particularly communities of color, on clean energy solutions for a healthier future. Hernando finds joy in travel, outdoor adventures and sports. He cherishes moments spent with loved ones, recognizing the importance of balance and connection in a fulfilling life. 

Thanks To Our Many Interns, Staff
Volunteers, Support Committee & Donors.
Together We Continue To Win Because Of Your Support!