helping san francisco stay safe. >> good afternoon everyone. this is the december 13th 2013 meeting of the lafco for the city and county of san francisco our clerk is miss lisa miller could you please call the role. >> commissioner breed. >> present. >> commissioner mar. >> present. >> we do have a quorum.

>> item number 2 is approval of the minutes for the september 27th 2013 regular meeting. >> i see no comments -- let's open this up for public comment is there anyone from the public who would like to speak? seeing none, public comment is closed. >> miss miller please call item number 3. >> the cleanpowersf program and the california public utilities commission and cleanpowersf energy efficiency and facilities and local jobs patrols strategies and. >> maybe thank you mr. chair typically we start the status with the status of the puc and

barbara hail is here to provide that to you. >> thank you. most of our activities recently on the cca front for in puc proceedings where pg and e's green tariff option has continued to move forward. developing a green rate the statute requires a commission decision by july so we are expecting that the commission will need to issue at least a proposed decision in the april time frame in order to meet that statute requirement at this point we would expect pg and e's projected green tariff rate to be initially

offered at 12.3 cents a kill owatt hour and that rate is forecast to increase to 9.4 cents a kilowatt hour in january so pg and e's basic service energy component of basic service rates is increasing come january to 9.4 cents and their current proposal before the cpuc under the green tariff option would be to offer the one hundred percent green power at 12.3 cents a kilowatt hour again that's just a proposal. we're expecting more activity probably around april. turn then to energy efficiency issues at the cpuc as it

relates to -- >> can i ask a question? >> absolutely. >> so since pg and e is in control of the power throughout the city owe on -- owe will they issue letters to ask people on opt in? >> i don't know what method they would use to communicate with the customers but customers would need to somehow elect to join the program. >> thank you. >> your welcome. >> so then on the energy efficiency front we do have a proposed decision issued by an alj administrative law judge there on plan implementation for community choice

aggregation entities where funds are awards that are collected from pg and e customers currently receiving funding from both electric and gas funds collected from pg and e rate pairs and pairs and the proposal will eliminate funding from -- we're keeping an eye on. other operating cca's and cca advocates have argued at the cpuc that that's not a good approach certainly for san francisco where you know green house gas reduction is a key focus, we would want to be able to you know, comarket electric saving and gas saves at the same time and reduce the operating costs of having those programs by keeping it combined

even if the other program offerings were just for electricity so we're keeping an eye on that proceeding and the actual energy -- where they are having the rates adopted by the cpuc on how much the generation costs will be that they can recover as i mentioned that rate is going up to 9.4 cents a kilowatt hour and pge currently forecasting the rates to increase this january and they have also proposed significant increase in revenues that would result in higher rates by 2015 so they are proposing different ranges and proceedings there and my staff keeps an eye on the proceedings and tries to

forecast out what the rates will be just as san francisco's representatives in those proceedings trying to keep the costs down so we're keeping an eye on that. . >> commissioner breed? >> would you mind providing us with a chart? specifically with the can you current rates for pg and e as well as what we are proposing from cca just to have a bit of a comparison to understand you know the differences. >> sure and i'll do that focussed on residential customers? >> great. >> thank you. >> actually i'd say roll out that green tariff program to knowing what their outreach

will be and how many rate pairs go to the product will be helpful. >> i can tell you what pg and e has presented in the public setting what their roll out plan is i know they had forecast the level of participation they were anticipating but when they submitted that information it was for different program characteristics so i'm not sure if that's current so i'll do some research and get back to you on that. >> energy storage the california puc recently issued a decision that requires community choice aggregation providers to include energy storage as part of the supply portfolio so that's a new blags obligation on providers and

the power cost and difference of adjustment and the pcia we used to talk quite a bit about a number of parties filed at the puc asking us to open up a proceeding and look at this issue how much of the utilities program cost -- the cpuc designed to open a new standalone proceeding they said they are addressing this issue in a number of other proceedings so it takes more resources to follow them all but they are conducting some workshops so that should help focus some attention on that topic and give us a venue to talk about our concerns on that together with other interested community choice aggregation advocates. >> so that's the run down on

things happening in the regulatory arena in terms of other programs i just want to give you an update the sonoma clean power program recently announced that they have made a deal with some suppliers for their program and they are now in contract with cal pine for geo thermal power and they also have a contract with constellation to provide the balance of their power supply needs they are estimating that at sixty mega was watts and a one hundred percent deep green kind of offering one hundred percent renewable and the start clean program 33 percent renewables and the balance of

power is ghg free so they are moving along and marin energy authority is looking at the study work associated with including napa the county of napa in their program and they have already successfully integrated richmond into their program so those are the other sort of cca activities that i thought you would be interested in hearing about today. >> thank you. >> thank you. >> miss miller. >> thank you miss hail for that report this information is very helpful and i know that we're looking at the possibly of the california puc setting rates for the green tariff for pg and e and while they are proposing a hundred percent i know that part of what our program did was to also propose a hundred percent and today what we're looking at is the possible rfp

that we may be able to potentially release that put togethers more of a comprehensive plan. how do you think -- with the way this seems to be playing itself out -- how do you think we'll be able to compete based on where pg and e is now in its plan to implement this? how are we going to be able to compete i guess is what my question is. >> i think the real challenge in competing with the pg and e program is that it allows to the extent the cpuc adopts it as proposed it allows pg and e to use existing resources that are in part being paid for through things like the pcia to

qualify as part of a portfolio to reach the one hundred percent commitment to that customer group so we are concerned that there is some subsidization from non participating pg and e customers to make the green tariff option appear more cost effective than it would be if you were able to truly segment those costs between non participating customers and participating customers. that's an advantage that pg and e would have in the marketplace that would not be an advantage to other competitors so that customers interested in green services, would have available to them. >> because they are proposing an increase in their generates. >> uh-huh. >> as well but -- will they go to the california puc at the

same time? >> they are -- they are at the california puc at the same time in different venues and proceedings and so we are expecting the rate increase that i mentioned but the generation component to increase, which helps anyone who's trying to implement a cca program, but when you look at it from the green tariff option perspective, the way pg and e is proposing to build that rate is irrespective of the actual cost of providing the full service. >> miss miller. >> you asked us at the last meeting to check on potential alternatives given what has not happened at the commission in terms of setting rates so your

staff spend sometime -- we looked at the marin energy authority there's 2 different programs one for if if affiliate members and the city of richmond recently joined the city and county of san francisco would be a special consideration member that requires a different set of considerations by them but they were and both of us talked to their staff -- they are willing to talk to san francisco about expanding their program. jason will go into more detail. a study and recommendation by the staff we also talked to sonoma and they are a new program and they just signed their contract

so they are not really in a position at this point in time of entertaining real discussions with us not like marin would be but they are of course interested in helping whatever activity they could provide us. i just want to say one thing about the alternative is that we had looked at the issue about whether or not the commission actually had to set rates in such a situation of joining the program and my determination i wouldn't believe they did. it would actually be a separate and independent entity but i do believe that the city attorney disagreed with that and given that whether or not that's a true avenue for us to explore -- i'm not really sure so i want you to be kind of aware of that while jason goes through the

particulars of joining another program. >> jason lafco staff as in the memo shows i looked at a variety of different ways to figure out how do we get a cca program launched i kind of didn't pay attention to as much of those it would be something to be done at the ballot box and i felt was outside of what we're looking for. there's 3 different options you can have under the jpa one is joining marin or sonoma and having a seat at the table with them or to form a brand new jpa there's about a dozen different communities out there in california that are looking at potentially looking at trying to form a program. most are

not close to pulling the trigger or moving forward one that's close has actually said we want to join marin is the un incorporated parts of napa have said they are interested in joining them so that would have been one potential option but they are looking to go to marin for that and i came up with a hybrid of those 2 options i call option 3 perhaps using something like marin and form a new jpa with the city and county of san francisco where we can take the program that the sppuc put together and we would have control over having our own program and it would actually be a lot easier in some ways we wouldn't have to have an impact and having. we

wouldn't be able to separate out the 2 programs they can have their program and we can have our program and as miss miller mentioned there might be some legal issues so there would need to be some information at the city and county level that would need to be done because the city doesn't represent lafco so the commissioner says supervisors you can do that at the board level. >> thank you. >> miss miller. >> yeah so i just wanted to say that gets us to the third item which is because of the difficulty we've had with the sfpuc setting rates the idea of trying to join another entity where we have the city attorney saying we still got to go back

down the same path we might want to do in the interim try to do some activities that promote our effort but be mindful of the fact we have timing issues in terms of getting the program started and that gets us to the third item on the agenda to develop an rsp to try to do some of the studies on some of the initial programs so what's unique about ours is obviously the local build out so the idea is to concentrate with that so that we are implementation program is even that much farther down the line. >> thank you. commissioner mar. >> i was going to say that before we get into that the local build out and an rsp for

that which i strongly support i want to go back to option number 3 the hybrid plan as proposed. it sounds like marin clean energy is interested in allowing us to develop or join into their program but you are saying this option 3 may be easier because it protects their autonomy and also our differences as a much larger population to have more autonomy for us to have some kind of joint hybrid like that. >> right. the -- how marin would do it is through a separate jpa agreement and so mr. freed's option 3 is not where we want to go they would want the liability and a lot of those issues to remain separate for this current program so

they would want to have a separate and that's why they put it in a special consideration category it would have a separate agreement and assets and liabilities would be separate because we dwarf them. >> i appreciate all the work you have all done to try to get us to this point and i know it's been a challenge and frustrating from our standpoint because this is something we all care about and we all want to see move forward and our efforts are being hindered at this time by appointed members of the puc so i think we have to think differently to dispel some of the myths about this program and what i wanted to propose and i appreciate the opportunity to discuss it, but

one of the things i think that's important is that although we have various layers to this plan and various goals that we're trying to obtain, i want us to develop more of a comprehensive plan that allows us the opportunity to address, not only some of the push back for the plan, for example, when we talk about local build out, there are folks that are concerned that there aren't real local jobs and union jobs and so understanding exactly where the locations possibly are as it relates to local build out and understanding the long-term impact so the initial possibilities and increase in job opportunities that could exist and the various layers of experts in those particular jobs what does it mean

long-term with regards to job with regards to the local build out and what are we looking at in terms of how the funds are generated through bonds and having a more comprehensive plan that connects the dots that leads us to the direction we want to get to not necessarily over night of course but a 10 year plan realistic plan that's a competitive plan also a clear communications plan because i truly believe one of the challenges during the bart strike for example, the message of what was happening with the bart strike was determined by the bart officials they went out there with their message and had their communication plan and sadly the workers were not on top of what they needed to do in terms of their message

to the public until after the message was defined by the media by officials from bart and i bring this up because we suffered the same fate recently when the information that had gone out to homes to sha say shell is going to come in and do this and this is what's going to happen and that message was communicated unfortunately not completely accurately and created the challenges we're facing with getting this program moved forward so we need to be prepared and think about what that looks like we need a clear communication strategy and a clear understanding of the build out and a clear understanding of how this program works as it relates to facilities and customers and as it relates to opt out is it recommended that we work on state legislation to change opt out versus opt in? personally

i think opting in is a lot more challenge and a new program could fail if we try and convince people to opt in it's a little bit easier but if we're basically shoving this down people's throats we want them to know not only is this good for the environment but hopefully some level of cost savings here to get more people to support the program so having the right understanding and experts to help us put this plan together so that we're able to present a plan that is clear, that is something that we can actually implement, and something that when explained to the public it's clear. that's really what i'm looking for because although i realize

when shell was selected they were selected to be the broker, to purchase the clean power on our behalf and our goal was to of course generate the revenue necessary to leverage bonds in order to do the build out and the plan, we understood the plan we knew it was a good plan, we knew that the possibilities exist, we had to make some decisions that we may not have been completely comfortable with but it would have gotten us to where we needed to go and the problem was it was just really hard to articulate a lot of what we were trying to do to the public even though we understood the details of the plan and what i'm asking or hoping to propose is that we prepare a comprehensive rfp that gets us to a comprehensive plan that has tangible information so that we're able to have various

options for all the different layers of this plan that we're missing so i hope i'm being clear about that and i wanted to propose that at lafco because i wanted us to use the resources of lafco to try to prepare this and i also wanted to get feedback from my colleagues to get their thoughts so part of what i think is important in developing a plan is to make sure that when there are people who oppose it, which there will always be -- that we have clear answers so that we're communicating what the real accurate true message is and we know that it's a real message and we know that there's a real possibility for build out and

real locationed for build outs and real possibilities for local jobs for unions and locals and how we're going to go about making it possible and making it a success because ultimately we want to make sure not only are there options but affordable options for power and we move more aggressively than we have in the past and that's pretty much what i wanted to say and hear feedback from my colleagues and of course members of the public on their thoughts on this. >> thank you very much i really appreciate the leadership that you are showing on this issue and we know our chair could not be here today but he's also been a very important player in all of this and i see some of the advocates who had been working on this for quite sometime and i want

to thank you for being here and i think for being more patient than probably anyone should be -- i think it makes sense to figure out how we move forward with the build out and i think that the rfp idea is something that provides that opportunity. the one thing that i would like to figure out how we incorporate into anything we do is how do we make sure that we don't reinvent the wheel and that we maximize the benefits from work that has already been done. we, as an agency, have invested a lot of money in work by entities like public power and local power -- how do we make sure that their