Monterey Bay Community Power (MBCP) on Dec. 5 announced that its policy board has unanimously approved the agency’s continued expansion.
With the action, the community choice aggregator will add the Cities of Arroyo Grande, Carpinteria, Del Rey Oaks, Goleta, Guadalupe, Grover Beach, Paso Robles, Pismo Beach, Santa Maria, Solvang and the County of Santa Barbara to MBCP’s 21 existing member jurisdictions.
MBCP will become the largest, geographically speaking, of all nineteen CCAs in California. Collectively, CCAs now serve more than 10 million customers in California.
The addition of the 11 member jurisdictions from San Luis Obispo and Santa Barbara Counties generated five new seats on MBCP’s Policy Board, sworn in immediately following the expansion approval during the December 4 MBCP policy board meeting.
Customers within the newly approved jurisdictions are set to begin receiving electric generation service from MBCP in early 2021 which is when they will also gain access to MBCP’s local energy programs “that reduce local greenhouse gas emissions and help solve energy resiliency issues, transforming and helping to decarbonize the Central Coast,” MBCP said.
Last year, at the December 2018 policy board meeting, the Cities of San Luis Obispo and Morro Bay went through the same process, and they enroll with MBCP January 1, 2020.
“The remarkable growth of MBCP and community choice energy along the Central Coast affirms our region’s long-standing commitments to environmental stewardship and economic stimulation,” said MBCP CEO Tom Habashi. “Unifying the Central Coast in these terms not only benefits our own region, it supports the growth of California’s CCE [community choice energy] community and the potential to influence important energy-policy decisions being made in Sacramento.”
The American Public Power Association has initiated a new category of membership for community choice aggregation programs.
