Power Surge: Program could raise your electric bills

While San Francisco has struggled in recent months with record budget deficits, public-transportation problems, and scandal over police officers' criminal backgrounds, a momentous program has been rolling out with little public debate. Whether you've heard of it or not, the overhaul of the city's energy system known as CleanPowerSF could soon be a big factor in your life — and in your electricity bill.

Known as a "community choice aggregation" (CCA) program, CleanPowerSF would allow the city to remove energy consumers from their current utility service — Pacific Gas & Electric Co., in most cases — and enroll them in the city's own program, run under contract with a private provider. City officials are now rushing to finalize a contract with their chosen provider, a consortium called Power Choice, ahead of the vote next month on Proposition 16, the PG&E–backed ballot initiative that would require a two-thirds majority vote in any municipality seeking to enact a government-run power program.

The talks have been clouded by unusual secrecy. Contract negotiations are going on behind closed doors, and Power Choice's bid documents have been sealed. But one thing is starting to become clear: One of the founding promises of CleanPowerSF — the offering of greener power at prices that meet or beat city residents' current PG&E rates — is going out the window. "You cannot charge PG&E rates and get wind and solar," said San Francisco Public Utilities Commission general manager Ed Harrington at a public meeting last month.

Under CCA, the estimated average residential electricity bill is 24 percent higher than under PG&E, according to a 2007 controller's report.

But CleanPowerSF is a cherished priority of the city's leftist politicians as well as of their press organ, the San Francisco Bay Guardian, which has persistently advocated some form of "public" or government-run local power system. Supervisor Ross Mirkarimi, one of CleanPowerSF's foremost advocates, said it's "reprehensible" that Prop. 16 has forced the artificial deadline, but still hopes the contract will be signed by June 8. "We've come so far," he says.

Accordingly, the pressure is now on PUC bureaucrats to have the details of a massive new government program, affecting hundreds of thousands of residential and business power consumers, hammered out less than a month from now. It appears unlikely that it will result in cheaper electricity — the sentiments of CCA's supporters run more toward greener power, at greater cost.

"By and large, San Franciscans are green-minded, and they want to put their money where their mouth is, so to speak," CleanPowerSF director Mike Campbell says. If a contract is signed in the next month, they might not have a choice.