Community Choice Aggregation

According to California’s The Climate Center, “Community Choice Aggregation (CCA) has proven to be one of the most powerful ways to accelerate the transition from dirty fossil fuels to clean energy sources.”

Community Choice Aggregation (CCA), also known as Community Choice Energy (CCE), or simply Community Choice, refers to a local, self-supporting, not-for-profit public power agency formed to buy – and in some situations generate – electrical power on behalf of its residents, businesses, and municipal facilities. The agency may also elect to administer energy efficiency programs and other greenhouse gas emission reducing activities.

For the most part, Community Choice programs follow an opt-out model for enrollment. This means that once Community Choice for a region is in place, residents and businesses are automatically enrolled in it, opting out if they wish.

Community Choice programs are primarily responsible for procuring electricity and providing other related services; they typically have no involvement with transmission and distribution infrastructure, which remain the responsibility of the existing utility. The utility also retains responsibility for metering and billing customers.

As of September 2021, the Local Energy Aggregation Network identified ten states – California, Illinois, Maryland (Montgomery County pilot), Massachusetts, New Hampshire, New Jersey, New York, Ohio, Rhode Island and Virginia – that have enacted CCA legislation empowering local governments to aggregate the electricity loads of residents, businesses, and/or municipal facilities.

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