WEST SACRAMENTO, Calif. — West Sacramento could be changing the way PG&E customers pay for their power.
Many communities have turned to California Community Choice Aggregation (CCA) in an attempt to reduce high costs and restore local control over how they get their power.
West Sacramento is now exploring whether to join Auburn, Colfax, Lincoln and other communities as part of Pioneer Community Energy.
The not-for-profit entity purchases electricity on behalf of residents and businesses in hopes of saving people cash.
It comes at a time when many PG&E customers are feeling burned by exceptionally high bills.
"I'm calling it a crisis," said West Sacramento Mayor Martha Guerrero, who is asking the city council to explore membership with Pioneer on their next agenda.
"They said they have good results, they have lower bills. They showed us data," Guerrero said.
The concept is that West Sacramento would buy its energy in bulk and then try to pass on savings to its constituents.
Steve Weissman, a lecturer at the UC Berkeley Goldman School of Public Policy, said community choice aggregators like Pioneer are gaining in popularity across the state.
There are now 25 of them. Unlike utilities, like Sacramento's SMUD, CCAs don't own the poles and wires. They still rely on PG&E to move the power and make repairs. But they do generally end up saving customers some money, Weissman said.
However, there are other benefits; local governments work with the non-profit, not PG&E, to reach other goals, such as the move toward more renewable energy.
"If people in the community are really interested in trying to be cleaner and more environmentally responsible, there's an opportunity to do more things to get there," Weissman said.
State data shows 14 million customers are now served by CCAs, and that number is expected to grow. As for West Sacramento, it could take another two to three years before it could join.
PG&E provided the following statement in response to an inquiry from ABC10:
For more than 100 years, it has been PG&E’s privilege to provide our customers safe, reliable and affordable energy, and we look forward to the opportunity to do so for many years to come.
At the same time, we respect the energy choices that are available to our customers and will continue to cooperate with local governments as they consider pursuing and/or developing a CCA program.
It’s important to remember that if a customer becomes a CCA customer, they are still a PG&E customer. We continue to deliver the electricity to CCA customers through our transmission and distribution system, and provide meter reading, billing, customer service and maintenance services.
PG&E also delivers some of the nation's cleanest electric power, with 100% of electricity delivered to our residential and small-business customers coming from greenhouse-gas free sources in 2023.
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