Editorial: 'Clean energy' program the right choice for local towns

Environmental regulation offers government an enormous opportunity to tax the populace. In the name of clean air or water, officials can invent value -- literally out of thin air. Think about the billions of dollars collected in carbon offset fees in the past few years. The government has placed value on pollutants and sold the rights, creating a market where one did not exist previously. The carbon offset funds will probably be spent of high speed rail, another inefficient boondoggle being pushed on us with an environmental justification.

With the introduction of CCAs, local government can now get in on this scam. How much money does it cost to implement? What does the revenue stream look like?

Government has a role in provisioning public goods and protecting the citizens through regulation and laws. There will always be an argument with respect to how much regulation is appropriate.

Environmental regulation is easy to implement because there are few who protest or disagree. Government entities can raise revenues through it. But, it does not come without cost. Where is the appropriate boundary? Where does it end?

Where does it end?

Good question, @sleptic. It ends with us handing a healthy environment to our kids' kids. And giving them the opportunity to do the same to their grandkids.

Now a question for you - when did you finally accept the fact that the earth is dramatically warming due to man's burning of natural resources? A year ago? Five years ago?

Community Choice Aggregation (also called Community Choice Energy) is not a scam. In fact, it is an idea whose time has come. Successfully implemented in Marin and Sonoma Counties, a CCA program enables cities and counties to establish a local government agency that purchases electric power and makes it available to citizens at a lower cost and with a higher percentage of renewable energy than the power provided by PG&E. It helps communities reduce their greenhouse gas emissions, enables participants to save money and any surplus funds can be used to create local solar projects.

Since this is a "competition" to PG&E, how can they state that PG&E will be maintaining the grid system. What interest PG&E has to do it as before, or would start to do superficial patchy work on grid maintenance. If case of grid failures,who is going to pay - would it be the Peninsula Clean Energy, .g. us, the customers? So suddenly the cost would increase and stay higher since there is no return to lower rates (see sewer, or water bills) once the cities get used to so called "revenues" (indeed an extortion). And the new managing body is formed - how much the payroll will be for those new fat cats (and future pensions). Californians have always been easy to dupe with saying the magic word "environment".
And where those ecological power sources are? Do you see any wind turbines, solar panel farms or hydroelectric plants in the county? No, they are not here. So where the clean energy is going to come from?
Thus is another scam to put the buddies on a payroll, do the lowballing and increase rates later because of.... (lack of clean energy sources so we need to build them/pay for them; to do this studies would be needed, so consultant buddies will be called in).
Do not get duped - they invented another way to live even better on your backs.