October 2022
Member Spotlight
Throughout 2022, SECC will recognize one member every month, providing an organizational profile and highlighting the member's accomplishments in the smart energy space.
About Peninsula Clean Energy
Peninsula Clean Energy is a Community Choice Aggregation agency in California and the official electricity provider for roughly 810,000 residents in San Mateo County and the City of Los Banos. It was founded in 2016 with the mission of reducing greenhouse gas emissions. It currently provides more than 3,600 gigawatt hours annually of electricity that is 50 percent renewable, 100 percent clean and at lower cost than a dirtier power mix provided by PG&E. Peninsula Clean Energy is also on track to deliver electricity that is 100 percent renewable by 2025, which would lead the U.S. public utility sector.
As a community-led, not-for-profit agency, Peninsula Clean Energy makes significant investments in its communities to expand access to sustainable and affordable energy solutions. The agency has earned progressively strong investment grade credit ratings from Moody’s and Fitch, which helps propel new wind, solar and storage projects that provide emission-free power to customers.
Encouraging Customers to Get Rid of Fossil Fuels
Along with providing more affordable emission-free power, an essential part of Peninsula Clean Energy’s strategy to reduce greenhouse gas emissions is encouraging its customers to reduce and eventually stop using fossil fuels through a variety of innovative customer engagement measures.
EV Rebates, Infrastructure
Peninsula Clean Energy has offered a suite of programs intended to create more equity in electric vehicle availability and use. Now more commonplace, the agency’s program offering rebates of up to $6,000 for used EVs was ahead of its time. It also began offering rebates for new EVs in 2018 and expanded the program in subsequent years.
Peninsula Clean Energy’s $28 million EV Ready Program was the largest EV charging program tied to a single Community Choice Aggregation agency when it launched in 2020. The effort has focused on installing EV charging infrastructure at commercial workplaces, multi-family dwellings and other public locations where that infrastructure has particularly been lagging.
The agency’s rebate program for e-bikes was also ahead of the curve.
Building Electrification
Similarly, Peninsula Clean Energy has sought to expand efforts to reduce methane gas use in buildings across all corners of its service territory. That includes a program providing income-qualified residents with no-cost appliance electrification, energy efficiency and other repairs and upgrades in homes that use methane gas or propane for heating or cooking.
Peninsula Clean Energy also partnered with the Bay Area Regional Energy Network to offer $2,500 rebates to replace their methane gas water heater with an all-electric heat pump water heater.
And the agency is preparing to roll out a major new program this fall offering zero-percent loans to customers to finance heat pump equipment and repay that over time on their monthly electric bills. The agency’s existing rebate program for electric heat pump water heaters is also set to be expanded and new rebates for electric heat pump HVACs will start up soon as well.
In another effort to expand awareness, Peninsula Clean Energy is in its third year of an annual awards program with the New Buildings Institute spotlighting homes and commercial properties that have been constructed or renovated into all-electric buildings.
