A Message from the Executive Director
“
2020
was an extremely challenging year for our community—emotionally taxing for all of us, but also economically and physically difficult for so many of our friends and neighbors. For those struggling financially there are a range of available programs that can help, such as the CARE electricity rate-reduction program. You can visit our website or reach out to us using the contact information below to learn more. Like other organizations, the pandemic disrupted our operations as we rapidly transitioned to a 100% remote-work operation, and many of our customer programs had to be suspended due to social-distancing requirements. But despite these challenges we continued to make significant progress toward local energy goals:
The purpose of the Redwood Coast Energy Authority is to develop and implement sustainable energy initiatives that reduce energy demand, increase energy efficiency, and advance the use of clean, efficient and renewable resources available in the region.
• In May of 2020 we marked the three-year anniversary of our Community Choice Energy program, which has cumulatively provided over $5 million in utility cost savings to our customers while also increasing the amount of renewable and low-carbon power in our local electricity mix. Central to the goals of the program is to provide both environmental and local economic benefits to the community, and since its launch in 2017 the program has retained and accessed a total of over $51 million of investment in direct, local economic benefits to Humboldt County through customer rate-savings, program spending and matching outside grant funding, local power-procurement, and allocations toward building a reserve/contingency fund. • We adapted our customer programs to continue to provide technical assistance and energy efficiency services to local residents, businesses, and public agencies while complying with public health orders. This included helping to secure $43 million in state funding for customer battery storage systems that have the potential to both enhance local energy-related emergency response capabilities at local critical facilities while also improving the resilience and flexibility of the regional power grid. • We launched our first electric transportation rebates, and also made significant hardware updates and progress on adding new locations to our network of public electric vehicle charging stations across the county. • Through several new, long-term power contracts we’ve made substantial progress in 2020 toward RCEA’s goal of providing our customers a 100% clean and renewable electricity mix by 2025. When all of these projects, including both local and large-scale utility solar and battery storage projects, are completed in the coming one to three years they will supply close to half of the county’s electricity needs. In the following pages you can read more about the above activities along with other highlights of our efforts over the last year. Looking ahead to 2021, while the challenges of the last year will not yet be behind us, we are optimistic about the future. In the coming year we will launch new and expanded customer programs, begin construction on our renewable energy microgrid that will serve the County airport and Coast Guard Air Station, and we will continue our efforts toward the development of local offshore wind energy. We look forward to working with the community on the transition to a prosperous, sustainable, and resilient energy future for Humboldt County. We hope you will join us in this endeavor.”
Matthew Marshall RCEA Executive Director
(707) 269-1700 • info@RedwoodEnergy.org 633 3rd Street, Eureka, CA 95501 • www.RedwoodEnergy.org Office hours Mon-Fri • 8:30 to 4:30pm Due to the COVID-19 pandemic our office is physically closed until further notice. redwoodenergy.org • Thursday, Feb. 4, 2021 • NORTH COAST JOURNAL • SPECIAL PULL-OUT SECTION
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