REPORT TO COUNCIL
SUBJECT
Title
Action on the Approval of the 2017 Power Source Disclosure Report
Report
BACKGROUND
Enacted in 1997, Senate Bill 1305 established the California Energy Commission (CEC) Power Source Disclosure (PSD) program to provide "accurate, reliable, and simple-to-understand information on the sources of energy, and the associated emissions of greenhouse gases, that are used to provide electric services" to California consumers (Public Utilities Code Section 398.1(b)).
The law requires that electricity retail suppliers, like the City of Santa Clara's Electric Department, dba Silicon Valley Power (SVP), disclose to customers which types of resources are used to generate the electricity being sold to them. SVP is required to use the format developed by the CEC called the Power Content Label (PCL). As part of this reporting, SVP is required to submit a detailed report of SVP's resource mix.
The disclosure requirements are intended, in part, to address concerns about protecting consumers from misleading and fraudulent promotional efforts. The PCL is considered a "nutrition label" for electricity. The PCL provides information about the energy resources used to generate electricity for our customers. Just as a nutrition label provides information about the food you eat, the power content label provides information about what our electric customers consume.
The CEC guidelines allow the governing body of a publically owned electric utility that offers only one electricity product to its customers, to approve, at a public meeting, the submission of an attestation of the veracity of the annual reports to the CEC in lieu of engaging a third-party certified public account to perform an audit (2 Cal. Code of Regulations ? 1394(b)(2)). The electricity that SVP provides to its customers meets this standard.
DISCUSSION
SVP's 2017 resource mix is more concentrated in renewable and hydroelectric resources than the statewide energy mix. California e...
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