Frequently Asked Questions and Common Terms
Answering questions you may have about CACE & Defining important concepts.
Understand Before You Act
Our members know that having conversations about California’s energy systems involves listening. We’ve heard your question and created a directory of answers to frequent questions, plus an glossary of acronyms and key concepts.
If you don’t see the answer you’re looking for, please message us with your question.
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FAQs
Let’s answer your questions about CACE and make the energy justice movement easier to understand.
What is the California Alliance for Community Energy (CACE)?
The California Alliance for Community Energy is a statewide network of activists, advocates, and grassroots organizations. We are united by a shared mission to support and defend locally controlled, community-determined renewable energy programs that deliver environmental, economic, and social justice benefits to communities across the state.
What are the main issues CACE advocates for?
We fight to protect local energy sovereignty, including:
- Defending Rooftop Solar: Fighting against regulatory rollbacks and discriminatory fixed utility taxes that put solar out of reach for working families, renters, and schools.
- Advancing Microgrids: Advocating for community-driven energy resilience through equitable microgrid funding and development.
- Promoting Energy Affordability: Pushing back against unchecked utility rate hikes and ensuring that basic energy access remains a fundamental right.
- Challenging the Utility Status Quo: Working to hold utilities accountable and resist centralized mandates by preventing utility monopolies and state regulators from stripping autonomy away from local Community Choice agencies.
How can I (or my organization) get involved?
Yes: We invite those who share our vision to help us build a more just energy future. Get involved by:
- Becoming a Member: Add your organization to our growing statewide coalition to amplify our collective voice in the fight for energy democracy.
- Attending Statewide Calls: Members join our monthly webinars featuring leading energy advocates and strategists.
- Joining a Task Force: Members can participate in working groups that collaborate with our Steering Committee on specific issues like community renewables, energy education, and agency accountability.
Can my utility (Pacific Gas and Electric, Southern California Edison, or San Diego Gas & Electric) join CACE?
No. CACE is committed to maintaining an independent voice. Individuals with direct ties to investor-owned utilities or fossil fuel industries are not eligible to join. All applicants are reviewed before approval.
Can I donate to CACE?
Yes! We rely on grassroots support to fund our advocacy. CACE takes nothing from utilities, fossil fuel interests, or corporate donors, which means every dollar that keeps this alliance in the fight comes from people like you. Whatever you can give, your donation goes directly toward organizing California communities for energy justice and a fairer, community-controlled energy system.
Monthly, recurring donations are especially helpful, providing steady support that allows us to respond quickly as energy policy decisions unfold throughout the year.
Online donations are the fastest way to support our work.
To donate by check, please make checks payable to our fiscal sponsor, Social and Environmental Entrepreneurs (SEE).
You must write “California Alliance for Community Energy” in the memo or note section. Please also include your email address so we can send you a receipt and a thank you.
Mailing Address for Checks:
Social and Environmental Entrepreneurs (SEE)
23564 Calabasas Road
Suite 201 Calabasas, CA 91302
Note: California Alliance for Community Energy
Is my donation tax-deductible?
Yes. The California Alliance for Community Energy is a fiscally sponsored project of Social and Environmental Entrepreneurs (SEE), a registered 501(c)(3) non-profit organization. All contributions made to CACE through SEE are tax-deductible to the fullest extent permitted by law.
What does a “bottom-up” energy transition look like?
CACE envisions a complete transformation of the energy system from an outdated, top-down model to a community-focused, bottom-up approach. Rather than maintaining a structure where power flows one way from distant power plants, the grid of the future relies on distributed energy resources (DERs) located directly within neighborhoods. This transition aims to build a system that is liberated from fossil fuels, highly resilient to climate disasters, and governed locally.
How does CACE champion environmental and social justice?
Our vision is rooted in equity. We recognize that California’s centralized energy model has historically burdened low-income households and communities of color with the highest costs and the most severe environmental impacts. Through specialized groups like the Microgrid Equity Coalition and our Environmental Justice Task Force, we demand that the transition to clean energy directly prioritizes and empowers frontline communities.
What is a “decentralized” energy model?
A decentralized energy model (also known as distributed energy) means generating, storing, and managing electricity locally rather than relying on massive, distant power plants controlled by monopoly utilities. Instead of power traveling hundreds of miles across expensive transmission lines, energy is produced right where it is used.
In a decentralized system, communities utilize local technologies like rooftop solar panels, home battery storage, community microgrids, and bi-directional charging for electric vehicles (so that vehicles can act as an electricity storage battery for homes).
CACE advocates for this model because it avoids the massive costs of long-distance grid infrastructure, protects neighborhoods from utility power shutoffs, and keeps energy jobs and economic benefits rooted directly in the community.
Why do we need a decentralized energy grid?
A decentralized grid, one which utilizes rooftop solar, local battery storage, and community microgrids, is more resilient and cost-effective than the traditional top-down energy model. Building local energy assets avoids the massive costs of unnecessary long-distance transmission infrastructure. It also helps protect communities from the systemic failures and catastrophic wildfire liabilities that monopoly utilities continually pass onto ratepayers.
What is the Affordable Energy Campaign?
The Affordable Energy Campaign is a broad statewide coalition of environmental, consumer, and economic justice organizations working to reduce energy burdens for California families.
CACE works in partnership with this campaign to advance policies that:
- Provide immediate bill relief
- Prioritize affordable grid alternatives
- Frame energy affordability as a core justice issue
What is Community Choice energy?
Community Choice is a decentralized energy model designed to provide safer, more reliable and affordable energy to residents. Rather than relying on profit-driven utility monopolies, Community Choice allows local communities to make their own energy procurement decisions. This keeps economic development, job creation, and clean energy investments rooted directly in the community.
How is a Community Choice Agency (CCA) different from a traditional utility?
Investor-owned utilities (IOUs) are private, profit-driven monopolies controlled by shareholders. Community Choice programs present a locally controlled public alternative. CCAs enable communities to decide where their energy comes from, prioritizing clean, local renewables. Because they operate to serve the public interest rather than generate corporate profits, CCAs can reinvest their revenues locally to support economic development, local jobs, and community empowerment.
I automatically enrolled in a Community Choice program. Why did that happen?
Under California state law (specifically AB 117), when a city or county joins or creates a Community Choice Aggregation (CCA) program, customers in that jurisdiction are automatically enrolled. This collective approach is what gives communities the buying power needed to negotiate better rates and demand cleaner energy options.
However, participation is always a choice. Customers retain the right to “opt out” and return their electric generation services to the traditional utility if they prefer.
Glossary of Key Terms
Are you a lover of TLAs (Three Letter Acronyms)? Are you trying to get a better handle on some of the language used in the energy justice movement? We’ve got you covered with a glossary of important concepts and terms.
Energy Justice (and Environmental Justice)
The principle that all communities, regardless of race, income, or zip code, deserve equitable access to clean, affordable, and safe energy. California’s centralized energy model has historically burdened marginalized communities with the highest utility costs and the most severe environmental pollution. Energy justice demands that the transition to a renewable grid directly prioritizes and empowers these frontline communities, rather than continuing to overlook or exploit them.
Energy Democracy
A framework where community members, rather than corporate utility monopolies, have the power to make decisions about their own energy resources. Energy democracy treats clean energy as a public good and a human right. It focuses on transitioning the electrical grid from a top-down, profit-driven model into a community-based system where the residents control their power, keeping the economic and resilience benefits rooted in their own neighborhoods.
Community-Driven Energy Resilience
A concept that goes beyond installing clean technologies like microgrids. It requires community engagement and decision-making to ensure that the communities most at risk from power shutoffs and climate disasters have the authority to guide the deployment of resilient energy systems to meet their specific local needs.
CAISO (California Independent System Operator)
The organization that oversees the operation of California’s bulk electric power system, transmission lines, and electricity market. It manages the flow of electricity across the state’s centralized grid.
CCA (Community Choice Aggregation / Agency)
A local, not-for-profit public agency that allows cities and counties to pool the electricity demand of their residents and businesses. CCAs purchase power on behalf of their communities—often prioritizing clean, local renewables—while the existing utility continues to deliver the power and maintain the power lines.
CPUC (California Public Utilities Commission)
The state regulatory agency responsible for overseeing privately-owned public utilities in California, including electric power companies.
The CPUC sets the rules and rates for the traditional monopoly energy model.
DER (Distributed Energy Resources)
Small-scale, localized energy generation and storage technologies. Examples include rooftop solar panels, home battery storage, electric vehicles (and bi-directional charging), and energy efficiency controls. These resources generate power locally rather than relying on massive, centralized power plants.
DSO (Distribution System Operator)
An operational model for the electrical grid that manages local energy distribution. Advocates push for DSO models because they empower the localized proliferation of clean, distributed energy resources (DERs) rather than relying on centralized transmission.
IOU (Investor-Owned Utility)
A private, profit-driven utility company owned by shareholders. In California, the major IOUs are Pacific Gas and Electric (PG&E), Southern California Edison (SCE), and San Diego Gas & Electric (SDG&E). IOUs operate a centralized energy model and maintain the physical grid infrastructure.
Microgrid (or Community Microgrid)
A localized, self-sufficient energy system capable of generating, storing, and distributing its own power. While it can connect to the main electrical grid, a microgrid can also disconnect (or “island”) and operate autonomously to provide resilient power during broader grid shutoffs or natural disasters.
NEM (Net Energy Metering)
A billing mechanism that credits owners of solar energy systems for the excess electricity they add to the grid. Recent state policies (such as NEM 3.0) have reduced the value of these credits, posing a threat to rooftop solar adoption.
TAC (Transmission Access Charge)
A fee assessed to pay for the long-distance transmission of electricity. Current assessment methods often fail to recognize the value of locally generated energy, creating an unfair cost barrier to community-based renewable projects.
PCIA (Power Charge Indifference Adjustment)
Often misleadingly called an “exit fee,” the PCIA is an ongoing charge levied by investor-owned utilities on customers who switch to a Community Choice program. It forces local energy customers to pay for the older, above-market legacy power contracts (like fossil fuels and nuclear) previously signed by the monopoly utilities.
BYONCE (Bring Your Own New Clean Energy)
This acronym slays by advocating for energy-hungry data center developers to Bring Your Own New Clean Energy by supplying or funding an equivalent amount of new, clean power generation when developing data centers for AI or cloud computing. Requiring tech companies to bring dedicated solar, wind, or battery storage capacity to the table protects residential electricity bills and avoids utilities building new fossil-fuel plants.
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