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Category: Environment

  • Valley Clean Energy meeting, Thursday, Sept. 12

    VCE(From press release) The Valley Clean Energy board of directors will meet at 5:30 p.m. Thursday, Sept. 12, in the Council Chambers at Woodland City Hall, 300 First St. in Woodland. The meeting is open to the public.

    The board — which includes members of the Woodland and Davis city councils and the Yolo County Board of Supervisors — is expected to adopt residential time-of-use rates and receive an update on potential acquisition of PG&E wire and pole assets.

    The meeting agenda is available at https://valleycleanenergy.org/board-meetings/.

    VCE, the local electricity provider, launched in June 2018 and provides cleaner energy at competitive rates to 55,000 local customers.

  • VCE Costs the Same as PG&E But Delivers More

    By Tom Stallard

    It’s been a long hot summer, but those cool autumn days aren’t too far off…

    And thanks to Valley Clean Energy, local electricity customers are not paying any more to run their air-conditioners than they would have paid under PG&E. At the same time, they are reaping the environmental benefits of a greener energy portfolio.

    Community choice programs like VCE can keep their rates competitive by buying electricity through a process that encourages private energy companies to compete to provide clean, renewable power.

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  • VCE public workshop, studies purchase of PG&E Assets

    VCE(From press releases)

    Valley Clean Energy Sponsors Public Workshop on Proposed New Residential Time-of-Use Rates

    Valley Clean Energy (VCE) will conduct a public workshop this month to share information on proposed changes to PG&E’s residential electricity rates based on time of use. VCE is considering whether or not these rates would be advantageous to VCE customers and would like to hear from its customers. PG&E staff and VCE representatives will be present to discuss the proposed changes and answer questions.

    The public workshop will begin at 5:30 p.m. Thursday, Aug. 22, in Woodland City Council Chambers, 300 First St. in downtown Woodland.

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  • Valley Clean Energy responds to Woodland utility fraud news

    VCE(From press release) Valley Clean Energy — the official, locally governed electricity provider for Woodland, Davis and unincorporated Yolo County — would like to reassure its customers that recent reports of utility fraud are not connected to the agency in any way.

    Valley Clean Energy (VCE) began offering customers clean, low-carbon power in June 2018 and currently serves more than 54,000 customer accounts. The not-for-profit public agency reinvests its revenues back into the communities it serves.

    Yolo County District Attorney Jeff Reisig issued a news release Friday, Aug. 2, to warn local residents to be aware of utility service providers who are switching customers’ gas or electric service without consent or authorization.

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  • Valley Clean Energy announces net energy metering and dividend program

    VCE(From press release) The Valley Clean Energy (VCE) board of directors took big strides last month to fulfill two major promises to its customers.

    The board voted unanimously to begin including Net Energy Metered (NEM) solar customers into VCE service starting in January 2020, and additionally voted to launch a Dividend Program this fall, designed to share revenues with customers when VCE meets its financial goals.

    Valley Clean Energy is a not-for-profit public agency that provides electricity service to customers in Davis, Woodland and the unincorporated areas of Yolo County.

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  • Destruction of mature trees at WDAAC

    Tree-stump

    California black walnut stump after removal. Tree was north of Covell Blvd. and along the west side of the West Davis Active Adult Community development site.

    By Greg McPherson and Larry Guenther

    On a global scale, planting billion of trees to combat climate change will be for naught if we don’t stop clearcutting the Amazon and other forests. The same idea applies on a local scale. Tree Davis’s upcoming planting of 1,000 trees will matter very little if healthy, mature trees are removed from development sites. Large amounts of carbon dioxide stored in these big, old trees is rapidly released after removal, whereas it takes many years for young trees to acquire biomass and accumulate carbon.

    In November Davis voters approved Measure L, which established Baseline Project Features to guide development of the West Davis Active Adult Community (WDAAC) property, which is located west of the Sutter-Davis Hospital and north of Covell Blvd. In early June we noticed that 14 large, old California black walnut trees were among a host of trees removed from the site. We wondered why these veteran trees were not protected in a greenspace buffer along Covell Blvd.

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  • Valley Clean Energy Community Advisory Committee meeting

    VCEThe public is invited to the next meeting of the Valley Clean Energy Community Advisory Committee. The meeting will begin at 5:30 p.m. Thursday, July 25, in the Woodland City Council Chambers at 300 First St. in Woodland.

    Advisory committee members will review and discuss PG&E's residential time-of-use proposal, hear an informational presentation on potential local energy efficiency programs and discuss coordination of VCE's 2020 Integrated Resource Plan and Strategic Plan.

    VCE, the local electricity provider, launched a year ago and provides cleaner energy at competitive rates to 55,000 local customers in Davis, Woodland and unincorporated Yolo County. For more information, visit https://valleycleanenergy.org. To receive agendas by email, sign up at https://valleycleanenergy.org/get-in-touch/.

  • There should be a public buyout of PG&E

    By Dov Salkoff

    I am in a strange stage of my life. I am unemployed with a Ph.D. in neuroscience, living in my mother’s house. Since moving to Davis, I became more involved with political activism, most of all climate change. I am now driven, every day, by the conviction that there is something fundamentally wrong with this world, and people like me are in a good position to be part of the movement to fix it.

    I’ve heard a lot of ideas from Davisites on how to combat climate change, and there is a clear pattern. Electric cars, solar panels, “going vegan” and biking to work peak enthusiasm as ways to reduce emissions, but there is a fatal flaw in these solutions. They leave out the poor and working class. In a survey of eight counties in the Sacramento region, 37% of respondents said they couldn’t afford making personal changes to reduce their environmental impact.

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  • Valley Clean Energy board meeting, Thursday, July 11

    VCEThe Valley Clean Energy board of directors will meet at 5:30 p.m. Thursday, July 11, in the Council Chambers at Woodland City Hall, 300 First St. in Woodland. The meeting is open to the public.

    The board — which includes members of the Davis and Woodland city councils and the Yolo County Board of Supervisors — is expected to hear a presentation from a representative of PG&E on the utility’s residential time-of-use rates.

    VCE, the local electricity provider, launched a year ago and provides cleaner energy at competitive rates to 55,000 local customers. For more information, visit https://valleycleanenergy.org. To receive agendas by email, sign up at https://valleycleanenergy.org/get-in-touch/.

  • A Tour of The Sustainable Living and Learning Communities

    A IMG_8406A future focused interdisciplinary institution grows from the deep roots of UC Davis’s alternative communities.

    By Colin Walsh

    In an earlier article we discussed the new SLLC that binds together the Student Farm, The Experimental Community Gardens, the Domes, Design Lab workspace, and Project Compost and the Tri Co-ops (Pierce, The Agrarian Effort, and Davis Student Co-op). What had been distinct learning communities with similar values and commitment to student agency, are now a unified grassroots educational initiative that explores a broad range of principles and practices related to agricultural, environmental, and social sustainability. Together, they aspire to promote 4 values, according to the SLLC website: experiential learning, sustainability, community, and place.

    We also looked at the Green Fellowship program, a new effort to “fund projects exploring student-led advancement of social justice, sustainable technology, and environmental sustainability at UC Davis” according to the website.

    A_IMG_4047The Tour

    On Saturday 5/11, as a very nice wine and cheese reception featuring food from the Student Farm and wine from the award winning Matthiasson and Farella wineries wound down (Steve Matthiasson and Tom Farella where in attendance), our tour guides gathered us together in the Eco Garden by the historic farm house at the student farm. We were welcomed warmly by our guides Carol Hillhouse and Nick Tamayo. Nick described his several years of experience with the student farm as he became ever more involved.

    First, we walked through the Eco Garden, literally taking time to smell the flowers. Our guides took the time to point out plants and told us about the history and visions for the areas as we went.

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