Dear colleagues and friends:

We are very pleased to welcome Beckie Menten of Marin Clean Energy (and an HSU alum!) as the next speaker in the Spring 2015 Sustainable Futures Speaker Series. Beckie will speak on Thursday, April 16 from 5:30 to 7:00 PM in Behavioral and Social Sciences Building room 166 (BSS 166) on the HSU campus. The title of her talk is “Community Choice, Community Power: An In-Depth Look at California's Emerging Model for Local Electricity Control.”

Beckie Menten is the Energy Efficiency Director for Marin Clean Energy (MCE). She designs, develops, and delivers efficiency programs in the MCE service area. Beckie has an extensive background in both energy efficiency and local government, having worked at the city, county, and state level to design efficiency programs and research best practices in energy efficiency. Prior to joining the MCE team, Beckie was most recently the Program Manager for the Energy Efficiency in Existing Buildings program at the California Energy Commission. Beckie also served as the efficiency financing lead at the Energy Commission and brings considerable expertise in evaluating innovative ideas for enabling investment in energy efficiency. Prior to working with the Energy Commission, Beckie worked with the Demand Side Management group of the California Public Utilities Commission. Beckie has a master of science degree in Environmental Systems from Humboldt State University, where her thesis research focused on development of a seven-county regional Property Assessed Clean Energy (PACE) financing program on the north coast of California; she received a Switzer Fellowship for her work on the PACE program.

Marin Clean Energy established California's first community choice aggregation (CCA) district, and they now serve customers in Marin County and the cities of Richmond, El Cerrito, San Pablo, and Benicia. A CCA provides a framework for shifting the responsibility for purchasing electricity from the utility to a local entity such as MCE. According to their website, the "... purpose of Marin Clean Energy is to address climate change by reducing energy related greenhouse gas emissions and securing energy supply, price stability, energy efficiencies and local economic and workforce benefits. It is the intent of MCE to promote the development and use of a wide range of renewable energy sources and energy efficiency programs, including but not limited to solar and wind energy production at competitive rates for customers."  There has been discussion about the possibility of setting up a CCA in the Humboldt Bay region, and Beckie's talk will provide a great opportunity to learn how a CCA works in practice.