News

The Village board has voted to move forward with the next step to consider a Community Choice Aggregation (CCA) program. This would allow us to negotiate electricity costs, and to choose green power options. We will hold a series of public hearings in order to explain how the program would work for residents who decide to opt in. These sessions will be held on the following dates:

In person meetings at Village Hall:

Saturday, January 11th at 11 am

Thursday, February 6th at 7 pm

Virtual meeting only:

Wednesday, January 22nd at 7 pm

The Board has selected Joule Assets Community Choice Aggregation Program as the administrator. The final decision on “go/no-go” will be made in March, when the price of renewable energy rates will be set.

Village of Rhinebeck: CCA Overview 

Why CCA 

Community Choice Aggregation (CCA) allows local elected officials to choose where the energy comes from for their community. It’s a program to purchase power in bulk for virtually all homes and businesses within the participating jurisdiction. A CCA can allow whole communities to participate in the clean energy economy by ensuring that a greater percentage of electricity is coming from renewable sources.  

Currently, Central Hudson is the default entity that selects the sources of electricity on behalf of businesses and residences in the Village of Rhinebeck. Central Hudson chooses sources that include greenhouse gas emitting power plants. CCA gives us the local control to pool our electricity buying-power, and to advocate and act on behalf of our village to make a different choice:We would choose clean sources for the electricity Central Hudson provides to village customers.  

A Village of Rhinebeck CCA would fulfill the No.1 priority action identified in our Climate Action Planning by lowering our government operations’ emissions as well as the emissions for the wider community in the village. It would earn us major points in the CSC and NYSERDA’s CEC programs (NYSERDA’s CCA Toolkit). 

Negotiating a rate on behalf of customers within the municipality would guarantee: 

  • Either 50 percent or 100 percent renewable electricity at the best price we could find 

  • Stable, predictable supply charges on monthly Central Hudson bills for a contract period of  2 or 3 years 

 

CCA Steps  

  1. Village Board passes enabling legislation (Done May 2024)

  2. Village Board forms CCA Advisory Group (Done)  

  3. Village Board puts out an RFP for a CCA Administrator (Done, Village Board approved Joule’s proposal at the Dec 2024 board meeting)

  4. Two months of intensive public outreach with the CCA Administrator (Jan, Feb 2025)

  5. Public Service Commission approves data security and implementation plan  

  6. Village Board issues RFPs for energy and efficiency purchases  

  7. Administrator negotiates with competitive suppliers and contractors 

  8. Village Board selects supplier with recommendation from Administrator 

  9. Village Board approves contract with locked in rate (typically 2-3 years) 

  10. Central Hudson switches the supply to new supplier and participants continue to get unified CenHud bill 

  11. Participants can opt out at any time, no penalty 

 

Precedents 

There are thousands of CCAs in the US. In the Hudson Valley, a CCA enabling law has been passed by: 

  • City of Kingston 

  • City of Poughkeepsie 

  • Town of Red Hook 

  • Town of Saugerties 

  • Town of Rhinebeck 

  • Village of New Paltz (and more) 

 

CCA 3.0 

This enabling legislation would provide a framework for addressing the climate crisis beyond simply the source of our electricity. The enabling legislation provides language around Distributed Energy Resources (DERs), which gives the Village of Rhinebeck CCA options for group purchasing for on-site interventions such as rooftop solar, heat pumps, weatherization and insulation measures, energy management systems, and microgrid backups. Watch this space as these programs emerge in partnership with the CCA Administrator and Program Organizer.  View Mid-Hudson Energy Transition’s Village Board  presentation in July 2023 (PANDA video, slides).