With all hurdles overcome, Southampton Town is poised to become the first municipality on Long Island to implement a community choice aggregation program, a model that replaces the utility as the default sole supplier of electricity or natural gas and gives municipalities the opportunity to seek lower prices from alternative suppliers.

The town believes CCA has the greatest potential to bring renewable energy into the community in a relatively short period of time without the disruptive infrastructure improvements that might otherwise need to take place

As electricity charges skyrocketed through the primary months of 2022, Joule estimates that its electricity supply chain helped clients save $7 million from July 2021 through February 2022.

Beyond the bill savings for participants, the program has helped to avoid more than 650,000 metric tons of greenhouse gas emissions since July 2019.

With the governor’s signature on legislation addressing many of the complexities not addressed in the initial Public Service Commission order, Southampton can now proceed toward development of C.C.A.

Southampton Town has been at the forefront of this effort, and was the first town on Long Island to adopt legislation to create a local CCA program.

Community Choice Aggregation is one of, if not the most powerful tools in the State’s arsenal to achieve clean energy and climate protection goals.

The climate crisis and our communities' economic need cannot wait. We deserve access to the same benefits that others in the state are getting.

The Town of Southampton, New York, is building on its first-mover status with the release of an RFP for the first community distributed generation (CDG) solar project on Long Island, an opportunity made available through its community choice aggregation (CCA) program.

Why should we have to pay their [LIPA's] local supply costs? We can go out and get local supply ourselves.

State regulators are focusing a microscope on Long Island's energy market after an outpouring of complaints from competitors and local governments who say LIPA’s practices stymie competition.

The second bill, which Mr. Thiele said will be introduced this month, "would by law ensure that Long Islanders who are part of LIPA's service area would be able to access C.C.A. by the same rules that have been imposed by the P.S.C. for the rest of the state," he said on Tuesday.

Southampton has been leading the charge for the past three years to allow East End municipalities to demand their electricity comes from renewable sources, and has had some success in 2020.

Brookhaven and Southampton town officials this week charged that LIPA is continuing to block their efforts to contract alternative energy suppliers to offer cheaper, greener power to their constituents, prompting them to call for state legislation to force the authority to comply with state law.

It is important that Long Island residents are no longer left behind. CCA authority has been enabled for the rest of the state since 2016. It is important that Long Island municipalities are able to source the electricity power supply for residents and small businesses, to access clean energy markets, and to protect consumers with fixed electricity rates without cancellation fees.

“CCA is the most powerful way to green the grid quickly,” said Ms. Arthur. “It’s the single biggest action a municipality can take. You can basically take a whole town of people and switch them at one time over to renewable energy. People can do individual renewable energy projects. But to have a whole town switch to renewables, that’s a giant step.”

East Hampton can take a large step toward deriving its energy needs from renewable sources by joining 61 other municipalities in New York State with an active community choice aggregation program.

LIPA vote means Southampton is closer to cheaper electric rates.

CCA is a tool essential to Southampton in order to meet its stated goal of 100-percent renewable electric energy by 2025.

The CCA program will be able to provide renewable-generated electricity for less than what PSEG Long Island is charging. Even a one-cent reduction in the cost of energy for ratepayers would save Southampton residents a combined $7 million a year.

LIPA Director of Communications Sid Nathan said: LIPA will recommend our board of trustees vote to approve community choice aggregation at our meeting on Wednesday and welcomes the opportunity for community leaders to make energy choices they believe are appropriate for their constituents.

CCA aggregates the purchasing power of all the town’s residents and small businesses, so lower electric rates can be negotiated. The savings can enable the entire community to switch to 100% clean and renewable electricity for less than what residents pay now.

LIPA is expected to vote on adopting a framework for CCA at its 5/20 board meeting. Six investor-owned utilities in NY State adopted a CCA tariff in 2016. LIPA, which is not regulated by the state’s Public Service Commission, did not.

Long Islanders need to understand that we need to fight for what ratepayers outside the LIPA region already have, and that is choice.

A CCA program would replace LIPA as the default power supply provider.

The LIPA board of trustees will hold its first virtual board meeting Friday as the authority readies a program that would allow hundreds of thousands of Long Islanders to switch to an outside company for their energy supply.

The community choice aggregation model replaces the utility as the default, monopolistic supplier of electricity or natural gas and gives municipalities the opportunity to seek lower prices from alternative suppliers.

Municipalities will likely be able to provide price stability for its residents, solicit bids from power and gas companies, and stipulate how much energy comes from wind farms, solar panels or any other renewable source.

CCA fits with the larger goal of trying to reduce carbon emissions, trying to wean us off fossil fuels as soon as possible. It’s critical to the planet, but also to our local goals.