SAN FRANCISCO, July 2, 2001: The California Energy Commission announced its award of over $6 million dollars to a new team of municipal utilities in California committed to renewable energy. The Public Power Renewable Action Team (PPREAT) has established a groundbreaking collaboration including the City of Anaheim, the Los Angeles Department of Water and Power, the City of Redding, Pasadena Water and Power, Silicon Valley Power, and many other municipal utilities in California. PPREAT will be managed by the Center for Resource Solutions (CRS), a non-profit organization in San Francisco focused on renewable energy promotion for economic and environmental sustainability.

PPREAT plans to deploy renewable resources as a hedge against volatile electricity prices, offer renewable energy services to public agency customers, and keep public power competitive in the face of changing electricity markets. The team will support the public power system in California with advice and information to facilitate the development of utility scale renewable-based electric generation projects, both distributed and bulk power, that reduce risk and stabilize electric system costs. “The award serves as a major victory for PPREAT and a strong affirmation of the role public power can play in delivering renewables for California, “ says Kirk Brown, Assistant Director of the Center for Resource Solutions.

Ultimately, PPREAT will develop long-range renewable power procurement strategies that can compete head-to-head with traditional power plant development proposals. The California Energy Commission’s Public Interest Energy Research (PIER) program awarded $6,177,564 towards nine PPREAT renewable energy projects over three years. Among these projects are distributed generation assessment, New Geothermal Resource Assessment, Biomass Distributed Generation Value Analysis, and Solar Thermal Parabolic Trough Power Plant.

PPREAT aims to:

-Aggregate demand for renewable energy among public power utilities;
-Move renewable energy into mainstream power planning processes;
-Identify opportunities for public power joint-ownership of renewable energy projects;
-Leverage federal and state renewable energy project development technical assistance;
-Maximize administrative effectiveness and renewable energy outreach tools; and
-Develop a replicable model for joint-ownership of renewable energy projects.

While PPREAT's initial collaborators come from California, PPREAT participants hope to work with public power agencies across the nation. For more information on The Public Power Renewable Energy Action Team, visit the PPREAT page of the CRS website.

Based in San Francisco's Presidio, CRS administers national and international programs that preserve and protect the environment through the design of innovative strategies and increased utilization of appropriate technologies. CRS directs the Green-e Program, a renewable energy certification program for restructured electricity markets. Dr. Jan Hamrin founded CRS and serves as the Executive Director. More information is available at www.resource-solutions.org

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