Valley Clean Energy Alliance (VCE) was in the Davis opinion columns this weekend again. First, Bob Dunning wrote another column in the Davis Enterprise that mischaracterizes the switch to VCE from PG&E as “mandated” and implies that local government didn’t trust Davis citizens to make the right choice. Then, David Greenwald wrote a column in the Davis Vanguard on how Dunning had ignored the authorization of the development and formation of VCE and is late to the game.

In both cases, the distinction between the choice to form VCE made by city councils and the Board of Supervisors after substantial study  is not distinguished from the choice that electricity ratepayers now have as to which entity will serve them. Previously, Yolo County ratepapers had no choice as to who should serve them–it took the formation of VCE to create that choice. If Dunning has a problem with that even offering that choice in the first place, then that’s a much more fundamental problem. But he is not being so transparent in his opposition, with is either disingenuous or ignorant.

I wrote the following email to Bob Dunning (I had an earlier letter to the editor already published in the Enterprise, that I also posted on this blog and the Davis Vanguard.)

You complain that somehow you’ve been “mandated” to sign up with Valley Clean Energy Authority. Yet you fail to ask the question “why was I mandated to sign up with PG&E all of those years?” Why does PG&E get a free pass from your scrutiny?

Instead now, you actually have a choice. We trust that you will make the right choice, whereas before you had NO choice. And you are not “mandated” to join VCE. You can act to switch to PG&E if you so choose. What has changed is the starting point of your choice. The default is no longer PG&E—it’s VCE. There’s nothing wrong with changing the default choice, but we have to start with a default since everyone wants to continue to receive electricity. (The other option is like they did with long distance service in the late 1980s with random assignment as the starting point, but that seems too much bother.)

 Send me your answers in your next column.

As to the Vanguard, I posted:

I think your column misses the fundamental point–contrary to everything that Dunning writes, we DO have a choice–it’s just that the starting point (default) isn’t what he wants. He prefers that the big corporations get the favored pole position.