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Solar Bonds - First Green Bonds      In addition to creating CCA, Local Power founder Paul Fenn wrote the world's first "green bond" or "climate bond" authority in San Francisco in 2001, to complement San Francisco's Community Choice Aggregation of grid power procurement, for the finance, installation and maintenance of local renewables and energy efficiency measures on homes and businesses in 2001, known as "H Bonds" or Solar Bonds. Local Power Co-founder Julia Peters ran the citywide campaign, which won 55% approval from voters, who amended San Francisco's charter (Proposition H, City Charter Section 9.107.8) to read that "no voter approval shall be required with respect to revenue bonds issued to finance or refinance the acquisition, construction, installation, equipping, improvement or rehabilitation of equipment or facilities for renewable energy and energy conservation." In 2004 and 2007 San Francisco adopted a CCA ordinance and CCA Draft Implementation Plan, and H Bond Action Plan for a service to "meet or beat" the utility rate while using the solar bond authority to finance and build 360 MW of local renewables and energy effficiency measures. Since then, Green Bonds have played a major role in Local Power's development of the CCA business model, and at the same time have become a $1T industry worldwide, transforming renewable energy even apart from CCA. Meanwhile, California CCA 2.0 programs built over 20,000 MW of new in-state renewables, causing massive climate benefits - over $35 B of investments committed including $15B in Green Bonds - becoming the largest issuer of Green Bonds in the US (larger than China or Canada!) in 2024. This is over 11 Gigawatts, more than 1% of the combined domestic US electricity generation supply. |
