Blue Strike led a team of consultants to prepare a first of its kind business plan to provide local development in the region served by AVA Energy (formerly East Bay Community Energy). The Local Development Business Plan (LDBP) creates a comprehensive framework for accelerating local distributed energy resource deployment while maximizing local benefit in Alameda County through the Community Choice Aggregation (CCA) model. The Local Development Business Plan is intended to support the achievement of a bold vision for implementing a CCA program in Alameda County, with a strong focus on developing local clean energy assets and maximizing local environmental, economic, and social benefits. It seeks to do this by providing a comprehensive framework for rapid deployment of beneficial clean energy programs and resources throughout the EBCE service territory.

The LDBP identifies short-term, no regrets opportunities as well as some of the tradeoffs between different local development goals. It also maps out a path to pursue and accelerate achievement of those goals (including economic and workforce benefits), while maintaining enough flexibility to adapt to changes in state policy and regulation. In addition, it identifies innovative win-win programs to create good jobs, provide programs that enhance economic equity, stimulate economic development, and enhance the integration of local distributed energy resources (DER) in ways that enhance AVA Energy’s long-term stability and reliability as an organization that the Alameda County community will depend on for years to come.