Good evening, Councilors. My name is <name> and I live on <street or city>.

I'd like to follow up on an email I sent to you last Friday about a Big Picture idea concerning cities with 100% renewable energy goals but no practical way to reach them. The idea is called the "Community Electricity Options project" and it centers on a white paper entitled, "A Strategy and Six Ways to Address Community Energy Goals".

The purpose of the project was to develop an actionable path forward for the many communities that have ambitious energy goals. We concluded that this is best acomplished by a state-level solution that would provide a city with more choice and control over the energy sources used to produce its electricity. Local solar and energy efficiency programs, while important, can only take us so far.

Looking to practices in other states, the paper provides background on 6 possible solutions for communities. However, we don't advocate any particular solution.

The essence of this idea is that any viable solution for cities and businesses with ambitious energy goals would best arise from a transparent process led by state-level decision-makers and informed by a broad array of stakeholders and independent experts, who would evaluate the alternatives, identify the best solution, and then determine the legislative and regulatory actions needed to implement it.

We are currently engaged in outreach to legislators, the incoming Polis administration, and key stakeholder groups including the Sierra Club and CC4CA.

I'll quickly list those 6 options.

• The first two are different flavors of Community Choice Aggregation, or CCA – as implemented in California, and as implemented in Illinois. CCAs offer communities an alternative electricity supplier with alternative rate plan options.
• Option 3 concerns the bill HB-1428, which would have allowed utilities to form collaborative agreements with individual cities if it had passed in 2018. The paper recommends ways to improve this bill to make it better for cities.
• Option 4 is for a city to take control over the local electricity system and form a municipal electric utility, as Boulder is doing and as Pueblo is considering.
• Option 5 is for utilities to voluntarily accelerate their transition to 100% renewable energy system-wide, thereby eliminating any need for city-specific solutions. The paper looks at the technical and economic feasibility of this option based on studies by NREL, RMI and others.
• Option 6 is to adapt the idea of a "green tariff" for use by cities. Green tariffs are programs designed for large corporations in monopoly states that allows them to contract for renewable energy from specific projects through their utility.

Again, what is being proposed is not a specific solution, but rather a transparent, inclusive process involving a legislative or Governor's committee, with input from diverse stakeholders and experts. We feel this approach is well suited to identifying the best solution, and it will be more widely accepted than a prescriptive solution.

Councilors, I hope you will read at least the Introduction and Executive Summary of the white paper, then consider this idea on its merits, and consider helping to move the idea forward through your contacts in the Legislature, Governor's office, CC4CA, and simply by spreading the word among stakeholders, which is basically everyone. I'll note that CC4CA's Policy Position #1 might as well have read "support the Community Electricity Options project."

For others listening, you can find this idea on the Energy Freedom Colorado website, EnergyFreedomCO.org, and click on Community Electricity Options project.

Finally, if I may, I'd like to hand each of you a page with my statement on one side and our summary for Legislators and Commissioners on the other side. Thank you.