How to Own Your Power

Paul Fenn: So we're doing this basically marketing paperwork and engineering service to make something accessible to people that otherwise is a decade away at least, in terms of having a combined energy system that combines on-site renewable energy like solar on the roof with electric vehicle with a two way charger that functions as a battery with A heating and hot water system that also functions as a battery. So these are all under one system, and that's why they can do more on the site and use the grid less. And the whole strategy is to get away from the grid, to eliminate pipeline use, and then get protection against the grid, prices and resilience, and to form people into small groups around where they live in their neighborhoods. to install and use these systems.

Dia: Welcome to the Ithaca Local Economy Lab. I'm Dia, your host and neighbor, and today's episode is a true Ithaca experiment in energy ownership that's looking for participants. And you, if you live in or around Ithaca, are eligible. But if you're listening from outside of Ithaca or even New York, don't tune out because this system, CCA, is actually available in about half of the US right now. And if you don't know about it, You definitely want to stick around to the end where we'll tell you exactly how to get this kind of power back, no matter where you are. So, our guest today is Paul Fenn, who is the founder and president of Local Power, which is an energy consultancy that Bloomberg called the utility company's number one enemy. In Massachusetts in the 1990s, he worked out a way for average consumers like you and me to take advantage of the same bulk purchase price discounts that.

Big businesses like data centers get. He then wrote California's version, which was signed into law in 2002, He also wrote the world's first Green Bond Authority for San Francisco in 2001, and he's helped write legislation to make it available all across the US. He is now doing his newest version of this work here in Ithaca.

Dia: what brings us to this moment with T gen and the CCA which you've which you have invented,

Paul Fenn: Thanks, yeah. It it was a it was invented as part of that phenomenon the last forty years, and it really is since 1995 but I got involved more like 1992 I guess. since that time we've had the sort of post regulatory environment.

In the United States for electricity and for natural gas. And alongside that, this the increasing free trade orientation of the whole economy and globalization. And so the shift of those industries as deregulate industries toward the global market, away from local market. like we're now exporting LNG, the huge amounts of liquefied natural gas to Europe and to other places.

parallel activity of deregulation and also globalization because that unleashed all the capital to leave the United States and to acquire energy assets in foreign countries. So those are parallel processes and community choice aggregation, which is the the policy I developed was really a sideshow.

but it was all most of that time was this outsider to the main event, which was consumer choice, deregulation. Everyone choose your own power. Everyone but choose your own gas supplier, depending on the state you were in. and and so the crisis we're having today, I would call it a post-regulatory crisis.

So it wasn't just that they loosed restrictions on the industry, but the industry was allowed to liquidate and globalize.

So it's not the same industry and its motives aren't the same and its activities aren't the same. So why is it the price of natural gas goes up in the state of New York or down, or electricity is no longer just a matter of what the cost is to bring those assets to New York, but instead the the outside market and what it's doing. And so if a war makes natural gas more valuable as liquefied natural gas in China than it is in New York, then the gas is going to China, not New York. So and the part of that is because of globalization.

the impoverishment of the energy of the people of New York in terms of energy consumption, reduction of protection of them as consumers, exposure of them to to price volatility in the market. So you have a tripling of electricity rates in recent years. There's another 24% increase requests from are are currently underway. So we're going from normally having five percent per year increase in costs, which is was kind of the norm. It's you know it's now 10% is doubled The current request is two and a half times the last increase. It's already extreme. And that really does hurt people economically because this money is some of the only discretionary funding that most people have. It isn't just that it's, a few hundred dollars a month. It's that there wasn't any other three hundred dollars a month that was what they have left, And so now it goes to utilities.

I promised I wouldn't my answers wouldn't be too long. This one already is. But basically that I think that's the situation that we're being exposed. But the exposure is a 25-year exposure. It's just getting a lot worse, partly because of the of the the wars, have caused the transformation of the United States from a non-exporter or importer of any natural g liquefied natural gas into the largest.

export of natural gas in the world. So CCA.

Is a way to get the community into a group again in this environment And to redefine what the service is going to be for the community at the municipal level, it's a restart of the definition of electricity and gas service. And then the other track of what we're doing with the city and the town of Ithaca is what we call Own Your Power. That's an energy transition service when you personally, alone or with your neighbors, voluntarily and with us you become an owner of your energy supply and it's on the site of your home or business or nearby, next door on the block, at a minimum in the neighborhood. but then it has other parts like the municipality is also going to try to get involved. And the municipalities that do get involved owning their own power on the site will also put some of that up for shares to people who can't do it on their own house. So to try to open it up so so renters can participate, not just homeowners, to sort of desegment the local market where it isn't just certain parts of the population that are eligible, but anyone's eligible.

So to use data, to use a more engineered approach to the placement and use of these kinds of advanced energy systems that are on the site, to aggregate, to make them less expensive, to do a lot of the paperwork so that to reduce the soft costs, which are a huge part of the reason people can't afford these kinds of systems, is just the the paperwork and the marketing costs and the engineering costs.

So we're doing this basically marketing paperwork and engineering service to make something accessible to people that otherwise is a decade away at least, in terms of having a combined energy system that combines on-site renewable energy like solar on the roof with electric vehicle with a two way charger that functions as a battery with A heating and hot water system that also functions as a battery. So these are all under one system, and that's why they can do more on the site and use the grid less. And the whole strategy is to get away from the grid, to eliminate pipeline use, and then get protection against the grid, prices and resilience, and to make that form people into small groups around where they live in their neighborhoods. to install and use these systems.

Dia: So back in 2019, Ithaca was, I think, the first city in the United States to adopt the Green a Green New Deal for itself. And then of course came the COVID shutdowns, which sort of threw everything off of track. And then we got the Biden administration, which which then put a whole bunch of money and funding into green sorts of energy solutions. And now we've got a new administration that's come in that's sort of clawed that all back. And so everything is really in in turmoil at this moment.

Like almost at it it seems almost daily. There's just new new things that are coming and going. And so if our listeners go to not sure.

Paul Fenn: it's Tompkins Tompkins-gen.com. Tompkins

Dia: Dot com. Okay.

Paul Fenn: dash gen dot com.

Dia: So if they go there, they can read about this, the the two sort of separate branches that your your company is offering. Your company is called Local Power, and we can

Paul Fenn: Mm-hmm.

Dia: read about that at localpower.com. and all of these will be in the show notes as well if you're if you're interested for the links. But the two separate, there's two separate programs, right? The CCA, which is the what is it, community choice aggregation, which is Kind of like you it it's it's an opt-out program. So everybody who is in a municipality that is part of a CCA or that's participating in CCA, they have to specifically opt out in order to not participate. And then the municipality

Paul Fenn: Exactly.

Dia: will sort of buy the the energy in bulk and get that's that's essential. So it's it's sort of like a an a cooperative basically that the city is is buying right or I I think I read somebody said like a Costco so you just you join it and it's it's like you get the discount. now

Paul Fenn: Mm-hmm.

Dia: the the Own Your Power is slightly different because it's opt-in basically instead of opt out where the individuals have to choose to participate in setting up or purchasing these I guess Is it accurate to call it a microgrid? A network? Is that is that an accurate statement?

Paul Fenn: yeah, some kind of network could be a power network, it could be a heat network.

Dia: Okay.

Paul Fenn: So and then there's the vehicle part, right? And those are connected to a power network. There also, though, are permutations between that and something like appliance automation or circuit

Dia: Mm.

Paul Fenn: automation. so there are a number of different levels that could all be called a network. There actually is no word for what we're doing because it is a pretty cutting edge kind of Design, but we say microgrid because it's the clearest kind of conception of what it is. That you have a bunch of appliances, vehicles, heating systems, hot water heaters that are being operated by a network, whether they're physically connected or not. Right? And so

Dia: Okay, okay.

Paul Fenn: they might some of them are connected, others are not connected, and but they're all being operated as one asset. And by the same control system. So it's like a microgrid, but elements of it don't ha aren't necessarily connected by power. Some might be connected by heat or hot water. Others might might not be connected at all.

Dia: Okay, so you have all of these points of entry basically to participate in this.

So right now the CCA is on pause until later this year or perhaps next year, waiting for the state regulators to to sort of decide whatever it is that they're going to decide. And

Paul Fenn: Yeah, exactly. Exactly.

Dia: so So that one's on pause. So what you're focusing on now is the Own Your Power part of it, which is the opt-in part of it. Okay, which

Paul Fenn: Mm-hmm. Yeah.

Dia: which is really exciting for for renters who, like you said, often get sort of locked out. And of course, I don't know what the actual number is, but approximately fifty percent of the municipality of Ithaca here disappears w yearly based on their

Paul Fenn: Yeah. Yep, I know it.

Dia: on their schooling and on their school schedules. and there are a lot of renters here obviously because of that. So and and just in general, like there's more renters than homeowners across the nation. So is the program up and running today? Or or when it starts?

Paul Fenn: Well, it is it it it it is up and running. We are engaging with residents and local residents and also local businesses. and to so small businesses are also eligible. They can be renters as well. and we in fact just yesterday had our first renters event public meeting. We've had of I think that was our sixth monthly public meeting. so we're well underway in terms of engagement of the community. we're also conducting up you know, we've been conducting preliminary market engagement as well for several years now. So we do have that prepared to be able to conduct procurement. Right. So to be able to develop systems if once we get people signed up and and all the paperwork done. and so yes, it's underway and it's just but it's a it's a long-term process. So We're just trying

Dia: Mm.

Paul Fenn: to get people to participate in the evaluation of of their data.

So we want to you know get people who want to do that. So we're basically in that stage right now where we're looking at, we're talking to them, having meetings, they fill out an application on our website. You can just go to the website and There's several phases of of data collection. So we get the first phase, which is basic data. We have a interview with them. And then we we gr we start to look at that data and then request more and more detailed data and build up a database which has a a unique analysis of of their perhaps most cost effective uses of energy on the site, but also what we would call needs on the site. Like for example, some people use energy on the weekend, some people during the week. It's very good to have those two people right next to each other because then you have some constant use of energy. So design on in terms of multiple people, and that's where we try to form groups of complementary people that would be advantageous sharing something versus more advantageous going alone. So the the situation itself can call for one or the other. And so design would be to figure out You know, say maybe you have a huge appetite to do everything. I want to do the power, the heat, the hot water, you know, and the car and just take the leap and be all, you know, do it all. Others could say maybe I could only do one or two of those, but I really can't do the other two. I don't want to. And so we could then try to find a neighbor who does want to.

And then we have a system that is c is well designed, adapted to the site will be more cost effective. Because you have normally only one resource that's going to be developed on the site. You choose between solar or wind or this or that. You're not really often getting offered more than one technology, maybe wall batteries, but not a car, a heater, hot water, you know, four or five pieces of equipment.

that this different. And that's that's that's what we're after is to be able to design really well well made systems that therefore will cause a return on investment. They're not premium products, they'll cause savings to the people that you would avoid buying gasoline, natural gas, or heating oil, and grid power by using the system instead, and then you would share the savings if you have.

neighbors that are doing it with you, you share their savings together. And if you do it alone, then then you just yeah, I get it. The the direct savings from the void cost. So it's We're acting as a broker to to provide that service so they can get good bids. And then we give help basically give advice like a broker about what does this look like for payback if you say yes, It's not a cookie cutter from somewhere else. This is a pilot program for what is intended for replication. We've been doing these pilot programs for for a couple of decades now. and this is our our latest and greatest pilot.

Dia: So I'm struck by a couple of things as I'm listening to you. And one of them is that the fundamental unit of cohesion here in your program is actually community. Like it doesn't it

Paul Fenn: Mm-hmm. Yeah.

Dia: really doesn't work without community, which is which makes Ithaca kind of a great, a really perfect test case because we are such a a dynamic and unique community in that way.

so right now you're looking for people who are interested in doing this. they're not actually going to be buying these appliances like in September or anything like that. This is this is very preliminary. We're putting together the the groups, starting to look at what each group is needs and can do together.

Because it's gonna be very individual, very dependent. Like if it's a a group of neighbors that are all on five acres or ten acres or fifteen acres farms, that's gonna be different than somebody who's in like Cayuga Heights, you know, or in Fall Creek or whatever that is working together.

Paul Fenn: Yeah. Yeah.

Dia: So f if you're listening and you're interested in this, then do definitely go and check it out and sign up and and just start participating, right? It's free free to participate at this point. Or is there is there a cost? Like at what point do we start having costs and what are those look like?

Paul Fenn: The basic principle, just like community choice aggregation with the with a city or a town, they don't spend any money, they don't make any decisions until someone brings them a contract and says, Here's what what what we're offering you to pay per kilowatt hour for the next X number of years. So when they say yes and they formally accept that agreement.

that that's when a commitment occurs. So there is no collection of funds from anyone prior to that time.

It's an opportunity to go through a process where you see what you could get and then you say yes or no. But until you say yes or no, no money changes hands. But in terms of the amount of the money, the whole point here is that there's so much diversity in the economy that if you had one number, it would be too much for some and too little for others. So by de facto, there is no single number because it has to be adapted to the person.

So if you have no credit rating and you're in a month to month rental and you're going to participate in this program, then you're going to be involved You may get some access to modular equipment that's just for you that you could bring with you when you leave you leave your dwelling, right? That's one thing. But there's also shares in a local system that you can cash out of if you need to, whatever, right? But you're paying into it and then you can cash out of it. and so it could be something more of a movable feast in that sense, right? Less of a fixed system with with ownership and in building fixed systems. But then there's that level people who are in the in a building that are renting a unit and they want to and the building is making this accessible and they opt they they opt to participate and they're going to use these this system or maybe as a condition of lease they agree to use the system when they come in because it's the building energy system and all the other occupants in the building own and operate the system. So then they would be buying into that system and they'd have an agreement with with that group, which is their neighbors. And part of what we're doing is writing all these different agreements and then getting them signed off on and then using them as templates. Then they would choose in those agreements how what happens when they move or if they don't make payments and all that kind of stuff. so that's at the renter end, the low income end, the renter end, there's the the single family homeowner end. There's also the multifamily building the that are middle income, right? There are a lot of different permutations to this, but because it has to be adapted. There also are multiple ownership platforms. So there are different ways to own the system based on how much you're able to borrow or raise money, And that's attempting to localize the financing as well. So it's focused on on local funding, local loan, personal loans or home loans or business loans, but also local direct investment platform and a ownership transfer platform that uses outside money but it's still there's an eighth year ownership transfer and that's the way we can finance it for people who can't get any form of loan.

So you're not limited to the modular stuff. You can buy shares on the larger system next door.

And have the same equity participation as people in that building. And so you could be using that car, even though you're not your house is not connected to its charger. And so you see how you can loosen up the fabric of the system in terms of how people use energy so it's flexible enough to include more people.

Which I do think is the path to community.

So we're dealing with people individually. And but we're also lowering costs because it's using an aggregation compared to normal companies.

Community and lo and lo and you know localization or come together where you have a technology that is local and you're using it and therefore you have community. You have the material basis for community, which is you have a reason to share something. And most of our economy you know is focused on mobility, separation, and reasons not to share anything. right, 'cause it's a it's everyone wants to to to have cash in the bank, depend on no one. And that's pretty much what the economy offers. And this is a different kind of security, which is you know, just long-term co-ownership of something in a place that enables you to avoid having to pay energy bills every month. And there are larger systems that can be maintained over time.

rather than little crappy little systems that break and don't have warranties and so on. So it's trying to improve the quality of the systems as well.

Dia: Right. Well, one of the things that we've been hearing about it recently is how fragile our electric grid actually is, and

Paul Fenn: Mm-hmm.

Dia: that there are, you know, that it's very vulnerable to to things like wildfires in California. There were a lot of wildfires that took out the electricity for days and days and days and weeks even I think in some places, and of course

Paul Fenn: Yeah.

Dia: bro brownouts and blackouts and all kinds of things that can happen. and so these more localized energy sources are definitely more resilient and you know if it's and solar panels are warrant warrantied for I think it's twenty five years now or thirty thirty years and that's just the warranty. Yeah. Like

Paul Fenn: The standard, yeah. Yeah.

Dia: they I think we don't really know how long they'll last because they're still lasting, which is great. They they

Paul Fenn: Mm-hmm. Yeah. Yeah, and batteries are turning out really good and car batteries are working out really well. The inverters have to be replaced, but that's a small part of the cost, very small part of the cost of the even the technology. But like I said, the main cost is the paperwork of making it happen. Once you have an asset, maintaining an asset, it's a much, you know, it's a long term thing. And so it just changes something from a month to month we call energy rent, where you're just paying a certain amount every month just to just to function.

And this way you're saying, no, let's treat that as in as as investment where we could put that into something we're gonna own and it will avoid that energy payment rent requirement from that time forward. And so I think that's you know that that has an economic liberation effect, which is salient, you know, in terms of not just community and sustainability, but but survival and and a way to have wealth in a time when wealth has really been kind of stripped away from most people.

Dia: Right. Yeah, so just I just wanna say it really plainly here because individuals and communities, groups, neighborhoods can actually own their own power. The own the sources of electricity, not rent it from the grid, not be dependent upon, you know, here here in New York we i it's a company in Spain that it basically gets all of our money. this would be people in their own neighborhood generating their own power and using their own power and and maintaining their own power. So this is exceptionally powerful. and you know

Paul Fenn: Yeah. Yeah. I mean the there's I mean they're still on grid, right? So they're not completely off the grid. There's

Dia: Right.

Paul Fenn: not off the grid. Still on the grid. So it's still gonna be little bit of a a bill there for electric connection, ongoing service. But we're talking about the lion's share of not just electricity but gasoline bill, which can be just as much as your your energy bill, your utility bill. Gasoline. If

Dia: Because of the EV, because of the use of the EV, right?

Paul Fenn: 'Cause right, it's an renewably powered EV, and l at least in large part. It won't obviously it's still using the grid, but but the but it's using on site renewable power and deliberately attempting to charge the vehicle when it can and in that in those hours of the day. And so it's partially on site renewably powered vehicle, but also the heating hot water systems on the site are all providing this function so that the energy can stay on the site and not need arbitrage.

sail back on to the utility and basically a kind of of capped system that the utility controls that prevents this type of of thing from from going mainstream basically it keeps it in a box and so that's that's why this on-site approach is so important is is so much of your all your energy bills are going away right not just your electric bills you're maximizing on-site use of the renewables and storage to minimize the grid use. You've eliminated all of your combustion and you're minimizing the grid. That's how you get a true greenhouse gas reduction from renewable energy.

you're not going to the gas station anymore. And and so those are all different we call it the energy wallet, all those things.

if you add them up, it's, you know, s I mean I looked at at average NYSEG our our my my count was seventy thousand dollars per decade. Does that budget? That's ballpark, right? But if you include sewage, sewer and trash, which we which this program will also attempt to to deal with, I don't know if we'll pull it off, but that that makes it even more that makes it like ninety thousand dollars per decade. So you can turn that what you're paying to basically to combustion today, somewhere, in your utility bill, your car, your heater. if you pay that to an asset and you have a transparent process, there's not some outside money that's gonna own the whole thing, So the financing is transparent, the ownership is transparent, the procurement's transparent. It is trying to set up a benefit for those those people.

to make it compelling so that it will be potentially community-wide, that it could be adopted on a community-wide basis. So we're trying to achieve an energy transition, and this is the interior architecture of that.

game to try to persuade everyone to actually do this. And the secret of it is that there are no parasitic elements other than us. And our parasitism becomes very cheap, which is a five it's a five percent commission for whatever gets built. That's our that's what we get paid. And we're only paid once it's all done, the process is to participate and find out what if you participate with us and gave us your information and had these interviews with us and made a few decisions about design, like we'll take the car, I don't want to use the car, I just want the heater, I just want that. and so that we can include it in in a group.

of projects that we bid out so it's aggregated, right? That's the other way you lower costs. We're thinking like 50 projects for the first round or something like that. But to get scale so we can get better lower prices from from bidders.

And where people will put in the work, because that's the real challenge with engineering is how to get companies to put in all the work, the engineering work to put in a bid and have it be worth it to them to do that work without being paid in advance.

And so we're trying now to focus on how do you make the development of advanced energy systems much cheaper.

Through this augmentation. And then if we can give the data and have it all baked and defined, but the decisions already occurred to the developers in packages, we believe that they will give us much better bids than what you get when you just call them on the phone and say, Well, I think I want to go solar and I want to be greener and you don't know anything. And they have to come to your house five times to hold your hand and get you to sign a document. And that's the current market, which is why they charge you so much.

So that's the innovation side of what the program is is trying to get at the so called soft costs so that people can afford this.

Dia: Right.

And make it and make it just kind of smooth as you said, smooth the way for folks so they don't have to handle all of these

Paul Fenn: Yes, yes.

Dia: different threads all at once because it is very confusing and it is very very individual.

Paul Fenn: It's very confusing. And it and it's very individual. And it's it's also been made more confusing by deregulation, which we were talking about before, in which there's all this fraud. So you're told you could buy green power and even they'll say green watts, you know, and not telling you that no, these are just pieces of paper, most of them from Texas, and otherwise nothing happened. and so we've been sold fictions that confuse everyone.

And then it makes us not believe anything because we can't believe in what the government told us for the last 10 years. And so now why would I believe you when you say this or that? I'd have become d sort of dubious. And that's what we're dealing with. And ironically, because we've been, you know, trying to do the real thing forever. So that's the biggest challenge is if people can actually recognize that what we're doing is is strange. they need to recognize that it's really quite strange.

Dia: Strange f strange for the economy that we're in and strange for the for America.

Paul Fenn: For America, for America, which is this straitjacketed economy with with a totally disastrous energy policy, and completely incoherent political class when they talk about it. And so no one has any idea what's going on, in my opinion.

Dia: Mm.

Paul Fenn: about it's just total chaos. Like you were saying, there's so many shocks in the market. you know, that that you know, every year there's a new shock. It shocks the politics, it shocks the market, it shocks the resident.

it shocks everyone. And so that's what I like to say to people, we need to find our feet. You know, we we need to like real kind of calm down a little bit and just think about what to do and what what would actually solve the problem here. And the main thing is that we're too exposed to the market for gasoline, natural gas, these are very volatile markets. They've been going up and down for decades, and people need to kind of learn.

and and make a decision that they want to get off of that if they can, we're saying to them saying you can do this, but it takes some effort. But these technologies all exist, they're all UL approved, they're all on the market today. There's nothing I'm saying to you that can't legally be done right now. We're just trying to get people to do it, lower the cost the cost is the only issue. So we're doing this program to to lower the cost. Half of the cost is the customer, right?

Because the customer needs to learn all these things and make all these decisions. And it takes a lot of time, takes a lot of time to find them and help them educate them, make the decisions. And so it needs to be done in a more efficient manner with more transparency so that that they can trust what they're hearing. So we're setting up this very transparent vehicle so that they can trust what they're hearing and be given advice about what different options are and not be totally lost in nomenclature and legalese. because I know how how dizzying it is and how d how disabling it is when you're trying to make decisions to face that.

But we need to go through a a transition process where you don't do it piecemeal and buy separate pieces of equipment that are expensive, don't work with the other parts. And so if you just buy solar, that's expensive, it doesn't work with the other parts. It's a bad design. Even solar plus storage is a bad design. It's too crude. There need to be more complex systems that are that use software, you know, and communication to to localize the use of the of of the energy on that system.

And so that's what we're setting up. And that way you're not using the grid as much. You're not using the pipelines at all. And when those markets go up and down, you just doesn't expose you anymore, except for the part of that you're connected to the grid, which is still going up and down. But now it's a fraction of your total energy bill. It's not all of your energy bill. Right now you have 100% exposure to all of these centralized supply chains. And with an on-site system, you could be down to we're we're shooting for 30% of what you are now. Like the what's what we shoot for is 30% of what you are now. obviously that's gonna work itself out, but we're going for a majority, you know, most of your energy is not coming from the grid. And none of your energy is coming from gasoline and natural gas heating oil, which are your main high emitting polluting factor. So as far as climate change, that's the big move. You just got rid of all your combustion.

You're now just on the grid, but even the grid is cut back. But eventually.

These systems, in my in my belief, is that within, you know, 10 years, they'll they'll they will be able to go off grid. That that the that these these resources are accumulative. And once you get a bunch of electric vehicles on a microgrid, at a certain point it's like, okay, you guys want to charge my connection, then we're just disconnecting from you now. And there's actually that opportunity to to be fully self-reliant. At this point, I would never claim that. You still need the grid for essentially backup service.

want to view it as a battery charger, it's basically a battery backup battery charger.

So that is real. And that in my view, that will be the first real energy transition if it if it's successful.

Dia: So what I think is so exciting about this this program that you're doing right now, Own Your Power, is how inclusive it is. And you know you've talked about how renters are often left out of these kinds of things unless they happen to be in a in a apartment building that with a landlord that does it. But the criteria

Paul Fenn: Mm-hmm.

Dia: for participating right now in Own Your Power like right now in Own Your Power is basically living in the munici living in Ithaca, living in the city or town of Ithaca. That's that's essentially the criteria right now. and having an interest. So if you are interested in building for a more resilient power future, if you are interested in building answers for climate change, if you are interested in building community, then you can you don't have to have money right now, you don't have to have a a lot of time because y you do need a little bit of time because we you know you're doing the data collection. But basically you have to have an interest and you have to be here to participate and to sign up and participate. And at this point I I find that really exciting. So if you're a renter, if you're a homeowner if you're a landlord if you're a business whatever it is that you are, you can come and participate right now and even if you participate here at the beginning and you decide ultimately to say no and not participate, your early participation is still going to be very valuable for the program at this point

Paul Fenn: Mm-hmm.

Dia: because you're giving data and you're you're helping to shape an understanding of what is needed and what's in the future coming forward. Is that correct?

Paul Fenn: that's absolutely true. That's absolutely true. I mean, you're also introducing us to other people, right? So if you if you engage, then we'll probably end up engaging some of your neighbors as well. And and that's good. We want to engage every neighborhood. Because the biggest challenge of it is all this paperwork for different templates. And the templates are just for different types, you know, not just types of people, but types of groups. So it's got this strange level of diversity more than just individual diversity. Group diversity is way beyond individual diversity because all of a sudden you have exponential numbers of groups. You know what I mean? You could have, you

Dia: yeah.

Paul Fenn: know, just crazy different con so some people that only use it.

that you know it could be a b businesses with residents in the same building or it could be a government building next to a business or it could be a school next to in a neighborhood or it could be you know just anything apartment building it it could be a single family home it could be three single family homes next to each other or two next to each other one across the street those are all very different it sounds like they're almost the same but it's like nope each one is completely different And so we have to, and also there's types of people, you know, renters owners, absentee owners. then you have people who have no credit, people have good credit. you have people on asset don't have asset, collateral don't have collateral, people that are in public housing versus private, people that are under subsidized electricity rates or not subsidized electricity rates. You have two classes of poor, those who have it and those who don't have it.

So you all these people with completely different situations, realistically speaking. So and we have to adapt all that. to it's really pretty daunting. So that there's a value when someone calls, it's just like, okay, so who are you? And we want to sort out what just what you are. And it it's helping us to define either an individual situation of a specific attribute or someone who might have a friend next door, and we can look at them and say, Do you match?

If you did combine, you shared a hot water heater, would that work better than if you went alone? Right? Would it be better payback or whatever? And stuff like that.

Dia: So what would you what would you like someone who's listening to this right now, what would you like for them to do after the show? What what's the first step that you want them to take?

Paul Fenn: please, if you could just go on our website, Tompkins-gen.com and you'll see the button own Own Your Power. Green, big huge green. There two big buttons, blue one, this is basic service, and that's the the gas and electricity service that's not starting until next year or whatever. And then there's Own Your Power and that button will open up a page that will ask you for information and just take it from there. So we talk to you at that point we'd just communicate with you.

in terms of signing up, whether you're a renter or an owner, we would we would proceed accordingly.

This is energy transition in which you are an early participant. And so we are organizing a group, in your neighborhood and or on your block or next door in your in your building. And that's what we're looking for. We're trying to find people who want to do that. And so that we can cue these these processes up and see whether we get low bids for advanced energy systems on buildings. If we're able to do that, then it'll be compelling. People will will want it. so yeah, we very much encourage you to contact us at Tompkins-gen.com. There's also an 800 number on the website.

Dia: So I I wanna just touch back on something that you said because I think it's I think it's one of these little bumps in the road that somebody might hesitate around. and that

Paul Fenn: No good.

Dia: is about the idea of community actually. because

Paul Fenn: Yeah, yeah, good, yeah.

Dia: because we all want community. We all know that we need it, we all know we don't have enough of it, and it is so scary. Like community is just so scary, right? Like we don't know how to work with each other. We don't and

Paul Fenn: It is. I know.

Dia: we we don't want to go and you know, the idea of living in a co op or working in a co op is great until you have you learn that you have to do it with other people. And so so

Paul Fenn: Right. Right. Yeah.

Dia: so you're talking about like sharing an EV. Okay. there's gonna So how to what degree is your organization dealing with that even?

Because I can see that people wanting to join but feeling a little bit nervous about that those aspects of it.

Paul Fenn: You're so right. It really is the key question about this.

And so if you want to have community, we need to localize. And not not just do it as an act of idealism. so I think that's part of what will make it compelling is that it's not asking for idealism. It's saying this is better for you. You will do better if you share, you know. So we want to set up systems that don't require heroic acts. We want people that recognize the value of cooperation to have ability to cooperate and that would so we're we want to form help people form individual cooperatives to do that and that's one of the units of the use of these systems that would include the neighbors who just want to own shares to use the car they'd all be in the co-op but also we want to have ways for people to do it that really cannot imagine that kind of cooperation with their neighbors and should not be required to imagine it given their situation in their neighborhood in the building that they're in.

You know, often with neighbors who truly are not candidates for that activity, or building owners who truly are not candidates for the activity. Do not ask them to do the impossible. Let them join those who do want to do that. And that's basically the idea here. So people who want to cooperate are doing this and not some kind of of of coercion first. but then so it's selfish, it's uncoerced.

we're trying to have a menu. And that's what I told you about in terms of the financing. So it doesn't have to be a cooperative. If you can't do it in that way where you're gonna be really involved with people, maybe is there is a a local group, but you're just not comfortable with them and you don't wanna have to have meetings with them all the time. And you're afraid they're gonna all gang up on you 'cause you're the outsider and this kind of but very reasonable anxieties about joining a group.

Then we have another form which is a trust.

And a trust is a black box where everyone's agreed to what the terms are on paper. And whatever happens, the consequences are automatic. There is no group decision making process when you know when someone moves away or someone doesn't pay their bill, or something breaks out of warranty, or things go wrong in different ways, right? So in a co-op, you would decide what to do. You're responsible, you decide.

in a trust, it's already been decided. It's in the agreement that formed the investment. You're just in it, and this is what happens in that situation. You also can't change it as easily as a tr a cooperative could change it, right? and so we're trying to have it this this is to be flexible to different situations. Then you're a single home homeowner. You want to do the cooperation, I mean you want to buy into all these systems and you want to get off the grid and you want to stop using Combusting fossil fuels, but you don't like your neighbors and you're not interested in talking to anybody, you know, just me. Thank you very much. we have that too. So that person still can do the thing, you know, get off the grid. So not requiring everyone to be one thing, which I do think is part of how you can get community, if you don't create too much uniformity around how that's defined. let people be different, let them participate differently, you know.

not require a cookie cutter thing for everyone and everything in common and everyone chanting and voting and all the sort of focus on procedure, which can become bureaucracy, which is how, you know, condominium associations often do become petty and vindictive, is it's boring, bureaucratic, you know. So there's that end of it too, that people need to be able to reject that and still be be able to participate. And To have political diversity, right? And, you know, the issue is same as for anybody else, you save a bunch of money and

Dia: We all have electric bills, so we all have neighbors, yeah.

Paul Fenn: Yeah, we all got bills. And it really shouldn't Yeah, that shit really isn't political. You know, there's really

Dia: No.

Paul Fenn: very it might be very little difference between a d a Republican and a Democrat when it comes to this, because This is just about a different system, which has different ways to do it, but which is trying to all do the same thing, which is get off of the main system, like to minimize dependence on the main supply chains of energy. And for me personally and for in the neighborhood secondarily.

Dia: we actually have a significant number of our listeners are not in Ithaca or even in New York. and so do you have any any advice for anybody who's listening who is interested in doing something like this? I know that your local power operates

Paul Fenn: Mm-hmm. Yeah.

Dia: and actually set up C started CCAs in California.

Can anyone contact you if they're interested in setting this up or finding out what's available to them locally?

Paul Fenn: yes, thank you, of course. any any time. localpower.com is our is our main website. and Tompkins dash gen dot com is sort of fancy and user oriented. Our website's a boring consultancy looking kind of website, but you could f contact us through there. We we do help people that wanna do things like this and we adapt, because different every state's different in terms of what the laws are. And so we found over the years that there are different models that fit different states and even different locations, in terms of what they are able to do by law and then what they have the the willingness to do politically. So we like to work with people that want to do it and then we sort of figure out how it would work where they are.

and try to come up with a strategy for what would be and we're we've proved pretty good at like figuring out what fits a place legally and politically. So you could actually do it and not just have a f long term fight political battle, but actually do it. And and yeah, we've yeah we'd love to hear from people, whether in New York or anywhere. I mean the whether you have a CCA law, which is about half the country or the other half where you don't, we figured out some strategies for for states that don't have CCA laws at all and sort of figured out things that they still could do under their laws. So it didn't depend on go going to the legislature necessarily. We also sometimes we'll help draft state legislation for people that want to file a bill.

or or submit testimony to the state regulator to to alter regulations that are in your way who do a lot of that kind of work as well most of we're focused on implementing this program so that's more of a kind of a side thing but we can do that and glad to hear from people that are interested just to talk it over and think it through.

Dia: thank you again so much for sitting with us and explaining

Paul Fenn: Thank you.

Dia: this. This is a this is a fantastic program and a really exciting way for people to participate directly in change making change for the better, like right now. Just coming in and giving the information that that they've got available to them right now is is fantastic. So I wanna encourage everyone listening to do that in Ithaca or around Ithaca and If you're outside of Ithaca, check out Local Power and see if you can bring something like it to your town. Thanks again, Paul, and

Paul Fenn: Thank you.

Dia: we'll talk again soon, I hope. Best of luck.

Paul Fenn: I hope so too, Dia. Really enjoyed it. Thank you so much for having me on.

Dia: The Ithaca Local Economy Lab is produced by Practically Real Enterprises, LLC, and brought to life by an amazing team, including technical advisor Jake Gribschaw, associate producer Stacey Cornelius, content strategist Sonia Simone, and creative advisor Erin O'Shaughnessy. Yen Ospina is our artist, and the music is by Carsie Blanton. Until next time, take good care.