City street with crosswalk and energy efficient lighting

Clean Energy Alliance (CEA) follows a community choice energy (CCE) model that allows local governments to purchase power to meet their community’s electricity needs, offering an alternative to investor-owned utilities. CEA offers competitive prices and clean energy options while reinvesting revenues into projects and programs that benefit members’ communities. 

Under California state law, local governments are allowed to form community choice aggregation (CCA) programs, commonly known as CCEs, that offer an alternative to investor-owned utilities (IOU) such as San Diego Gas & Electric. CEA was established through a multi-agency partnership. This model enables local governments to purchase and manage their community’s energy supply. While CEA is locally operated, they work in partnership with the region’s existing investor-owned utility: CEA procures the electricity while the local IOU continues to deliver energy, maintain the grid, provide billing services and handle all new service requests and emergencies.

CEA is governed by a board of local elected officials from member agencies who oversee decisions regarding power purchasing, programs and rate setting, and are directly accountable to the people who elected them. Meetings are conducted in an open, transparent manner, ensuring the public has a voice in decisions made for CEA.