In October 2020, the Board approved Valley Clean Energy’s 2021-2023 Strategic Plan which contains goals related to VCE’s power resource portfolio as well as decarbonization. The Community Advisory Committee (CAC) formed task groups at the January 2021 meeting and approved the task group “charge” at the February meeting. The initial task group – carbon neutral and decarbonization task group – has been meeting bi-weekly since March. It became apparent very early in the meetings that addressing the carbon neutral topic (specifically Goal 2, Objective 2.5) was going to be more than enough to focus on for 2021 and decided to postpone the decarbonization work (Goal 4) until 2022. The “charge” stated that the task group assist staff and consultants in evaluating feasibility and creating a road map for both carbon-neutral and carbon-free-hour-by-hour power by 2030. In order to complete this work an outside consultant was selected from an April 30, 2021 request for proposals (RFP) seeking qualified consultants to explore the feasibility, cost and benefit of pursuing a 100% carbon free portfolio. Energeia was selected to perform the study. The contract with the consultant was approved by the Board on July 8, 2021. Interim updates were provided to the CAC (late August 2021) and to the Board (September 2021).
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