Long Island is typically second only to Hawaii in the cost of electricity, but only 5 percent of that electricity is derived from renewable sources, Suffolk Legislator Bridget Fleming, who chairs the county’s community choice aggregation task force, told the Legislature’s Public Works, Transportation, and Energy Committee on Monday.
With the burning of fossil fuels raising global temperatures and sea level, “it’s just not acceptable to let this go on,” she said.
Ms. Fleming spoke as the task force presented a report that both detailed a community choice program’s purpose and recommended several steps the county could take toward its implementation, this one month after the East Hampton Town Board voted to pass legislation enabling the creation of such a program.
Community choice aggregation, or C.C.A., allows a local government to pay for electricity and/or natural gas on behalf of its residents, businesses, and municipal accounts from a provider other than the incumbent utility. A municipality enters into … [more]
