A majority of Boston residents will receive electricity via a new supplier starting Monday, the culmination of a years-in-the-making Community Choice Electricity program developed by the City of Boston Environment Department and partners. The opt-out program leverages Boston's collective buying power in a bid to deliver greener, locally sourced and more affordable electricity to customers — appealing to some consumer protection groups and environmental justice advocates alike.

Boston's new setup is an example of a community choice aggregation (CCA), or municipal aggregation, program. The model allows a local government to procure electric power for constituents from an alternative supplier — that may offer competitive pricing, and more local and renewable sourcing — but still deliver service from the existing utility provider.

Residents of Boston had a multi-month period in which they could select one of three service options.

On the default option, residents receive a 10% higher proportion of their electricity from renewable sources compared to Massachusetts' minimum required standard for renewable energy portfolio, or 28% renewable sourcing in total.

Residents can also manually select a slightly cheaper option that simply matches that standard, or pay a few cents more per kilowatt hours per month to receive electricity from 100% renewable sources. The Boston Environment Department could not share exact estimates on how many customers selected each of the three options, but said approximately 216,000 accounts will be enrolled in the overall program at its outset Monday.

The initiative is one piece of Boston's strategy to be carbon neutral come 2050, in conjunction with other efforts such as improving access to electric vehicle (EV) sharing and charging in the lead up to 2030 and developing carbon targets for existing buildings — the city's greatest source of community emissions at 71%.

Read the full article about local power production by Maria Rachal at Smart Cities Dive.