In a move to meet the city’s climate goals, the City Council voted unanimously July 21 to to join San Diego Community Power and named Councilmember Kelly Purvis to represent the city on the agency’s board.
The move marks a transition from using a traditional utility to purchase energy to using a Community Choice Aggregation (CCA).
When using a CCA, public utilities continue to deliver power and handle billing — SDG&E, in Coronado’s case — but a board determines where the energy comes from. These programs generally focus on choosing sustainable energy sources. Because they are non-profit entities, they must reinvest income after reserves into local energy programs, which is not the case with investor-owned utilities.
SDCP’s own board must still vote to accept Coronado as a member, a move that is expected later this month, and residents will not be served by the new provider until March 2028 if all is approved.
Residents can opt out of the CCA and return to SDG&E. The rates between the two can vary, with CCA rates often coming in lower, though the difference is generally marginal.
Three council members sought the board seat before Purvis emerged with it. Councilmember Carrie Downey was named alternate. Both appointments are contingent on SDCP accepting the city.
“There’s no immediate changes to electric service as a result of either of these actions tonight,” said Kelli Maples, the city’s senior management analyst. “SDG&E will continue to own and maintain the electrical infrastructure throughout the implementation process.”
The timeline Maples laid out runs another 20 months.
Staff will return to the council in September for a second reading and final adoption of the ordinance, after which the city manager will execute the joint powers agreement. San Diego Community Power’s board is tentatively scheduled to take up Coronado’s membership at its own September meeting. The vote is not anticipated to be contention and, if approved, Coronado would be able to participate in board meetings starting in October.
The bulk of the remaining work then shifts to SDCP, which must amend its implementation plan, obtain review from the California Public Utilities Commission, coordinate with SDG&E and carry out required customer outreach. Formal customer notification is expected to begin in January 2028 — timed at SDCP’s recommendation to land after the holiday season — with service delivery beginning that March.
Maples said the city intends to go further than the minimum notice required by law, with a dedicated project page on the city website, published FAQs and a timeline of key dates.
An analysis by SDCP found that Coronado’s energy load accounts for roughly 1 percent of the CCA’s total load, suggesting that Coronado would not adversely affect SDCP’s financial position.
The vote to join SDCP was straightforward, with little deliberation, although the last 12 months saw lengthy discussion about whether joining a CCA was an appropriate move. The city explored financial risks, the board’s weighted vote option, resource adequacy violations, and more at the direction of council members and residents’ concerns.
The council formed a subcommittee to research and address the concerns, and in February, after reviewing the subcommittee’s findings, the council’s worries were assuaged and it unanimously voted to join.
The board member appointment, therefore, drew more discussion than the vote that preceded it.
Three council members wanted the seat: Amy Steward, Carrie Downey, and Kelly Purvis.
Councilmember Mark Fleming, who did not seek the seat, advocated for Purvis on the strength of her work on the Metro Wastewater JPA. Steward then withdrew.
“I’m willing to remove my name because I think these two have really worked incredibly hard on this,” Steward said, referencing the nine months Purvis and Downey spent on the CCA subcommittee. “I’d be comfortable stepping back for now.”
Mayor John Duncan then nominated Purvis as primary director and Downey as alternate, citing current council workloads and Purvis’s JPA experience. He said he agreed with an early point of Downey’s: that early representation on the board mattered.
“It’s almost as a little bit of a watchdog to see what’s happening (on the board) and if there are any concerns,” Duncan said.
The appointments are not locked in. Duncan noted the council will review all of its interagency assignments in December, after the new council is seated.
Though some of the benefits are murkier than others — such as how much, if any, savings a CCA might bring — one thing the council said time and again was that the move was about choice.
“I think we established that joining a CCA is good for several reasons,” Downey said. “The biggest one is it’s an opportunity for choice among our citizens. If you want to join, you can. If you don’t want to, you opt out.
Purvis, who has described herself as an early skeptic of CCAs, said the subcommittee process changed her view.
“I had my doubts, and I came around,” she said. “And choice for me was the big reason for going this way.”
A years-long process
Tuesday’s votes cap a process that began in March 2022, when the council adopted the city’s Climate Action Plan identifying community choice aggregation as the single most effective step available to cut Coronado’s greenhouse gas emissions.
The city commissioned an independent white paper from consultant ICF, delivered in June 2023, then a comparison of the county’s two CCAs — San Diego Community Power and the Clean Energy Alliance — from the Energy Policy Initiative Center at the University of San Diego, delivered in June 2025. A subcommittee of Downey and Purvis worked through some 10 to 15 pages of council questions before the council voted 5-0 in February to pursue SDCP membership.
City Manager Tina Friend credited the subcommittee on Tuesday.
“In my 20-odd years of experience, I’ve never seen a city council subcommittee operate so independently and produce such an impressive body of work on their own,” she said.
