Date
Tuesday, November 14, 2023
Time
10:30 AM - 12:00 PM
Name
Understanding Customer Opt-Out Behavior in the Context of Greener and Cheaper Electricity
Session ID
B4 - Decarbonization and Renewable Energy Policies & Programs: Successes and Lessons Learned in Engaging Hard-to-Reach Communities
Track
Policy
Julien Gattaciecca
Description

CCAs have the immense opportunity, and maybe responsibility, to reduce carbon emissions without requiring much effort from their customers, as they are defaulted into CCA programs when they launch. In California, the general CCA trend has been to provide greener power, at competitive prices. Today, 40% of the eligible load is served by CCAs. This means that 11 million customers, across 200+ communities, receive electricity from more than 11 GW of new clean energy sources, saving a substantial amount of GHG emissions every year. In this presentation, we will discuss how CCAs have performed so far, and how their customer behavior varies across product offerings (i.e. are customers opting out of 100% renewable energy more than they do off dirtier but cheaper products), We will also present a series of regressions to highlight which customer socio-demographics are associated with higher opt-out propensity, and discuss our interpretation of the results. Better understanding customers behavior in the context of greener and cheaper opt-out mechanism will help advance our common knowledge and better design both opt-out and opt-in programs to advance the clean energy transition and curb emissions. But as important, a deeper understanding of what turns off customers, even when offered greener and cheaper power, can teach us how to better communicate those complex programs to the outliers, making sure the green transition does not leave anybody behind.

Supporting Document 1