Public Comment
RCEA Board of Directors
June 26, 2026
Regular Meeting
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From: Martha Walden
To: Public Comment
Subject: agenda item 5.7
Date: Wednesday, June 25, 2025 10:06:21 AM
Item 5.7 should be removed from the consent calendar.
In the interest of serving the people of Humboldt County, RCEA’s board should continue to vote in its CCA mode on CCA program objectives such as power content targets and procurement strategy. The reason for that is plain. The weighted vote of the representatives for unincorporated county areas and for the two main population centers in the county more accurately reflects the population of Humboldt than one vote per board member.
An important part of RCEA’s mission has been to provide Humboldt county residents an alternative to the corporate decision-making of PG&E. Staff’s proposed rule change would substantially undermine the more democratic structure of RCEA. The power content targets, the very nature of the energy procured by RCEA, are exactly what ratepayers would like to influence.
Martha Walden
Agenda item #5.7: Amending Board Operating Guidelines
From: Martha Walden
To: Public Comment
Subject: agenda item 11.3
Date: Wednesday, June 25, 2025 10:21:57 AM
Mission statements evolve as time goes on, and RCEA has had some indication from the public that locally sourced electricity is not as important as other criteria. Deleting the word “clean”, however, from its mission statement would not seem to reflect the wishes of anyone—at least not its ratepayers who expect RCEA to distinguish itself from PG&E by procuring clean and renewable electricity. To a large extent RCEA does that. With its out-of-the-area contracts for solar power and battery storage plus the airport microgrid and other local sources of clean, renewable energy RCEA has striven to improve on PG&E’s power mix. Why then would RCEA turn its back on “clean”?
There is only one answer and that is RCEA’s commitment to biomass electricity, which it has been buying since 2018. RCEA signed a resolution in 2019 to provide the county with a hundred percent clean and renewable energy and promised to transition away from biomass electricity. This promise was broken in 2021 when RCEA extended its contract with HSC to 2031. Now it looks like this delay in following through may be permanent.
It’s too bad that Humboldt Sawmill Company’s twenty percent portion distinguishes RCEA’s power supply so much from PG&E but not in a good way. The biomass plant emits 42 times more soot and 32 times more nitrogen oxide than the natural gas plant per megawatt hour. Its carbon intensity is 35 times greater than the natural gas plant.
These extremes ruin the clean quality of what RCEA would offer otherwise.
Despite current hard times RCEA should not give up on the criteria of “clean” for its power mix. Resolve to give up HSC biomass electricity in 2031 instead. Keep working to give Humboldt county a hundred percent clean and renewable electricity.
Martha Walden
Agenda item #11.3: Amending Local Procurement Goal
From: Wendy Ring
To: Public Comment
Subject: Agenda items 5.7 and 11.3
Date: Wednesday, June 25, 2025 5:04:56 PM
Attachments: RCEA letter 6-25.docx.pdf
Attached document is submitted as public comment for RCEA board meeting on 6/27/25 regarding agenda items 5.7 and 11.3
Wendy Ring on behalf of the Humboldt Coalition for Clean Energy Agenda Items 5.7: Board Operating Guidelines
and 11.3: Amending Local Procurement Goal
Re: RCEA Board Agenda Items 5.7 and 11.3 June 26, 2025
Dear RCEA Board Members,
Humboldt Coalition for Clean Energy is a coalition of 16 local faith, health, environmental, and political organizations. We are submitting the following comments on Item 5.7 and 11.3.
Item 5.7 We would like Item 5.7 to be removed from the Consent Calendar and for this proposal to be defeated. Changing the voting procedure for power content targets and procurement from population-weighted votes to a single vote per jurisdiction takes the “community choice” out of Community Choice Aggregation. When RCEA last surveyed the public on their preference for our future renewable energy mix, the majority chose a portfolio with zero biomass and the fastest reduction in greenhouse gas emissions.1 We believe the proposed voting change will subvert the will of the public by increasing the power of smaller, more conservative communities less concerned about climate change and air quality at the expense of the majority of the county’s population. No good reason has been provided as to why the CCA’s power content and procurement are not CCA business and should be turned over to the RCEA board. We oppose this change.
1 RCEA, Humboldt’s Electric Future, 2023 Final Report
https://redwoodenergy.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/850/2025/01/Humboldts-Electric-Future-2023-Fin al-Report.pdf
Item 11.3 In 2019 in addition to the RePower Plan, RCEA also passed a resolution adopting a goal of “100% clean and renewable energy” by 2025.2 While subsequent statements by RCEA have misquoted the 2019 resolution as “100% renewable and carbon free” and “100% renewable” the board has never formally reversed its commitment to energy that is both renewable and non-polluting. Standing by this commitment is more important than ever as climate change drives deteriorating air quality in the West3, including Humboldt County, and as public health researchers demonstrate an ever expanding range of adverse health impacts from ever smaller increases in air pollution.4 Our coalition believes strongly that RCEA’s 2019 commitment to clean energy should not be misquoted or consigned to the dustbin of history but should instead be honored and explicitly carried forward into the revised 2030 goals. We would like to see this language added to any revision that eliminates the local part of the target.
A commitment to 100% clean energy would mean not renewing Humboldt Sawmill Company’s biomass contract when it expires in 2031. HSC’s biomass plant is a federally designated Major Source of criteria pollutants and a state designated Air Toxics Hot Spot, which has committed hundreds of violations of the Clean Air Act in recent years. It emits over 300,000 metric tons of CO2 annually which, due to the temporal mismatch between tree growth and combustion, contributes to global warming and its resulting air quality impacts over the critical next 2 decades.
The argument has been made by RCEA staff and by others invited by RCEA to speak on RCEA sponsored panels that Humboldt Sawmill Company’s biomass plant promotes cleaner air because it prevents wildfires and open burning. It is illegal to open burn sawmill waste in California. Humboldt Sawmill Company’s annual reports to RCEA state, year after year, that the biomass plant burns sawmill waste, not slash or fuel reduction thinnings, so it doesn’t prevent smoke from wildfires or burning slash piles.5 The truth is that the biomass plant increases air pollution by emitting 42 times more soot and 32 times more nitrogen oxides per megawatt hour than PGE’s natural gas plant6 7 and by displacing investment in clean energy. 7 CEC, Quarterly fuel and energy report
https://www.energy.ca.gov/data-reports/energy-almanac/california-electricity-data/quarterly-fuel-and-en ergy-report-qfer-data
6 CARB Facility Search Tool, https://ww2.arb.ca.gov/applications/facility-search-tool accessed June 21, 2025
5 HSC MOU documentation provided to RCEA 2023, 2024, 2025 4 American Lung Association. Health impact of air pollution. 2025 https://www.lung.org/research/sota/health-risks
3 Wei, Jing et al. Long-term mortality burden trends attributed to black carbon and PM2·5 from wildfire emissions across the continental USA from 2000 to 2020: a deep learning modelling study. The Lancet Planetary Health, Volume 7, Issue 12, e963 - e975 2023 2 RCEA Resolution April 2019, which has been taken down from the RCEA website. This is the former now inactive link.
https://redwoodenergy.org/wp-content/uploads/2019/04/7.2-1-Resolution-2019-1-100-Renewables-by-2025.pdf RCEA should stop perpetuating myths about Humboldt Sawmill’s biomass plant improving air quality or not affecting air quality and instead respect the wishes of its customers who have clearly stated they want renewables that don’t pollute.
As you revise RCEA’s energy goals, we urge you to remember that the CC in CCA stands for community choice and to bring the commitment to non polluting renewable energy forward in both policy and practice.
Sincerely.
Humboldt Unitarian Universalist Fellowship Climate Action Committee Humboldt Chapter Women’s International League for Peace and Freedom Humboldt Buddhist Peace Fellowship
Humboldt 350
Redwood Alliance
EPIC
From: Walter Paniak
To: Public Comment
Subject: Public comment for items 5.7 and 11.3
Date: Thursday, June 26, 2025 12:15:35 PM
I support the recommendations of the Humboldt Coalition for Clean Energy.
The changes in item 5.7 do not appear justified with over 20 years of previous consistency.
Reference item 11.3 , I concur to the Humboldt Coalition for Clean Energy that clean must be added to the resolution text.
This would allow planning to end the HSC contract for the dirtiest, least efficient and most expensive power. For example, The ammonia needed to reduce the oxides of nitrogen for burning biomass is measured in tens of tons yet the power needed to synthesize ammonia is conveniently left off the equation. HSC has been working on its Toxic Hotpot assessment for years. In the spring of 2023 a HSC press release said the Toxic Hotspot assessment would be completed by March 31, 2023.
The air resources board shows the status for Toxic Hotspot Assessment “in progress” last fall.
Clean and renewable is a challenge, paraphrasing president Kennedy on another subject ” we choose to go to the moon … and other things not because they are easy, but because they are hard.”
Make the hard choice of adding clean.
Walt Paniak
Arcata resident
Walt Paniak