1 David Yakobson
From: Cris Gutierrez <[email protected]>
Sent: Tuesday, December 17, 2024 12:38 PM
To: Lana Negrete; Caroline Torosis; Jesse Zwick; Natalya Zernitskaya; Dan Hall; Ellis Raskin; Barry Snell
Cc: councilmtgitems; Council Mailbox
Subject: Council 12/17/24, Support of Agenda Item 16 L
EXTERNAL
Dear Santa Monica Mayor Negrete and Council Members:
I write as a Clean Power Alliance (CPA) Community Advisor for the westside. Tonight, Council has the opportunity to designate the City’s Director for the CPA Board and two Alternate Directors. It is a particularly timely designation as the City closes its 30th year of celebrating its sustainability leadership. With continuity, institutional knowledge, expertise, focus and meaningful relationships in mind, Council can designate the City's CPA Director and Alternate Directors to help advance Santa Monica and CPA in achieving ambitious climate goals. I highly recommend that Council designate Mayor Pro Tem Caroline Torosis as the Director and former Council Member Gleam Davis as the new 1st Alternate Director. The 2nd Alternate needs to be someone ready, with the capacity and focus, to step up whether from Council or from our knowledgeable community, including Climate Action Santa Monica (CASM) members, to carry on the good work.
It was after all, the City’s and residents’ leadership, largely through CASM, who helped bring CPA into being in 2017 and begin serving customers in 2018 with a mission "to address the impacts of climate change and provide the communities we serve with avenues to meet their clean air goals and to improve the health and wellbeing of their residents.” For the second year in a row, CPA has ranked as the number one green power provider in the United States, and it is crucial to maintain the impressive results, furthering CPA's impacts. We are fortunate to have many local successes with CPA. Celebrating our youth leaders earlier this year, CPA welcomed their effort in helping the Santa Monica-Malibu Unified School District become a CPA Green Leader with a 100% renewable energy standard. The City has worked closely with CPA on many programs enabling Santa Monica’s influence to extend further as with our Building Reach Code and so much more.
At this critical time, with a new federal administration including many climate deniers, our local and regional climate solutions need to be maximized. The work of CPA is profound. I trust Council to make a wise designation of the CPA Director and Alternate Directors.
With gratitude and respect,
Cris Gutierrez
Santa Monica Resident
Clean Power Alliance Community Advisor, Westside
Item 16-L
December 17, 2024
Item 16-L
December 17, 2024
Je# Bush is a long-time resident of Santa Monica and has many years of corporate energy and utility industry experience.
Early in his career, he served in analytical, regulatory, managerial and business development roles with Southern California Gas Company. He became a leader of a Sempra Energy business that sold energy commodities to large energy users along with risk management and energy e#iciency services. The services helped the large energy users meet operating budget and carbon emission targets.
After the business was sold and renamed Calpine Energy Solutions. Je# continued as a Business Development executive and closed transactions that provided savings to large energy users and created significant enterprise value.
Je# also sold Calpine Energy Solutions’ Data Manager Services to emerging California Community Choice Aggregators (CCA’s) which helped the CCA’s successfully initiate service.
Je# attends virtually many of the Clean Power Alliance (CPA) Board and Committee Meetings and has helped Climate Action Santa Monica (CASM) identify opportunities to enroll additional Santa Monica meters in CPA without incurring additional costs. He has also met with the leaders of some of the Northern California CCA’s and a few of the CPA Board Members.
He currently operates a consulting business, Greenbush Capital LLC, which provides insight into the California and West Coast wholesale electricity, capacity and RPS markets.
He provides services to merchant electricity generators and large commercial/industrial electricity users.
Je# is the Vice Chair of the City of Santa Monica Audit Subcommittee and has developed an understanding of the fiscal challenges facing the City.
Je# is also a significant supporter and advisor to CASM and serves on the University of California Davis (UCD) College of Engineering Dean’s Executive Committee.
He has an undergraduate degree in Mechanical Engineering from UCD and an MBA from UCLA.
Item 16-L
December 17, 2024
Item 16-L
December 17, 2024