- A source of cleaner electricity for your entire community
- A trustworthy, municipal alternative to commercial electricity offers in the marketplace
- A step toward a more equitable energy future
Community choice aggregation is a type of group electricity buying program for cities and towns in Massachusetts. Aggregation gives communities more control over the sources and price of their electricity supply.
More than half of Massachusetts cities and towns have already launched aggregations. A growing number are making their aggregations green, using the program to taking a big step away from fossil fuels and toward renewable electricity.
MassPowerChoice launched the very first green aggregation in the state, in Greenfield. We also now work with some of the largest and most ambitious green aggregations in the state in Cambridge, Newton, Worcester, and Nantucket.
We deliver highly customized programs for communities with complex and diverse populations. Our focus is helping communities to balance a strong commitment to renewable electricity with support for the vulnerable community members that are heavily burdened by energy costs.
Our goal is a sustainable future with no one left behind.
Our Aggregations
How aggregation works
When you first open your electricity account, your electric utility provides you with two services:
- Electricity delivery: They deliver your electricity and maintain the delivery infrastructure (the poles and wires)
- Electricity supply: They buy, or supply, your electricity (Massachusetts utilities do not generate electricity. They buy it in the electricity market). When your utility is your electricity supplier, you have Basic Service.
The charges for delivery and for supply (the electricity you use) are presented separately on your bill. When added together, they equal your total bill.
In a community choice aggregation, your utility continues to deliver electricity, but your city or town chooses its own electricity supplier. The contract with that electricity supplier determines the sources and price of the electricity supplied to participants in the aggregation.
Your utility continues to send the bill for electricity, but when they calculate the supply charge portion of the bill, they use your community’s aggregation price to make that calculation instead of their own basic service price.
Aggregations in Massachusetts automatically enroll electricity accounts that are on utility Basic Service, meaning accounts that do not have a private contract with an electricity supplier. However, aggregation participants are free to leave the program at any time with no fee or penalty.
Green aggregations
Green aggregations are programs that make buying or supporting the development of renewable electricity a central part of the program. In Massachusetts, green aggregations are purchasing 700,000 MWh of premium renewable electricity (Class I RECs) per year over and above the state renewable electricity requirements.
Communities choose us because they want to be a part of that impact. We are proud to say that our programs make up nearly half of that total. Our green aggregations:
- Supply 320,000 MWh of premium renewable electricity to Massachusetts electricity customers per year – more than any other consultant in Massachusetts
- Provide more than 170,000 electricity customers with premium renewable electricity
- Have directly supported the development of 65 new renewable electricity projects in Massachusetts
Whether your community wants to be out in front leading the pack, or you want to take smaller steps over time to be sure you bring everyone along with you, we have the expertise and the creativity to help.
Supporting vulnerable community members
One of the great benefits of community choice aggregation is the ability to offer new and better choices to the community members burdened the most by energy costs. We can help you design a program that offers:
- Stable, predictable electricity prices that do not change seasonally or at the whim of the electricity supplier.
- Protection from high utility winter price swings
- A trustworthy municipal alternative to bad deals in the marketplace
To make sure your program information reaches the people who need it most, we can help you target your outreach to environmental justice communities, linguistically isolated populations, and other members of your community who might be difficult to reach but who might especially benefit from your aggregation. As part of that, we can provide interpreting and translation services and a focus on ensuring everyone is equipped with a basic understanding of their electricity bill and how to protect their electricity account.