Cold Spring already qualifies for Climate Smart points through actions such as joining Hudson Valley Community Power, a program that supplies the village with electricity purchased from renewable sources.

The award recognizes communities and organizations that are actively accelerating the clean energy transition through actions such as CCA.

New Paltz residents will again have hassle-free access to a source of renewable energy for their home electricity this summer.

Weinberg singled out the Hudson Valley as 'a leader regionally for the whole state' in modeling clean energy use, while 'New York State is really setting the pace for the country…. It’s a bottom-up approach. Local action is leading the way.'

The town of Marbletown has secured a new electricity contract through Hudson Valley Community Power to provide renewable electricity

electricity supply rates will be fixed in place, immune to the price swings experienced by customers who receive their electricity directly from utilities like Central Hudson.

Unless they opt-out, more than 35,000 households and businesses will begin receiving electricity on July 1 under a two-year contract that runs to June 30, 2025

Once the bids come in, Joule will analyze them, and if they don’t offer real savings and a good deal for the municipalities in their terms, “We will recommend to them that they not act."

One advantage of Joule’s system is that customers are free to drop out at any time on a month’s notice, Stromback said. But should a customer who dropped want to come back in, they can do so, noted Saugerties supervisor Fred Costello. He recalled that when electricity costs spiked, many people who had not originally signed up for Community Choice Aggregation wanted to join the program

When compared to Central Hudson’s variable rate, members of the collective saved more than $7 million and avoided 25,560 metric tons of greenhouse-gas emissions in the first year of the program

In plain language, it would allow the village to essentially join a buying co-op that could, potentially, provide lower prices while ensuring that the power residents used was produced from renewable sources.

The $3.4 million in financial savings accruing in February sprang up from its individuals in the Central Hudson valley application zone.

As electricity rates skyrocketed through the first two months of 2022, Joule estimates that its electricity supply customers saved $7 million from July 2021 through February 2022.

Beyond the bill savings for participants, the program has helped to avoid more than 650,000 metric tons of greenhouse gas emissions since July 2019.

Residents from across the Hudson Valley are also recognizing the power in numbers. Many towns, like Beacon, NY are now participating in Community Choice Aggregation (CCA).

I think that we all learned a really important lesson that, aside from it being non-fossil fuel, it can be very stabilizing financially to know what you’re opted into.

Starting early next year, neighbors In Marbletown, Beacon and Phillipstown may notice the benefits of energy from the sun and solar panel arrays. The company estimates residents could see up to a 10% drop in utility bills.

Joule Community Power is dedicated to “empowering local decision-making, enabling access to cleaner and cheaper energy and making it easier for New Yorkers to transition to renewable electricity.

Hudson Valley Community Power will be the first opt-out community solar program that explicitly prioritizes LMI residents for solar benefits.

The contract with Luminace for the provision of approximately 24,600 MWh in the first year of operation represents the nation’s largest solar generation supply agreement dedicated to community choice solar to-date.

CCAs with a CDG component can do more than lower people’s bills. They can support local green jobs. They can foster knowledge and a sense of community investment in local energy systems. And they could even help towns create local islands of grid resilience.

Part of Hudson Valley Community Power...community choice solar offerings will be available to more than 4,500 households and small businesses, approximately 35 to 50% of which are expected to be low- to moderate-income (LMI) residences.

I’m proud that our Town Board showed continued environmental leadership by selecting the renewable energy option, which between 2017 and 2019 helped our community avoid nearly 15,000 tons of carbon emissions — equivalent to taking 3,200 cars off the road for a year.

By creating a virtual commercial entity out of all of these small customers within a community, you reverse their leverage within the marketplace and just using the existing market. You can actually have your cake and eat it, too. You can support renewables at a very cost-competitive rate that’s fixed, and it can be better than the price of non-renewables. It’s totally turned around the way that people think about renewables just by utilizing existing capitalistic markets.

Nine communities, including Beacon, Philipstown and Cold Spring, renewed their contracts with Hudson Valley Community Power to provide residents and businesses with renewable energy at a fixed rate.

Supporters of the Hudson Valley Community Power program contend there was a 37% savings in electricity production costs during the past year.

Customers have saved an average of $5 per month on their electricity costs and that greenhouse gas emission are being reduced because the power is purchased from hydroelectric facilities.

We should go ahead and adopt an enabling local law so we can at least get the process started and at least get the information out to our residents.

Philipstown’s program is being funded in part money the town raised through participation in the Hudson Valley Community Power Program

Hudson Valley Community Power donated $9000 to two Marbletown organizations to reward them for all the residents who signed up for community solar.

You can help build a solar planet from your living room.

Community solar now an easier option in New Paltz.

Joule Community Power establishes solar-driven CCA programs across New York.

Calling all Philipstown residents: you can now opt in to the Hudson Valley Community Power, a community solar program that saves an additional 10% on energy bills.

This is a win-win-win opportunity for residents--they get a price that's less than what they paid over the last year, they're protected against a volatile market with fixed rates for the next two years, and they're buying electricity generated from only renewable power sources.

New collaborations with our neighboring communities is a win for the entire region.

You’re protected from bad contracts, it’s low-cost, it’s green energy. It’s a win-win-win.

It’s a shift in authority.

The program will lower electric rates while sourcing 100% of the energy from renewable sources--a win for everyone who participates and a win for the environment.

Despite being a small town in New York, Marbletown has adopted a 100% renewable energy future plan that is also aimed at being profitable.

Several communities have banded together for two aims. First, to achieve lower-cost power. And, second, to gain more control over its source.

Marbletown is on a path to a prosperous, clean energy future.

You’re not just helping yourself, you’re bringing your neighbors with you.

I believe in Community Choice Aggregation programs as a major device that cities can employ to curtail the impacts of climate change and as a vital tool in energy conservation and procurement because they facilitate cost savings, price stability, they help to precipitate local renewable energy development, they stimulate community choice and the implementation of community-wide clean energy initiatives, all while encouraging investment in our local economy and the potential to create jobs in innovative industries.