You might recall that, over the Summer, the Costa Mesa City Council was visited by envoys from the Orange County Power Authority (OCPA) proposing to conduct a feasibility study. They wanted to see if Costa Mesa’s energy customer base might be a good fit for OCPA membership, which would allow Costa Mesa residents to purchase “greener” energy at a competitive rate compared to what our existing for-profit utility, Southern California Edison provides.

After a slick presentation from OCPA CEO Joe Mosca, the City Council dutifully voted to provide OCPA with the load data needed to complete the feasibility study. The study was scheduled to wrap up (checks watch) just about now, so I’ve been patiently waiting to see if the results would get agendized for an early 2025 meeting.

Of course, that was before the new Irvine City Council rolled a political grenade into OCPA discussion last night.

In a dramatic special meeting, Irvine City Manager Oliver Chi laid out a blistering case against the OCPA, alleging that the nonprofit energy provider both withheld critical information from Irvine representatives and deliberately misled the city regarding OCPA’s financial position. This precipitated newly elected Mayor Larry Agran to agendize not an investigation into OCPA’s shortcomings, but a full-blown withdrawal from OCPA beginning in 2025. Ouch. Despite a significant number of well-meaning comments from the public urging Irvine to continue its membership, it was pretty clear that the bridges with the Irvine City Council had already been burned:

“I’ve thought long and hard about what this is, and this is best described in two words: it is a noble failure.” – Mike Carroll, Irvine City Council Member and former OCPA Board Member

“I do get the sense from the last board meeting, from comments from one of the board members, that (such board member) would actually prefer not to give Irvine information, because he said we would overreact to it. I think how we react is up to us. [This treatment] with OCPA cannot continue… I don’t know what else to do at this point.” – Kathleen Treseder, Irvine City Council Member and OCPA Board Member

“Council Member Treseder and I have disagreed… she has felt, and I think others feel, that OCPA can be fixed. I don’t think it can be fixed. I think there are such structural questions in it that suggest to me that we have to begin to move away from OCPA. We have to figure this out, how we disengage.” Larry Agran, Mayor of the City of Irvine

“This motion is designed to give the power back to Irvine, to the people. It sends a message that no organization will have the power to bully us, and to withhold information from us. That is why this motion exists.” James Mai, Irvine City Council Member

In a 6-0 vote, the Irvine City Council then proceeded to give City Manager Chi the authority to begin the withdrawal process from OCPA in 2025.

To call this decision devastating to the OCPA is likely an understatement. Almost 65% of all OCPA members are Irvine residents. When I wrote about the OCPA earlier this year, I noted that the OCPA’s entire financial strategy relies on enrolling as many ratepayers as possible so that it can buy energy contracts in bulk. Losing more than half of its ratepayers will likely bankrupt this approach. Additionally, Irvine’s decision is a political black eye as well: the City of Irvine was the founding city of the OCPA, providing millions of Irvine taxpayer dollars as seed capital, and it has stuck with it even when other cities bailed in the past few years. Unwinding that relationship is likely to be even messier and more difficult than Huntington Beach’s withdrawal last year, which was a huge headache for that city and its residents alike.

So what does this mean for the City of Costa Mesa? With luck, we’ve dodged a bullet. My hope is that this development will move the Costa Mesa City Council to resist further urging from OCPA to join its membership, as doing so now would be forcing the residents to take on a simply unacceptable level of financial risk. And that, friends, is a good thing. Seeking ways to be more sustainable and ecologically conscious is a good thing. Bailing out a failed “green” enterprise is not.