The Department of Public Utilities (DPU) has issued guidelines to streamline the application process for approval of municipal aggregation plans.
Community Choice Aggregation (CCA) is a program that allows Massachusetts municipalities to voluntarily bundle or "aggregate" the electrical purchasing power of its households, effectively creating a town-wide buying group. By doing this, the town can establish contracts to obtain electrical services that are more responsive to community interests — either lower cost or "greener" sources of the electricity supply. By aggregating, a town gains leverage to negotiate better individual rates with competitive suppliers, as well as determining various options for green power sources. The household gets to pick the type of service it wants — this is the "choice."
Community Choice Aggregation, Warrant Article 3, was unanimously approved at Annual Town Meeting, June 3, 2023. That means that the Select Board is now authorized to initiate an exploration of the CCA program, allowing Shutesbury to investigate electricity suppliers, to seek competitive bids on source options, and eventually to contract an electrical supplier that meets our needs (or to reject all bids and keep the status quo).
So what's next? Steps in the investigative process and their expected timeline are spelled out in the slides presented at the December 2022 information forum (you can view the Public Forum video here).
- Community Choice timeline: where we are (Sept 2025) and how we got here.
- Community Choice Aggregation FAQs
- NGRID Aggregation Plan for Public Review (review period: 2/03/2025 – 3/07/2025)
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