Straight out of Cape Cod: The origin of community choice aggregation and its spread to other states
Name
1-s2.0-S2214629621004783-main.pdf
Size
493 KB
Format
Adobe PDF
Checksum (MD5)
9076f53ad8ef907a637b520d06e9020d
Author(s)
Hsu, David
Date Issued
April 2022
Journal
Energy Research & Social Science
Publisher
Elsevier BV
Citation
Hsu, David. 2022. "Straight out of Cape Cod: The origin of community choice aggregation and its spread to other states." Energy Research & Social Science, 86.
Version
Final published version
Abstract
This policy history describes how community choice aggregation was created in Massachusetts by a small
group of advocates and subsequently spread across the US. Twenty-one interviews with key participants,
primary materials from government and personal archives, and newspaper articles were used to attribute
and corroborate these events. A new finding is that community choice aggregation was created as part of
electric sector restructuring efforts in Massachusetts in 1997, but that this new policy was barely perceived by
many stakeholders in the larger restructuring process, and was included by legislators in response to advocates
who organized local governments through direct democracy strategies. Kingdon’s multiple streams approach
provides a useful framework to understand how organizing by advocates led to successful passage of legislation
in Massachusetts. The spread of community choice aggregation to other states occurred through organizing
that combined advocacy with policy learning and emulation. CCA has since been adopted by more than 1800
local governments that represent more than 36 million people in six states. This article concludes by discussing
the early outcomes, current status, and some prospective implications of community choice aggregation.
MIT Department
Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Department of Urban Studies and Planning
Terms of Use
Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International license
Persistent DSpace Link
DOI of Published Version
https://doi.org/10.1016/j.erss.2021.102393
