Petaluma Climate Action Commissioner's Building Decarbonization Coalition Appears to Have Utilized Nepotism to Advance Climate Agendas for Personal Profit
BDC Founder Panama Bartholomy has been working directly with his little brother, Obadiah Bartholomy, Manager of Distributed Energy Strategy, Sac. Municipal Utility District to Monopolize Energy
Petaluma Climate Action Commission Vice Chair and Executive Director of Building Decarbonization Coalition, Panama Bartholomy has what appears to be a tremendous conflict of interest.
The Building Decarbonization Coalition (BDC) aligns critical stakeholders on a path to transform the nation’s buildings through clean energy, using policy, research, market development and public engagement. The BDC and its members are charting the course to eliminate fossil fuels in buildings to improve people’s health, cut climate and air pollution, prioritize high-road jobs, and ensure that our communities are more resilient to the impacts of climate change.
Mr. Panama Bartholomy appears to have a younger brother by the name of Obadiah Bartholomy:
Manager, Distributed Energy Resources, Sacramento Municipal Utility District
Vice President of the Board, Energy Systems Integration Group
The Transcript of 04082019 California Public Utilities Commission California Energy Commission Joint Agency Workshop that took place on 5/17/2019 confirms that these gentleman are brothers.
MR. OBADIAH BARTHOLOMY: Thank you. I really appreciate the opportunity to come here and speak to you all. And before I get started, I will just acknowledge a little disclaimer. Bartholomy is not a very common last name and I am Panama's younger brother. And he got the public speaking gene. I went to school to be an engineer.
On May 30, 2024, The BDC published the following press release:
New public-private partnership forms to accelerate heat pump adoption in California
The California Heat Pump Partnership brings together leading state agencies, manufacturers, utilities, and other market actors to support the state’s heat pump and climate targets.
Sacramento, CA – Yesterday, the California Heat Pump Partnership (CAHPP) officially launched with its first convening to bring together state agencies, manufacturers representing more than 90% of the U.S. consumer heat pump market, utilities, and other market actors to help achieve the state’s goal to install six million electric heat pumps by 2030. Launched with a shared vision to catalyze a sustainable, decarbonized future, the public-private partnership will drive forward a clean energy economy and advance California’s climate objectives by propelling widespread heat pump adoption through cross-sector collaboration and strategic partnerships.
“California knows how to scale clean energy. We’ve done this with electric vehicles, solar, wind, and battery storage—and now it’s time to take the benefits of heat pump technology mainstream,” said California Energy Commission Chair David Hochschild. “Heat pumps provide Californians a way to both cool and heat their homes with no pollution. The California Heat Pump Partnership will help government and industry leaders do the barrier-busting necessary to ensure heat pumps are accessible to all Californians.”
“The Building Decarbonization Coalition is uniquely positioned to manage the partnership, and bring together state and industry leaders to rapidly grow the heat pump market in California,” said Terra Weeks, Director for the CAHPP. “Scaling this technology will usher California into a new era of clean electric heating and cooling, and propel the state toward a carbon neutral future.”
The CAHPP will develop a blueprint outlining how to address technical, market, and policy barriers for achieving the state’s heat pump targets. The partnership will also deploy a statewide consumer marketing campaign through The Switch Is On, an initiative launched by the Building Decarbonization Coalition, to educate, inspire, and make switching to electric appliances easier for communities, contractors, and all those who live and work in buildings.
“As California moves toward a carbon-neutral future, it’s crucial to foster close coordination between state and market leaders to achieve our building decarbonization goals,” said California Public Utilities Commission President Alice Reynolds. “The Heat Pump Partnership is a vital step in supporting California’s transition to clean electric heating and cooling. By aligning key stakeholders in the clean energy transition, we can minimize costs and maximize benefits for all Californians, driving us towards a more sustainable future.”
“California has advanced climate and air quality solutions through innovation and collaboration between government, communities, and industry to ensure equitable outcomes,” said California Air Resources Board Chair Liane Randolph. “The heat pump partnership is the latest example of how state agencies and other climate leaders are working together to face the growing threat of extreme heat and the need to decarbonize with action, urgency, and a commitment to addressing the needs of vulnerable Californians.”
California currently has about 1.5 million heat pumps deployed and is on pace to install less than 200,000 heat pumps a year. To close the gap of 4.5 million heat pumps by 2030, heat pump adoption will need to nearly quadruple with about 750,000 units installed annually. Large-scale coordination efforts like the CAHPP are crucial to align major players in the clean energy transition and support California’s climate goals. Scaling heat pump adoption in the world’s fifth largest economy will also act as a global market signal, with the potential of transforming the world’s green economy.
“As a global leader in intelligent climate and energy solutions, Carrier is committed to supporting the installation of six million heat pumps in California’s buildings by 2030,” said Kyle Gilley, Vice President of Government Relations at Carrier. “Electrification continues to be a solution for reducing greenhouse gas emissions and we are proud to be contributing to a greener tomorrow with our high quality, energy efficient, sustainable heat pump systems.”
“The California Heat Pump Partnership represents the public-private collaboration that we need to accelerate the adoption of advanced heat pumps, such as those that utilize inverter technology,” said David Calabrese, Senior Vice President of Government Affairs at Daikin. “As a global leader in providing heat pumps, we are committed to working with the California government, its utilities, the environmental community, and our industry to help meet the state’s six million heat pump target and ensure that this technology is accessible to all Californians.”
The partnership also builds on an agreement made last year by ten of the world’s largest manufacturers, distributors, and suppliers of heating and cooling equipment for buildings to rapidly scale the heat pump market. That agreement outlined commitments to help create manufacturing capacity, enhance efficiency, and incorporate load flexibility to decarbonize California’s buildings.
“As a leading manufacturer serving the California market with efficient electric space, water heating, and pool heat pumps, Rheem is committed to supporting the state’s goals to install six million electric heat pumps by 2030,” said Chris Day, Vice President, Global Product Strategy, Marketing and Training at Rheem. “The objective of the Partnership and Market Advisory Board is to scale heat pump installations through collaboration with the entire supply chain and channel partners. I am excited about the ability of the Partnership to focus the state on the most important policy and market levers to drive heat pump adoption and Rheem’s role in enabling wide-scale building decarbonization.”
“Our company is pleased to participate and contribute its more than twenty years of heat pump water heating expertise to the California Heat Pump Partnership as the state of California embarks on its ambitious goal of installing six million new heat pumps and heat pump water heaters by 2030,” said Joshua C. Greene, Corporate Vice President for Government, Regulatory, and Industry Affairs at A. O. Smith. “Through the leadership of Governor Newsom and the California Energy Commission, these combined efforts will help emphasize the co-benefits that heat pump technology offers—decarbonizing the built environment to help mitigate the impacts of climate change and lowering utility costs that will save consumers money.”
“Decarbonizing the built environment is within reach and comes with improved air quality, lower energy use, and more personal comfort,” said Dana Fischer, Senior Director of Regulatory Strategy at Mitsubishi Electric. “Mitsubishi Electric Trane HVAC U.S. is ready to do our part in achieving ambitious heat pump goals in California. Together we can make changes for the better.”
The California Heat Pump Partnership members include:
Heat pump manufacturers, including A. O. Smith, Bradford White, Carrier, Daikin, Fujitsu General America, Inc., Johnson Controls, Lennox, LG, Mitsubishi Electric, Rheem, and Trane Technologies
Distributor: Ferguson
Electricity providers, including Pacific Gas and Electric, Edison International, Sacramento Municipal Utility District, and Ava Community Energy
Policymakers representing the California Energy Commission, California Air Resources Board, California Public Utilities Commission, and the Office of Governor Gavin Newsom
Innovation leader: Los Angeles Cleantech Incubator
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The California Heat Pump Partnership (CAHPP) is a groundbreaking alliance that brings together leaders in the public and private sectors to rapidly scale California’s heat pump market.
At the January 24, 2024 California Energy Commission (CEC) Business Meeting, CEC approved an agreement 500-23-002 with Building Decarbonization Coalition for a $9,000,000 contract as follows:
“…authorized by Assembly Bill (AB) 102 (Chapter 38, Budget Act of 2023), to manage a public-private partnership dedicated to achieving Governor Newsom’s goal of installing 6 million heat pumps by 2030 through a consumer technical assistance, education, and outreach program to assist Californians in leveraging federal Inflation Reduction Act incentives and tax credits to decarbonize homes and address heat pump adoption barriers; and…”
On February 9, 2024, Tech Clean California published the following press release:
Single family market rate incentives are nearly fully reserved in Sacramento Municipal Utility District (SMUD) service area as of today, February 9, 2024. However, single family Equity incentives are still available.
Impact of SMUD Service Area Funding
Single family market rate incentives are nearly reserved in SMUD service area and today, February 9, 2024 is the last day to make sales and create claims to reserve incentives. Contractors have until the end of the day today, February 9, 2024, to get claims created in our online system. No claims created after February 9, 2024, will be accepted. No claims created after February 9, 2024, will be accepted. No claims with signed Customer Terms & Conditions dated after February 9, 2024, will be accepted.
TECH Clean California hopes to reopen incentives for these areas in the near future.
Single family market rate incentives are still available in all other electric municipalities, along with SoCalGas, and San Diego Gas & Electric service areas. As a reminder, market rate funds were fully reserved for electric IOU customers in PG&E service area earlier this week. Learn more about PG&E incentive funding. Again, single family Equity incentives are still available in all service areas, including PG&E.
The TECH Clean California initiative is funded by California ratepayers and taxpayers and administered by Southern California Edison Company under the auspices of the California Public Utilities Commission. The TECH Clean California team is led by Energy Solutions and partners with Ardenna Energy, Association of Energy Affordability, Building Decarbonization Coalition, Electrify My Home, Frontier Energy, National Comfort Institute, Energy Outlet, Recurve Analytics, The Ortiz Group, Tre’ Laine Associates, and VEIC.
In January 2021, The New Buildings Institute published The Buildings Electrification Roadmap (BETR). The advisors were: Panama Bartholomy and Brian Barnacle, BDC; Jerine Ahmed, SCE; Armen G. Saiyan, LADWP; Khalil Johnson, PG&E; Joshua Rasin, SMUD; Ralph DiNola, NBI; Becky Brun, Pitchfork Communications; Marbry Walker, Brand Design
The Building Electrification Technology Roadmap (BETR) was made possible in partnership with the Building Decarbonization Coalition.
The funding organizations are: Southern California Edison (SCE), Los Angeles Department of Water and Power (LADWP), Pacific Gas and Electric (PG&E), Sacramento Municipal Utility District (SMUD), the Electric Power and Research Institute (EPRI), and New Buildings Institute (NBI).
In February 2021 Mr. Panama Bartholomy, BDC presented the State of Building Electrification. The video summary stated:
Where are we on building decarbonization as a movement? What have early building decarbonization program efforts taught us and where we need to go next? What can leadership utilities and other institutions do to help the movement overcome some of its stickiest barriers? For the answers to these questions, we need to go to the leaders of the industry. So we asked Scott Blunk to come talk with us. Scott heads the Sacramento Municipal Utility District (SMUD)'s long range planning for electrification and energy efficiency and has years of experience designing, developing and building green and energy efficient solutions for residential, multifamily and commercial properties. Hear his insights on the state of Building Electrification and how SMUD, a community-owned not-for-profit electric utility, is leading the nation in building decarbonization.
Charley Cormany, Efficiency First California (EFCA) Executive Director published the following article:
For the staff at Efficiency First California (EFCA), 2020 started pretty well.
Early in the year, after many months of development, we launched two software solutions for the Sacramento Municipal Utility District, better known as SMUD.
The first tool is an automated rebate workflow program that allows contractors to apply for rebates online and actively track their status. The second is a comprehensive trade ally network for contractors, called the SMUD Contractor Network (SCN). The SNC allows new contractors to submit information to become participating contractors and has a host of other features, such as a complete Learning Management System (LMS) and a contractor directory to help SMUD customers find qualified contractors.
We have a long history of managing residential rebate programs for SMUD, and much of our day-to-day effort is related to implementing SMUDs residential rebate programs. Shifting to software development was a challenge. Both of these solutions were developed on platforms created and supported by third parties, and both required substantial changes to their existing structure to meet SMUD’s needs. Launching these tools took months of planning and extensive back and forth communication with SMUD and the software developers.
In the end, we learned many lessons and were pleased to have created something of such value for contractors. When the tools went “live,” we switched from development mode to operations, something we have been doing for years. We were starting to settle into this workflow when the global pandemic hit.
At first, we thought we would be okay, as SMUD has been a very reliable client for over the past decade. Eventually, though, the enormity of the pandemic started to take its toll. SMUD was losing revenue and had to cut spending. Our once-certain contract was in the crosshairs, and indeed, our budget was drastically reduced. I am sure this is a familiar story to many people who weathered the pandemic.
As the executive director, I faced a challenging situation. Do I lay off employees to reduce overhead? Or perhaps cut staff hours to part-time? Do we all take a cut in pay to ride out the storm? None of these are easy choices to make. At about the same time, the federal government was anxiously rolling out stimulus funds to stabilize the economy. We applied for and received a Payroll Protection Plan (PPP) loan and covered payroll for a brief time. However, our workload for SMUD was down, as the pandemic had affected contractors too. We needed a new project, something positive that would keep us busy and benefit the community we served over the long term.
Efficiency First California is a trade organization that represents contractors. We often rely on education to help our contractors succeed, which is one of our missions. Another is to support the growth of energy efficiency and the clean energy sectors. However, when it comes down to it, the thing contractors need most is a pipeline of good customers. On more than one occasion, contractors have told me that the best thing about a rebate program was that it made the phone ring but that they would give up the rebates entirely in exchange for customer leads. After some contemplation about our future, it became clear that the best way we could support our mission was by sending leads to our contractors.
After considering our options, we decided to leverage the knowledge we had gained building software solutions for SMUD and apply it to something for our members and the industry as a whole. We looked at the marketplace and determined that a statewide directory that connected interested homeowners to contractors might be an effective solution.
The decision was further solidified by a conversation with the Building Decarbonization Coalition (BDC). The BDC was launching a new consumer awareness campaign, called The Switch Is On, to support electrification. They reached out to us as they knew we managed the SMUD contractor network’s development, including a contractor directory. They were interested in providing a contractor directory for their consumer awareness campaign and wanted to know if there was the potential to leverage the SMUDs directory.
We realized that we could use our SMUD experience to build a directory to support the BDC’s campaign. Creating a new software tool would keep our staff busy, and I was confident we could meet the BDC’s short-term needs. Deciding to develop a contractor directory for the BDC was the first step in creating the Clean Energy Connection.
This project had the benefit of keeping our small, agile, and efficient team working full-time. The PPP funds, combined with the continuing but reduced revenue from SMUD, were enough to keep us from laying off staff or cutting hours. In effect, the creation of the Clean Energy Connection was akin to a workforce program, much like Franklin D. Roosevelt’s “New Deal” public works programs in the 1930s. It was a win-win for all parties.
We started by considering who could help us build the product and reached out to a trusted partner to determine their capability and interest. It turns out the pandemic had forced them to make the same choices about staff and labor hours. By moving forward on development, we could help keep their team busy, support our staff, and help the BDC with their needs. It just seemed like the right project and, frankly, was a glimmer of hope during some pretty dark times. That is how it all began.
The next thing we needed to figure out was who our target audience would be. Realistically, we knew that we did not have the expertise or the resources to support a comprehensive consumer awareness effort. Promoting the larger decarbonization message would need to be the responsibility of much bigger players, like utilities or coalitions of interested parties, such as the Building Decarbonization Coalition.
A more logical choice for us was to target customers who had already decided to go all-electric. We knew we could support these early adopters by helping them find contractors to help with their projects. We decided to focus on California, to begin with, as this was our territory. Early on, we decided we wanted to make the directory free for both homeowners and contractors. As a non-profit, we felt that not only was this was in alignment with our goals, it gave our effort more credibility as a grassroots effort to support consumers and contractors who want to address GHG reductions.
Ultimately, we defined the basic parameters: A statewide online directory that would help customers interested in going all-electric find contractors who offered those services. Supporting contractors by sending them what they valued the most – leads to new customers. The directory would be free to users and contractors and align with the BDCs ‘The Switch Is On” consumer awareness campaign. And it would provide a project to keep valuable employees busy during the pandemic shutdown.
We quickly rolled out a streamlined version in time for the Switch is On launch date. We then moved on to our full-featured product, which we launched in February of 2021.
When you visit the Clean Energy Connection website, you will find a section on the home page showing the “Clean Energy Projects We Encourage.” The basic premise is we are listing individual measures that meet our objectives. Initially, the measures were all related to electrification. We included this in the streamlined version of the directory we launched for the BDC to support their electrification campaign. Recently, we have added home performance measures, such as energy audits, air sealing, and insulation. We intend to expand the measures list as we grow.
We want this directory to represent high-quality, reputable contractors, and we have a strict vetting process. If you are a contractor and want to join the directory, you must offer some of the services we support. We also do license checks to ensure everyone we list is qualified to provide the services they are offering. We do automated Contractor State License Board reviews to make sure licenses are valid.
For example, if a contractor lists mini-split heat pump installation as a service they offer, we verify that they have the correct contractor’s license to provide that service. We require two customer references, who we contact to learn more about the contractor’s ability to provide good customer service and perform high-quality work. We also conduct an online reputation check to see what kind of online reviews the contractor’s customers provide.
Customers who use the site can filter their contractor list in various ways, including location, type of service, contractor name, certifications, rebate programs, and more. When a homeowner selects a contractor for their project, they can submit a request to be contacted by that contractor. This structure allows us to track contractors’ response time to leads and follow up with homeowners to evaluate their experience. Contractors who earn more positive feedback are prioritized in search results, ensuring that we reward those performing high-quality work and have satisfied customers.
The Clean Energy Connection is an effort by a small, non-profit trade organization to help support the transition to clean energy in California. It is a work in progress, and it grows every day. We consider it a success if it helps homeowners find a contractor, and it supports contractors who are interested in a carbon-free future. The directory is still in its early release stages, but it is already doing what we had intended. We encourage you to check it out and share it with others. Hopefully, it will take on a life of its own and be an essential tool in moving the state to a clean energy future.
Mr. Obadiah Bartholomy is currently compensated $251,003.35 in total annual compensation and benefits as the Manager Distributed Energy Strategy for SMUD.
He is employed with SMUD to:
develop enterprise strategies for Distributed Energy Resources including Distributed Generation, Demand Response, Electric Vehicles, Energy Efficiency, Distributed Storage. Work with Grid Strategy and Operations team to appropriately value and plan for DER's. Integrate DER's into Resource Planning process and improve robustness of that process. Integrate DER's into Distribution Planning process. Develop pilot programs to demonstrate emerging DER business models and technology combinations. Support development of state policies on carbon reduction that appropriately recognizes the role of customer resources in decarbonizing the electricity and transportation sectors.
Before I begin digging into meeting minutes, requesting records and pulling statements of economic interest to confirm that possible conflicts exist regarding the relationship between SMUD, PG&E and BDC, could Mr. Leland, Mr. Barnacle and the Bartholomy’s 100% guarantee that no conflicts of interest are present? I have written several other articles to follow this one, so the upcoming council debate should be quite entertaining. God bless Petaluma!
Time is on the side of the oppressed today, it's against the oppressor. Truth is on the side of the oppressed today, it's against the oppressor. You don't need anything else.
-Malcolm X
Greetings from Atlanta!
The ironic thing about these money launderers is the scheme requires capitalism to work. These thieves enrich themselves off the backs of the middle class. But in public, they proclaim capitalism is bad!
As a Cal Berkeley Economics graduate, the worst people in our society are the ones who steal from the poor and, in the same voice, these robbers tell people to put their trusts in them.