An Interview with Howard Chang, Ava’s New CEO

Howard Chang moves over from COO to CEO, taking charge at Ava Community Energy.  In this interview he shares his vision for the future.

Ava has a new CEO, as Howard Chang steps into the leadership role. Chang had served as Chief Operating Officer (COO) since 2017, hired shortly before Ava’s launch.

Before Ava, Chang spent five years as an investment banker with JP Morgan before getting a double master’s degree at Yale, in business administration and environmental studies. He started his energy career with national solar companies headquartered in the Bay Area.

As COO, his primary responsibility was overseeing procurement of $750 million of electricity each year for Ava’s customers.  

To learn his vision for the future of Ava, we sat down for an interview.

Q:  How would you describe Ava’s relationship to its member communities?

A:  We are one and the same. Our cities are part of us — we are made up of them. As a nonprofit public agency, we don’t pocket the profits. We think about value, services, and ways to reduce energy costs. 

We serve their residential and commercial customers, of course, but also the city governments themselves, and their needs. We have things like the critical facilities program, providing resilient power to their emergency facilities. And our public electric vehicle fast charging program, where we are installing fast charging hubs on city properties with an emphasis on multi-family housing and under-served areas. They provide the land for free, since they see the social good that we can provide.

Q:  Ava has many local programs that help customers electrify their homes, businesses, and vehicles.  What are the biggest opportunities and challenges there?

A:  A big challenge is customer engagement. Our programs are not reaching enough customers so far. Things like battery storage or electric bikes are relatively new and untapped, with a lot of room for growth.  But new things require a lot of customer education and can be complicated, and frankly sometimes kind of boring.  Who wants to spend time researching water heaters?  We have to make things simple and attractive to help with engagement.  

Q:  Ava has set a goal of zero-carbon power supply by 2030. What are the biggest opportunities and challenges in getting there?

A:  The challenge is very real. We are in a high-priced environment right now with demand driven by other CCAs and corporate buyers, who all want to go zero-carbon. There are lots of projects coming, but they are getting harder to build rather than easier. This makes affordability a growing challenge.

The other challenge is serving load with clean energy 24-7. Solar is great, and batteries can get us into the evening, but that doesn’t help at 2 a.m. There are no unique new technologies that solve that problem. Is it going to be offshore wind or geothermal power?  For now it is large hydroelectric, but there isn’t much potential for growth there.

But the opportunity is that our customers really want clean energy. They recognize the climate imperative. About 30 to 40 percent of our load is on Renewable 100, and with Fremont phasing it in by 2026, that will bring it up to half. On the other hand, our total load will be growing as we add Stockton, Lathrop, and then San Joaquin county over the next couple years.

Q:  What do these new members mean for Ava?

A:  We already serve Tracy, but now are adding other Central Valley communities. This means we will no longer serve only coastal Bay Area communities. From an energy perspective, the Central Valley means much more summer heat, so more air conditioners and more on-peak load. There is also a lot of agriculture load in the county, which will be new. And some new low-income customers. We are looking forward to expanding our reach and bringing our benefits to thousands of new customers.

Howard can be followed on Twitter here.