Ted Bardacke is Executive Director for Clean Power Alliance, California’s new, locally-operated, electricity provider for 31 communities and approximately one million eligible customers across Los Angeles and
Ventura Counties. Ted brings a unique background to the organization that includes experience in the public sector, journalism, education, and non-profit leadership. During his career, Ted has developed expertise in renewable energy planning and project development, electricity and water rate setting, customer service, and sustainability program design and implementation.
Ted comes to Clean Power Alliance from the Office of Los Angeles Mayor Eric Garcetti, where he was Director of Infrastructure and Deputy Director of the Mayor’s Sustainability Office. In those positions he was the Mayor’s chief policy liaison to the Department of Water and Power and the Department of Public Works and was instrumental in crafting the city’s first-ever Sustainability Plan, with an emphasis on pursuing distributed systems in the electricity and water sectors, and utilizing mobility infrastructure to pursue low- carbon and ecologically-beneficial outcomes.
Ted’s accomplishments at the Office of Mayor Garcetti include securing a 5-year water and power rate increase to fund a transition of 75% of the city’s energy mix to low carbon resources and reducing purchases of imported water by 50%. Ted also supervised major energy planning initiatives, including the 2016 Integrated Resources Plan and a multi-year study to define pathways to reach 100% renewables. Ted led major policy initiatives in energy efficiency, including an ordinance requiring annual building energy and water use disclosure and expansion of residential and commercial PACE financing availability.
From 2003 to 2013, Ted worked in the Green Urbanism Program at Global Green USA, a nationally-leading organization advancing smart solutions to climate change. Prior to that, Ted served as a foreign correspondent for the Financial Times of London, based in Mexico City and Bangkok and was a commentator for the BBC World Service and Deutsche Welle. Ted has taught at Pomona College, universities in Mexico City and Southeast Asia, and is a permanent Lecturer at UCLA’s Luskin School of Public Affairs. He is co-author with his teaching colleague Walker Wells of Blueprint for Greening Affordable Housing (Island Press, 2007) and holds degrees from Wesleyan University and the Graduate School of Architecture at Columbia University.