Pitzer College and Its Claremont Peers Announce 100% Clean Electricity Transition

One hundred percent renewable electricity is coming to The Claremont Colleges. Arising from a collaboration between students, staff and senior leadership, the consortium’s decision lights up a greener future across every campus.

The Claremont Colleges consortium is currently finalizing an agreement with the Clean Power Alliance (CPA), one of the largest providers of 100% renewable electricity in the U.S. CPA is a Community Choice Aggregation program that supplies clean electricity to 3 million residents and businesses across Los Angeles and Ventura counties.

The student group 5C Environmental Justice (5CEJ) started the groundwork for this initiative in spring 2025. Pitzer College student Wilbur Moffitt ’28 soon joined Milo Slevin PO’28, Lucy Reed SCR’28 and other 5C students for their campaign.

“I recognized that we needed local initiatives,” said Moffitt, who is a philosophy, politics and economics major and environmental analysis minor. “We needed a group of people who can figure out what resources are available in the absence of federal support and who can execute that passion.”

Reed, a Scripps College student and a campaign co-lead, is grateful for fellow student organizers’ support.

“We continuously drew on the wisdom of past 5C organizers and invoked stories of their student activism,” said Reed. “I am so grateful to have met so many lovely, dedicated, persistent people through this work and feel proud of the community we have built around environmental justice.”

Pitzer President Strom C. Thacker is proud to see this student-led initiative come to fruition.

“It was almost exactly one year ago that Pitzer students first brought this to my open office hours,” said Thacker. “This is what Pitzer College is all about, working together as students, faculty, and administration to turn ideas into action in the spirit of community engagement and social responsibility.”

Environmental sustainability is one of Pitzer’s five core values, and that made this initiative even more important to Moffitt. His Pitzer education inspired him to advocate with 5CEJ to eliminate pollutants that harm climate and public health.

“Just because the world is what it is right now does not mean we have to stay silent or wait it out,” said Moffitt. “There are real things that we could be doing to help real people. At Pitzer, we pride ourselves on giving back to our community.”

After extensive research, 5CEJ selected CPA as a viable renewable electricity provider. CPA will connect with the pre-existing power grid infrastructure of the campuses while decarbonizing the colleges’ electricity supply. Moffitt and other 5CEJ members set out to garner support from the campus community.

Among other organizing efforts, 5CEJ’s campaign hosted a full day of events at Pomona College’s Walker Beach and hosted tables for roughly two dozen student organizations to platform the campaign. Over 150 students attended, and 5CEJ students organized a social media campaign around interviews they conducted there. This and other efforts resulted in 1,300 petition signatures in support of clean electricity.

The campus communities’ enthusiasm was clear. What remained were financial hurdles. 

Working Closely Together

Over many months, 5CEJ met with Thacker and other college leadership in finances, facilities, and sustainability at the 5Cs. The Pitzer Vice President, Chief Operating Officer & Treasurer Laura Schaefer has been instrumental in facilitating a viable plan for The Claremont Colleges, including helping lead the negotiations with CPA on behalf of the consortium.

Schaefer, Thacker said, “has been working with students and her peers across the consortium to make this investment in clean electricity a reality.”

For Moffitt, this effort has resulted in a close working relationship between him and Schaefer.

“Laura and I text each other now about this,” said Moffitt. “I never expected to be texting the finance director of the school about a monumental shift in environmental purchasing at another institution.”

“This win demonstrates that we can make community-driven change on a local level even as climate action is being fought against on a national level,” said Reed.

Moffitt sees his work with 5CEJ as part of Pitzer’s culture of community-based advocacy.

“What Pitzer has instilled in me is that all of us are, at least to an extent, responsible for creating the change we want to see in the world,” said Moffitt.

Moffitt said that Pitzer raises up students like him as initiators. They are driving the sustainability revolution through community collaboration.

“We are people who are willing to ask difficult questions … and endeavor to find a solution,” he said. “I see that as one of my favorite parts of coming here.”

Moffitt looks forward to supporting more environmental initiatives — including Pitzer’s ongoing development of a sustainability plan.

“We want to make sure we’re centering Pitzer values in the plan,” said Moffitt. “That includes community engagement and responsibility to our local community as much as possible.”