Report: PacifiCorp Again Set to Cut Pay for Some Employees Who Choose to Work from Home (Portland Business Journal, OR)

PacifiCorp wants to bring employees back to the power company's office environment within two weeks.

Those who don't, according to the Oregonian, could face taking a 10% pay cut.

The Berkshire-Hathaway-owned energy company has set June 1 as the date when workers will begin returning to its Lloyd Center offices. The Oregonian reported that the company's "voluntary work-from-home program" includes "a 10% reduction" in pay.

PacifiCorp spokesman Tom Gauntt said by email there are other options for workers.

"As an essential service provider, Pacific Power has worked carefully throughout the Covid-19 pandemic to follow directives from state and local government leaders and public health officials while managing our responsibility and obligation to continue providing safe and reliable electric service, and we look forward to bringing our teams back together on site to do this important work together," Gauntt said in his email.

The company had floated the idea last fall, according to news outlets, before a two-week tightening of coronavirus guidelines announced by Gov. Kate Brown in early November prompted a delay.

PacifiCorp employs around 1,000 workers at its Lloyd District headquarters. It operates in six Western states and is the second-largest electric utility in Oregon, where it goes by the name Pacific Power.

At Lloyd Center, managers will craft plans for employees as they return to work Masks will be mandated in spots where workers can't function more than six feet from each other.

"Positive vaccination rates coupled with lower infection rates give us confidence that office work can be safely done with appropriate provisions for social distancing and mask wearing," Gaunt said in his statement. "To help employees manage through this time, we continue to offer flexibility including flexible work hours, alternative schedules, and our voluntary work from home program. These programs are designed to address individual needs to enable a successful path forward."

 

California’s Next Climate Challenge: Replacing Its Last Nuclear Power Plant (Los Angeles Times, CA)

The twin reactors along California’s Central Coast were nearing completion, and tens of thousands of people had gathered to protest. It was 1979, just months after a partial nuclear meltdown at Pennsylvania’s Three Mile Island, and a young Jerry Brown — serving his first stint as California governor — earned a standing ovation when he declared, “No on Diablo Canyon.”

Four decades later, Pacific Gas & Electric is finally preparing to shut the nuclear power plant. It sits near several seismic fault lines and has long stirred fears that an earthquake-driven meltdown could spread deadly radiation across the state.

But if Diablo Canyon is the devil Californians know, the devil they don’t know is what happens when it closes.

The plant is California’s largest power source, generating nearly 6% of the state’s electricity in 2019. That energy is emissions-free, meaning it doesn’t produce planet-warming greenhouse gases or lung-scarring air pollutants.

And unlike solar panels and wind turbines, Diablo Canyon can make electricity around the clock, regardless of the weather — a key attribute for a state that suffered brief rolling blackouts last summer.

But with just three years until the plant begins to power down, California has no plan to directly replace it.

That’s despite a state law, overwhelmingly approved by the Legislature and signed by Brown, ordering regulators to “avoid any increase in emissions of greenhouse gases” as a result of Diablo’s closure.

It’s common for nuclear shutdowns to be followed by a jump in pollution as fossil fueled power plants fire up more often.

California’s planet-warming emissions rose by 2% after the San Onofre generating station in San Diego County malfunctioned, eventually leading to its permanent closure. That wasn’t the only reason emissions rose, but it was almost certainly a factor.

Similarly, the share of New York state’s electricity coming from natural gas, a fossil fuel, rose by 4 percentage points after one of two reactors at the Indian Point nuclear plant closed last year. The other reactor produced its final electrons last month.

It doesn’t have to be that way, and Diablo Canyon was supposed to be a model of how to retire a nuclear plant without worsening the climate crisis. But critics say Gov. Gavin Newsom’s Public Utilities Commission is failing in that mission.

“Diablo’s retirement is going to increase greenhouse gas emissions. And their planning is not doing anything to prevent that,” said Mark Specht, an energy analyst at the Union of Concerned Scientists. “We should have figured this out by now.”

The future of nuclear power is a key question not only for California, but nationally. America has 94 nuclear reactors across 28 states. They generate one-fifth of the country’s electricity — as much as all other climate-friendly power sources combined.

President Biden’s ambitious goal of 100% clean energy by 2035 — a decade ahead of California’s current target — would be much easier to meet if those plants kept operating. But many could be forced to close in coming years, as their operators struggle to compete with increasingly cheap electricity from natural gas plants as well as solar and wind farms.

Should government toss an economic lifeline to those nuclear reactors? There are fervent advocates on both sides of the debate.

One of the best-known pro-nuclear figures is Michael Shellenberger, who ran for California governor in 2018 and more recently has decried “climate alarmism” and made appearances on Fox News. Other nuclear proponents include the distinguished climate scientist James Hansen, who in 1988 famously warned Congress that “the greenhouse effect is here,” as well as Bill Gates, who has invested in what he hopes will be next-generation nuclear technologies.

On the other side are old-school environmentalists shaped by the Chernobyl disaster and the cancer-causing radiation it spread, as well as younger activists who remember the Fukushima Daiichi meltdowns and see uranium as just another dangerous fuel to be thrown on the scrap heap with coal, oil and gas.

The Sierra Club says it is “unequivocally opposed to nuclear energy.” Food and Water Watch calls nuclear a “false solution” that isn’t needed to transition away from fossil fuels.

Groups including the Natural Resources Defense Council have staked a middle ground, opposing construction of new reactors while sometimes supporting policies that would prop up existing plants, at least in places with relatively low safety risks.

The Biden administration, too, wants to see existing plants keep running. Energy Secretary Jennifer Granholm told Congress this month that the administration is “eager” to work with lawmakers on subsidies for economically struggling reactors.

“We’re not going to be able to achieve our climate goals if our nuclear power plants shut down,” Granholm said.

A ‘lack of urgency’ in California

When nuclear plants do shut down, climate advocates agree that replacing them with clean energy sources is crucial.

That’s the problem in California, where officials acknowledge the state is likely to burn more gas after Diablo goes offline.

In a recent report studying the possible closure of the Aliso Canyon gas storage facility outside Los Angeles, the Public Utilities Commission cited Diablo’s retirement as one of several reasons gas demand is expected to increase in the coming years.

For Assembly member Jordan Cunningham (R-Templeton), who co-wrote the law ordering regulators to make sure emissions don’t rise after the plant’s closure, it’s inexcusable that the Public Utilities Commission doesn’t have a dedicated plan do so.

“I don’t know if it’s a lack of urgency, or it’s just a slow-moving bureaucracy, or they just move from crisis to crisis,” Cunningham said. “So much of energy policy moves through the PUC, and they just don’t move very fast. And it’s frustrating.”

The Union of Concerned Scientists released a report in February examining what might happen if Diablo closes without a plan to replace its output. The group estimated California would emit an additional 15.5 million metric tons of planet-warming carbon over the next decade — roughly equivalent to keeping 300,000 gasoline-powered cars on the road over that same time period.

Nitrogen dioxide pollution, which can cause asthma attacks and reduced lung function, would also rise in communities near gas-fired power plants. The added pollution would be equivalent to operating 1,750 diesel school buses, the report found.

The Public Utilities Commission says it’s following the law.

Ed Randolph, the agency’s director of energy and climate policy, described the lack of a plan to replace Diablo Canyon as a perception problem, not an emissions problem. He said carbon pollution is falling and will continue to fall, with solar and wind farms coming online every year that will help pick up the slack after Diablo closes, even if they weren’t built specifically to replace its output.

Those new power plants won’t start generating electricity at the exact moments in 2024 and 2025 when Diablo’s reactors go offline. But they’re still basically serving as replacements , Randolph said — even if there’s a short-term “bump” in emissions.

“You may see a slight uptick the next couple years, and then you see a decrease again,” he said.

Cunningham wasn’t impressed with that explanation.

“I don’t find that that’s compliant with their legal mandate,” the lawmaker said.

The utilities commission recently began talking about building new power plants explicitly to replace Diablo Canyon — but largely out of fear that California could have trouble keeping the lights on otherwise, an urgent concern following rolling blackouts last August.

In a proposal released in February and not yet finalized, commission staff floated the idea of ordering utility companies and local governments to buy 7,500 megawatts of new power by 2026. Those supplies would help replace Diablo’s nearly 2,300 megawatts, as well as several coastal gas plants that were supposed to shut down last year before getting a last-minute reprieve.

The new resources probably would include solar and wind farms paired with batteries that store energy for times when the sun isn’t shining and the wind isn’t blowing. The commission might also require utilities and local governments to sign contracts with geothermal power plants and “long duration” energy storage facilities that can help keep the grid balanced 24/7.

At the same time, commission staffers say it’s important not to build too much, too fast. Electricity rates are already rising as PG&E and Southern California Edison spend large sums of money to prevent their electric lines from sparking fires.

“Is this an unprecedented buildout? Yeah,” Randolph said. “But we don’t think it’s an unrealistic buildout.”

Some observers think 7,500 megawatts isn’t enough. The California Independent System Operator — which runs the power grid for most of the state and initiated last year’s rolling blackouts — says 10,000 megawatts are needed.

The California Environmental Justice Alliance and the Sierra Club have an even more dramatic proposal.

They’re urging the Public Utilities Commission to order 20,000 megawatts of new clean power supplies by 2026, which would amount to one-quarter of the state’s entire generating capacity today. A “significant percentage” of that clean energy, they say, should be built in the Los Angeles Basin and the San Joaquin Valley, regions with notoriously smoggy, asthma-inducing air.

That would enable California to not only replace Diablo, the groups say, but also shut down additional gas plants in low-income communities of color. A recent study from Harvard researchers highlighted the potential benefits, estimating that gas burned at power plants and other industrial facilities caused more than 1,000 premature deaths in the Golden State in 2017.

Those kinds of health consequences show that Californians can’t afford any “bump” in emissions when Diablo closes, said Deborah Behles, an attorney representing the California Environmental Justice Alliance.

“Not only is that bump problematic for climate change, it’s also problematic for disadvantaged communities that are already breathing some of the worst air in the country,” she said.

There’s little appetite in Sacramento for reversing course on Diablo Canyon, even as California struggles to build a cleaner, more reliable power grid.

A bill from Cunningham, which would have counted nuclear toward the state’s renewable energy mandate in a longshot bid to keep the plant running, died last year without getting a committee vote. Operating Diablo past 2025 would also require billions of dollars of upgrades to comply with environmental and earthquake safety rules, Randolph said.

Nuclear’s next generation

Utilities in other parts of the country haven’t shown much appetite for new nuclear power plants, either. The only reactors currently under construction, at Southern Co.’s Vogtle power plant in Georgia, are five years behind schedule and billions of dollars over budget.

Many nuclear advocates have placed their hopes in so-called “small modular reactors,” which in theory would be cheaper, easier to build and safer than their hulking Cold War-era predecessors.

Startups such as Kairos, NuScale Power and Oklo are working to develop and prove the technology. The federal Department of Energy last fall awarded $160 million in advanced reactor funding to two companies, TerraPower and X-energy, with a goal of helping them get demonstration projects built by 2027.

Jessica Lovering, co-founder of the pro-nuclear research group Good Energy Collective, thinks the technology’s backers should focus on environmental justice — ensuring cleaner air, water and soil in neighborhoods suffering the most from pollution.

In a recent essay, Lovering and her colleagues laid out what “nuclear justice” might look like. They called for the cleanup of still-contaminated atomic weapons sites such as Hanford in Washington state and Santa Susana in the San Fernando Valley, as well as action to address pollution from decades of uranium mining, such as groundwater contamination on the Navajo Nation.

Nuclear energy companies, meanwhile, could look to build small reactors in pollution-burdened areas that previously depended on fossil fuels for well-paying jobs — but only if that’s something local residents want. That would be a change of pace from the wave of nuclear development in the 1960s and 1970s, when many reactors were built near whiter, wealthier suburbs, while dirtier uranium mining and processing facilities were typically located near communities of color, Lovering said.

“There’s a discrepancy between who’s bearing the risk and who’s getting these economic benefits,” she said.

Only by confronting its problematic legacy, Lovering believes, can the nuclear power industry build trust and convince skeptics it’s worth rethinking their decades-old aversion to atomic energy.

“For me personally, and for a lot of people my age, the big existential crisis is climate change,” she said. “So if there is this tool that has had a lot of problems in the past — but it looks like there are answers to those problems, and new [advances] that make the technology much better — we should at least be considering it, and not taking it off the table.”

Edwin Lyman is skeptical.

He’s the director of nuclear power safety at the Union of Concerned Scientists, and he recently wrote a report questioning whether new reactor designs will really deliver the safety improvements their backers are promising. He also disagrees with the claim made by nuclear advocates that the technology is far safer than fossil fuels, saying it fails to account for radiation leaks that don’t lead to immediate death but can still cause cancer — a notion that is fiercely disputed by nuclear supporters.

Another hurdle is where to bury the waste produced by nuclear plants, which can remain radioactive for tens of thousands of years.

The proposed Yucca Mountain facility in Nevada was nixed by the Obama administration and again by President Trump. For now, nuclear waste is being stored on-site at operating and shuttered plants, including San Onofre.

“If we have to create a national sacrifice zone to get rid of the stuff or bury it, that’s not a great model for the future,” Lyman said.

Lyman thinks it makes sense to subsidize nuclear plants in danger of shutting down, if the alternative is burning more fossil fuels — but only if those plants are relatively low-risk. He supports retiring Diablo Canyon because of the earthquake threat.

“We’re not trading climate change for nuclear safety,” he said.

PG&E has long said Diablo would withstand a major quake. And nuclear energy proponents point to research suggesting the health impacts from incidents such as Three Mile Island and Fukushima Daiichi were small — especially compared with a recent estimate from Harvard scientists that fine-particle pollution from fossil fuels killed more than 8 million people in 2018 alone.

But for better or worse, after a half-century of anti-nuclear activism, California has made its choice on atomic energy.

Come 2025, the state’s last nuclear power plant will almost certainly go offline, joining retired reactors at San Onofre and the Rancho Seco plant near Sacramento, which closed in 1989 after a public vote.

Los Angeles and several nearby cities will still get power from Arizona’s Palo Verde nuclear plant, the country’s largest electricity generator, as will Southern California Edison. But nothing new is on the horizon.

Brown continued his anti-nuclear activism even after his second stint as governor. He’s now executive chairperson of the Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists, whose iconic Doomsday Clock warns of the threats posed by nuclear weapons and climate change.

“They both have catastrophic consequences,” Brown said in 2015.

There’s a big difference between nuclear bombs and nuclear power plants. But no energy source is risk-free. The question today, as temperatures rise and radioactive waste decays, is whether the climate catastrophe makes uranium worth the risk.

 

Viewpoint: Oregon U.S. Senator Ron Wyden, Portland General Electric’s Maria Pope Make the Case for the Clean Energy for America Act (Portland Business Journal, OR)

By Ron Wyden and Maria Pope

A changing climate threatens Oregon and states across the country. Rising global temperatures caused by greenhouse gas emissions pose serious and urgent challenges — everything from rising oceans that threaten coastal communities to acute drought conditions and devastating wildfires statewide.

Achieving the post-carbon world President Biden laid out last month will require major investments in clean energy infrastructure. Key to reducing greenhouse gas emissions, a core cause of global warming, is the development and deployment of new technologies and cost-effective sources of renewable power.

The Clean Energy for America Act scheduled for a mark-up this month in the Senate Finance Committee would reduce greenhouse gases by accelerating the development of new clean energy sources and creating tens of thousands of good jobs nationwide. The fiscal engine of this legislation links tax policy to energy policy in supporting the transition to a clean energy future without overburdening taxpayers or utility customers.

The current tax code carves up renewable energy into a confusing and obsolete hodgepodge of more than 40 different tax breaks for various energy sources and technologies. There’s one set of incentives for solar, another set for wind, and so on. Most of the incentives woven into these policies are temporary, leaving the clean-energy business and its employees in a permanent state of limbo.

Meanwhile, the tax breaks for oil and gas companies are permanent. When fossil-fuel interests get special permanent breaks compared with everyone else, the tax-policy environment forces Americans to subsidize the climate crisis.

The Clean Energy for America Act at long last jettisons this convoluted patchwork of credits and creates a level playing field by establishing one simple technology-neutral standard that incentivizes all zero-emitting technologies equally – even ones that haven’t been invented yet. It focuses on the three most important areas: green transportation (gasoline-powered vehicles are the leading source of greenhouse gases); green energy (power plants are the second-largest source) and efficiency (to reduce demand overall).

While the auto industry has made sizable gains with hybrid and electric vehicles, significantly more charging infrastructure is a must to propel the needed growth of this key sector.

The Edison Electric Institute’s members, representing the nation’s investor-owned utilities, have cut carbon emissions by 33 percent from 2005 levels and have even more ambitious goals of 80 percent reductions by 2050. And, many companies, such as PGE, are pledging even faster, more aggressive timelines. PGE, Oregon’s largest provider of electricity, is leading the way, and just this past year retired a coal plant and replaced the generation with wind, solar and energy storage all seamlessly integrated.

The proposed Clean Energy for America Act also establishes a single threshold to qualify for tax credits on storage facilities as advanced utility-scale batteries play an essential part of the clean-energy mix. The bill’s direct pay options mitigate the often needed tax-equity transactions, cutting out heavy discounts by large commercial and investment banks, getting the benefits directly to offset technology and development costs and in the hands of customers.

Finally, the Clean Energy for America Act helps ensure family-supporting jobs by requiring prevailing wages. Clean energy generation already employs nearly as many workers as oil and gas production – with virtually all new job growth expected to come from renewable development.

Significant investment is needed to reach our nation’s ambitious climate goals and a well-designed tax policy will help accelerate that transition by encouraging all players to make significant investments and reduce emissions as reliably and affordably as possible.

The legislation is backed by a diverse coalition of interests including the Environmental Defense Fund, the Sierra Club, the Natural Resources Defense Council, the Blue Green Alliance, numerous public and investor-owned utilities, the Edison Electric Institute and building trades. It will take everyone working together to transform our nation’s energy sector on the rapid timeline that climate science demands because our energy future must be clean, reliable and affordable.

Gov. Inslee, Washington State’s U.S. Senators Reject Idaho GOP Congressman’s Pitch on Lower Snake River Dam Removal (Seattle Times, WA – Paywall Advisory)

Washington state’s U.S. senators and its governor have joined forces against a proposal from U.S. Rep. Mike Simpson, R-Idaho, to remove four hydroelectric dams on the Lower Snake River and replace their benefits as part of a multitrillion dollar infrastructure bill being crafted by the Biden administration.

The proposal had gained the support of Oregon Gov. Kate Brown, U.S. Rep. Earl Blumenauer, D-Ore., as well as many tribes, after it was announced last winter.

But Republican members of Washington’s congressional delegation opposed Simpson’s plan before it was even officially released, and the state’s top Democratic elected officials were largely mum until Thursday.

“While we appreciate Rep. Simpson’s efforts and the conversations we have had so far with Tribes and stakeholders, it is clear more work within the Pacific Northwest is necessary to create a lasting, comprehensive solution, and we do not believe the Simpson proposal can be included in the proposed federal infrastructure package,” U.S. Sen. Patty Murray, D-Wash., and Gov. Jay Inslee said in a joint statement provided to The Seattle Times.

The two Democratic leaders added that regional collaboration on a comprehensive, long-term solution to protect and bring back salmon populations in the Columbia River Basin and throughout the Pacific Northwest is needed now more than ever.

But they urged a process to a solution that would honor tribal treaty rights, ensure reliable transportation and use of the river, ongoing access for anglers and sport fishers and the continued delivery of reliable hydropower.

“Washington state has a history of successfully bringing diverse groups together to develop solutions that benefit all stakeholders. This must be the model for the management of the Columbia River Basin,” the two continued in their statement.

U.S. Sen. Maria Cantwell also told The Seattle Times she does not support the Simpson proposal, though she does support salmon recovery not only in the Columbia Basin, but across the region, and collaborative processes to get there.

“This proposal has some things we should focus on; diversifying beyond hydro is a great idea, planning for new investment is a great idea, but the rest is not well thought out enough at this point,” Cantwell said of the Simpson proposal.

“Very, very valuable salmon recovery needs to happen and we shouldn’t miss the opportunity of this infrastructure bill to do that, and Puget Sound, being a powerhouse of salmon recovery opportunity, should be focused on. We should be clear that we are maximizing those opportunities.”

Money to help pay for removal and replacement of highway culverts that block salmon passage is just one such investment that could be made in the federal infrastructure package, Cantwell said.

Feds ramp up spill over dams to help salmon

The statements came as the region undertakes unprecedented steps to rescue Snake River Chinook salmon runs that are headed to extinction.

Federal agencies recently agreed to an operating plan for the dams that includes a broad suite of actions, including spilling large amounts of water over spillways at Columbia and Lower Snake River dams to help push young salmon now migrating to the sea downriver — and route them around, rather than through, powerhouses.

Unprecedented amounts of water are being spilled over Columbia and Lower Snake River dams to help baby salmon to the sea. This video shows 73 percent of the flow of the Columbia River crashing over the spillway at John Day Dam on May 11. (U.S. Army Corps of Engineers video by Christopher Gaylord)

The spill program was initiated on an experimental basis in 2019 and has so far shown promise. The Bonneville Power Administration, which markets power from the region’s federal hydropower dams, was able to end last year in the black even while spilling water over the dams for fish instead of generating power. And customers suffered no compromise in reliability even as the U.S. Corps of Engineers, which operates the dams, directed spill rates of nearly 90% of the river flow at some times.

The program is in place at four mainstem dams on the Columbia River and four on the Lower Snake. The system is run during the migration season to optimize spill 16 hours a day. The rest of the time, BPA picks the most profitable time of day to run water through power turbines.

Early results show that young fish have been able to reduce their travel time to the sea, and are not traumatized by the spill. But the real results won’t be known for years, when adults come back to spawn.

The most recent environmental assessment of dam operations for survival of fragile populations projects continued declines for Snake River salmon in poor years, such as will be more common under climate change.

Climate change is severely challenging salmon, cold water animals that can become diseased or even be killed outright in temperatures above 68 degrees if the

Warmer sea surface temperatures caused by climate change also are predicted in recent published scientific research to particularly stress Snake River spring and summer Chinook, endangering them with extinction and requiring an even more intense effort to support their survival in all life stages.

Snake River spring and summer Chinook are in dire shape, analysis by the Nez Perce Tribe shows. Many populations of Chinook already meet the threshold of quasi-extinction, meaning 50 or fewer adult spawners are making it back to their home streams, said Jay Hesse, director of biological services for the tribe.

Simpson’s big pitch

Into this logjam stepped Simpson last winter, with a proposal to breach the four Lower Snake River dams, digging out the earthen berms around them and leaving the dams in a mothballed status.

To replace the benefits of the dams he proposes creation of a $34 billion Columbia Basin Fund within the national infrastructure bill, from getting agricultural products to market, to reconfiguring irrigation infrastructure, buying replacement power and modernizing the electric grid to accommodate more and diverse sources of clean energy.

A dozen tribes across the Columbia Basin also issued statements last month in support of a legislative solution to the Columbia Basin salmon crisis.

Some of the tribes were enemies with one another long ago, and even today have very different interests. But they are united in their commitment to salmon recovery, noted Shannon Wheeler, vice chairman of the Nez Perce Tribe and a proponent of the Simpson proposal.

For tribes, salmon are a matter of cultural survival ensured as part of the bargain made in the treaties with the United States, Wheeler said. The Nez Perce reserved their rights to fish in all of their accustomed places in their treaty of 1855. “We ceded 13 million acres to protect a way of life,” Wheeler said.

The Affiliated Tribes of Northwest Indians also is going to consider a resolution in support of the Simpson proposal, said Leonard Forsman, chairman of the Suquamish Tribe and president of the ATNI.

Simpson said in an interview he has pivoted to a new strategy to provide the money for a Columbia Basin Fund in the national bill, but work out over the next year or two the writing of legislation to implement it.

He acknowledged the proposal is a politically difficult lift — and said he’s been censured by the Republican Party in his own state for his efforts.

But, Simpson said, he remains undeterred: “I think we were elected to solve problems.”

 

Oregon Lawmakers Vote to Give 'Energy Burdened' Households a Break on Utility Bills (Portland Business Journal, OR)

Oregon lawmakers have sent a bill to the governor that’s intended to help low-income Oregonians pay their energy bills.

The Energy Affordability Act, as supporters have dubbed it, allows regulators to consider lower electricity and natural gas rates or bill credits for “energy burdened” low-income households.

The Senate on Thursday voted 18-11 to pass the bill. All Democrats except Betsy Johnson supported it; all voting Republicans except Tim Knopp voted no. The House passed the bill, 36-20, in March.

The bill represents a change to longstanding policy that the Public Utility Commission treat all customers within a class — residential, commercial or industrial — the same as it establishes rates for the investor-owned utilities Portland General Electric, Pacific Power and NW Natural.

The utilities, various activists groups and the ratepayer advocate Citizens’ Utility Board all supported the bill.

Backers argued that state weatherization and bill assistance programs still left thousands of people facing a home energy affordability gap.

Six percent of household income is widely seen as the threshold for a manageable energy burden, with 10% considered “severely energy burdened.” As a percentage of low-income households, Eastern Oregon counties have the most energy burdened households in the state.

Smaller bills for low-income households could leave other ratepayers filling the revenue gap, but one study found such programs can result in higher collected revenue.

The Oregon legislation also opens up low-income and environmental-justice advocacy groups for “intervenor funds” from the PUC, totaling up to $500,000 annually. These are ratepayer-financed grants for nonprofits that represent broad groups or classes of customers.

That’s the aspect of the bill that generated the most disagreement.

Some Republicans pushed for a version of the bill that would have made representatives of small commercial customers also eligible for intervenor funds, while dropping representatives of “environmental justice communities.”

That version was defeated on a largely party-line 19-10 vote on Thursday.

 

For Clean Energy, Buy American or Buy It Quick and Cheap? (NY Times)

Patricia Fahy, a New York State legislator, celebrated when a new development project for the Port of Albany — the country’s first assembly plant dedicated to building offshore wind towers — was approved in January.

“I was doing cartwheels,” said Ms. Fahy, who represents the area. But she was soon caught in a political bind.

A powerful union informed her that most of the equipment for New York’s big investment in offshore windmills would not be built by American workers but would come from abroad. Yet when Ms. Fahy proposed legislation to press developers to use locally made parts, she met opposition from environmentalists and wind industry officials. “They were like, ‘Oh, God, don’t cause us any problems,’” she recalled.

Since President Biden’s election, Democrats have extolled the win-win allure of the transition from fossil fuels, saying it can help avert a climate crisis while putting millions to work. “For too long we’ve failed to use the most important word when it comes to meeting the climate crisis: jobs, jobs, jobs,” Mr. Biden told Congress last month.

On Tuesday, his administration gave final approval to the nation’s first large-scale offshore wind project, off Martha’s Vineyard in Massachusetts, again emphasizing the jobs potential.

But there is a tension between the goals of industrial workers and those of environmentalists — groups that Democrats count as politically crucial. The greater the emphasis on domestic manufacturing, the more expensive renewable energy will be, at least initially, and the longer it could take to meet renewable-energy targets.

That tension could become apparent as the White House fleshes out its climate agenda.

“It’s a classic trade-off,” said Anne Reynolds, who heads the Alliance for Clean Energy New York, a coalition of environmental and industry groups. “It would be better if we manufactured more solar panels in the U.S. But other countries invested public money for a decade. That’s why it’s cheaper to build them there.”

There is some data to support the contention that climate goals can create jobs. The consulting firm Wood Mackenzie expects tens of thousands of new jobs per year later this decade just in offshore wind, an industry that barely exists in the United States today.

And labor unions — even those whose members are most threatened by the shift to green energy, like mineworkers — increasingly accept this logic. In recent years, many unions have joined forces with supporters of renewable energy to create groups with names like the BlueGreen Alliance that press for ambitious jobs and climate legislation, in the vein of the $2.3 trillion proposal that Mr. Biden is calling the American Jobs Plan.

But much of the supply chain for renewable energy and other clean technologies is in fact abroad. Nearly 70 percent of the value of a typical solar panel assembled in the United States accrues to firms in China or Chinese firms operating across Southeast Asia, according to a recent report by the Center for Strategic and International Studies and BloombergNEF, an energy research group.

Batteries for electric vehicles, their most valuable component, follow a similar pattern, the report found. And there is virtually no domestic supply chain specifically for offshore wind, an industry that Mr. Biden hopes to see grow from roughly a half-dozen turbines in the water today to thousands over the next decade. That supply chain is largely in Europe.

Many proponents of a greener economy say that importing equipment is not a problem but a benefit — and that insisting on domestic production could raise the price of renewable energy and slow the transition from fossil fuels.

“It is valuable to have flexible global supply chains that let us move fast,” said Craig Cornelius, who once managed the Energy Department’s solar program and is now chief executive of Clearway Energy Group, which develops solar and wind projects.

Those emphasizing speed over sourcing argue that most of the jobs in renewable energy will be in the construction of solar and wind plants, not making equipment, because the manufacturing is increasingly automated.

But labor groups worry that construction and installation jobs will be low paying and temporary. They say only manufacturing has traditionally offered higher pay and benefits and can sustain a work force for years.

Partisans of manufacturing also point out that it often leads to jobs in new industries. Researchers have shown that the migration of consumer electronics to Asia in the 1960s and ’70s helped those countries become hubs for future technologies, like advanced batteries.

As a result, labor leaders are pressing the administration to attach strict conditions to the subsidies it provides for green equipment. “We’re going to be demanding that the domestic content on this stuff has to be really high,” said Thomas M. Conway, the president of the United Steelworkers union and a close Biden ally.

The experience of New York reveals how delicate these debates can be once specific jobs and projects are at stake.

Late last year, the Communications Workers of America began considering ways to revive employment at a General Electric factory that the union represents in Schenectady, N.Y., near Albany. The factory has shed thousands of employees in recent decades.

Around the same time, the state was close to approving bids for two major offshore wind projects. The eventual winner, a Norwegian developer, Equinor, promised to help bring a wind-tower assembly plant to New York and upgrade a port in Brooklyn.

“All of a sudden I focus on the fact that we’re talking about wind manufacturing,” said Bob Master, the communications workers official who contacted Ms. Fahy, the state legislator. “G.E. makes turbines — there could be a New York supply chain. Let’s give it a try.”

In early February, the union produced a draft of a bill that would ask developers like Equinor to buy their wind equipment from manufacturers in New York State “to the maximum extent feasible” — not just towers but other components, like blades and nacelles, which house the mechanical guts of a turbine. Ms. Fahy, a member of the Assembly, and State Senator Neil Breslin, a fellow Democrat from the Albany area, signed on as sponsors.

Environmentalists and industry officials quickly raised concerns that the measure could discourage developers from coming to the state.

“So far, Equinor has gone above and beyond what any other company has done,” said Lisa Dix, who led the Sierra Club’s campaign for renewable energy in New York until recently. “Why do we need more onerous requirements on companies given what we got?”

Ms. Dix and other clean-energy advocates had worked with labor unions to persuade the state that construction jobs in offshore wind should offer union-scale wages and representation. And New York’s system for evaluating clean-energy bids already awarded points to developers that promised local economic benefits.

Ms. Reynolds, the head of the environmental and industry coalition in New York, worried that going beyond the existing arrangement could make the cost of renewable energy unsustainable.

“If it became bigger and more noticeable on electric bills, the common expectation is that political support for New York’s clean-energy programs would erode,” she said.

The communications workers sought to offer reassurance, not entirely successfully. “I said to them, ‘We’re trade unionists: We ask for everything, the boss offers us nothing, and then we make a deal,’” Mr. Master said. “‘But I do think there’s no reason why turbines should be coming from France as opposed to Schenectady.’”

The final language, a compromise negotiated with the state’s building trades council and passed by the Legislature in April, allows the state to award additional points in the bidding process to developers that pledge to create manufacturing jobs in the state, a slight refinement of the current approach. (It also effectively requires that workers who build, operate or maintain wind and solar plants either receive union-scale wages or can benefit from union representation.)

While the law included a “buy American” provision for iron and steel, the state’s energy research and development agency, known as NYSERDA, can waive the requirement.

The agency’s chief executive, Doreen Harris, said she was generally pleased that the existing approach remained intact and predicted that the state would have blade and nacelle factories within a few years.

Some analysts agreed, arguing that most offshore wind equipment is so bulky — often hundreds of feet long — that it becomes impractical to ship across the Atlantic.

“There’s a point at which importation of all goods and services doesn’t make economic sense,” said Jeff Tingley, an expert on the offshore wind supply chain at the consulting firm Xodus.

But that has not always reflected the experience of the United Kingdom, which had installed more offshore wind turbines than any other country by the start of this year but had manufactured only a small portion of the equipment.

“Even with the U.K. being the biggest market, the logistics costs weren’t big enough to justify new factories,” said Alun Roberts, an expert on offshore wind with the British-based consulting firm BVG Associates.

A 2017 report indicated that the country manufactured well below 30 percent of its offshore wind equipment, and Mr. Roberts said the percentage had probably increased slightly since then. The country currently manufactures blades but no nacelles.

All of which leaves the Biden administration with a difficult choice: If it genuinely wants to shift manufacturing to the United States, doing so could require some aggressive prodding. A senior White House official said the administration was exploring ways of requiring that a portion of wind and solar equipment be American-made when federal money was involved.

But some current and former Democratic economic officials are skeptical of the idea, as are clean-energy advocates.

“I worry about local content requirements for offshore wind from the federal government right now,” said Kathleen Theoharides, the Massachusetts secretary of energy and environmental affairs. “I don’t think adding anything that could potentially raise the cost of clean energy to the ratepayer is necessarily the right strategy.”

Mr. Master said the recent legislation in New York was a victory given the difficulty of enacting stronger domestic content policies at the state level, but acknowledged that it fell short of his union’s goals. Both he and Ms. Fahy vowed to keep pressing to bring more offshore wind manufacturing jobs to New York.

“I could be the queen of lost causes, but we want to get some energy around this,” Ms. Fahy said. “We need this here. I’m not just saying New York. This is a national conversation.”

 

King County’s Culvert Hunters — And a $9 Billion Plan to Save Salmon Habitat (Seattle Times, WA – Paywall Advisory)

It doesn’t look like much, this ditch by the side of the road. But to King County’s culvert hunters, this isn’t a throwaway landscape.

Kat Krohn, an engineer and fish passage specialist for King County, chopped right into a fierce bramble of blackberries and got into the ditch as traffic roared by on a busy thoroughfare in Lake Forest Park. Here, Lyon Creek flows through Lake Forest Park before draining into the northwest corner of Lake Washington, crossing in culverts under roads and even private driveways all along the way.

That’s where Krohn and her teammates at King County come in. They are working in the field to compile an inventory of culverts on country roads, bridges and properties — the good, the bad, and the truly ugly in terms of whether a salmon can get through them to spawn or journey to the sea.

Urban creeks are the arteries and veins of the region carrying the lifeblood that animates the region’s ecology: salmon. Food for more than 123 species of animals — including endangered southern resident killer whales that frequent Puget Sound.

It’s no desk job, being a culvert hunter. These are the field medics looking for the blockages impairing the health of the region’s signature fish in their home waters.

As Krohn cut back the brambles, Ben Gregory, another engineer and fish passage specialist on the county’s culvert survey crew, bushwhacked into the muddy ditch and into thickets of roadside weeds.

It’s a landscape most would never notice — let alone think is important to salmon. Garbage cans lined the road where Krohn helped Gregory trace the ditch to a tiny, crushed culvert under a driveway, where it then crossed under the road to the other side.

The driveway culvert was way undersized for managing high flows, creating a fire hose that would slam back a salmon trying to get upstream. It also would probably flood, creating a risk for the roadway infrastructure.

On the other side of the road, where the culvert exited, they looked for more problems, a slope too steep for a salmon to manage, or an opening of the culvert perched too far above the stream bed for a salmon to leap into.

“It is helpful to think like a fish,” Gregory said, eyeing the pipe.

The team uploaded their field notes into handheld devices to feed their day’s reconnaissance into a growing inventory of blockages.

For this stream is typical in this largely developed watershed, thickening with houses and driveways and cars since at least the 1970s. The creek is routed through dozens of culverts crossing under the road in just a few miles — challenging the coho and steelhead traveling this creek to and from Lake Washington, on their way to Puget Sound.

Both the orcas and Puget Sound Chinook are threatened with extinction. To help them survive, the county is committed to spending $9 billion over the next decade on a Clean Water Healthy Habitat strategy, said Abby Hook, environmental affairs officer for King County’s Department of Natural Resources and Parks.

The goal, Hook said, is to guide investments to boost salmon populations and water quality, and conserve essential habitat for the good of orcas, salmon and future generations of county residents — even as the climate changes and county population grows.

The initiative also is intended to unify efforts across programs and jurisdictional boundaries to achieve watershed level results, from the Cascades to Puget Sound. The work includes everything from storm water and wastewater projects to road repairs and land conservation and ecological restoration. The cross-disciplinary approach is intended to align and deliver projects to achieve the most improvement the fastest.

That’s the big picture. Getting there is in the hands of people doing the day-to-day, on-the-ground work. This is combat biology, in environments mostly built to benefit and transport humans, not salmon.

“We are so unaware when we drive a road like this, we don’t realize fish are under the road, we don’t even know we are crossing a stream,” Krohn said. Everything matters in their streambed world: how wide the banks are, how deeply cut the channel, how steep the slope.

Her work has taught her to see landscapes differently. “I notice culverts everywhere I go now,” Krohn said.

Standing on the roadside amid the whizzing traffic, Gregory said the work can be daunting.

But then, there was the thrill last year of watching chum salmon barrel into Mary Olson Creek under Green River Road near Kent. County roads crews replaced a culvert carrying the creek that blocked most salmon from making it upstream. A deep, wide box culvert fixed the problem — and opened 2,000 feet of habitat for salmon and steelhead.

It was completed in August at a cost of $900,000, and the chum moved right in. Prime orca chow, spawning right there in South King County.

“They are powerful creatures,” Gregory said of salmon. “The opportunity is there for us to help them, and they are ready to take advantage. You will see coho in ditches you wouldn’t even think were an actual stream. There is hope in their resiliency.”

Evan Lewis left a long career at the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers to lead the fish passage team for the county, at King County’s Water and Land Resources Division. He wanted to make a difference for salmon, Lewis said, by working to help salmon travel as smoothly through the watershed as we do.

Since April 2019 the culvert hunters have identified 684 county culverts and other structures that are barriers to fish passage. That includes 376 total blockages, and 249 partial barriers.

A technical team with county, tribal and state representatives is collaborating to develop a final prioritization method to score and rank the barriers, based on their relative priority for potential benefit to salmon. The county has estimated that fixing less than half the total number of county barriers would deliver two-thirds of the total habitat presently blocked. That work would come first, the rest later.

Meanwhile, other work is underway to advance the Clean Water Healthy Habitat strategy all over the county — even in fast-growing places where many may have forgotten salmon are their neighbors.

The Bear Creek Basin near Redmond today is cut through with roadways thundering with traffic and burgeoning development. But that isn’t the whole story. King County, and the cities of Redmond, Sammamish and Woodinville, have been working in partnership to stitch together places for salmon to persist even here.

Laird O’Rollins, senior ecologist with King County, helped lead a recent tour of sites where the county is working to revive the creek with a combination of strategies. “Ideally you would start at the headwaters and work to the mouth,” O’Rollins said. “But this is urban combat biology: You do what you can, where you can.”

It works:

The wetlands at a restoration site at the Lower Bear Creek Natural Area were alive with songbirds. A heron cruised overhead, and a song sparrow belted it out like a diva.

Work is underway here to grow trees including cottonwood and willow along the creek to shade the water and cool temperatures, and increase the amount of downed wood in the stream. That creates more of the pools and meanders and side channels baby salmon need to rest, feed and grow big.

A beaver dam attested to the help from nature’s primo wetland engineer, noted Jen Vanderhoof, a senior ecologist at King County working to support the coexistence of beavers in the watershed.

Beavers can help boost biodiversity in a creek like this, Vanderhoof said, which is challenged by the effects of development, including both elevated temperature and pollutants.

The dams beavers build create pools that benefit baby salmon, and grow the insects and invertebrates that feed everything from fish to birds. Pools created by their beaver busyness also help recharge the hyporheic zone of the creek — where the water flows unseen, underground — maintaining flow and cooling temperature.

“Let the rodents do the work,” Vanderhoof said.

Not a wisecrack, but an insight, to not just treat symptoms, but instead restore natural processes that create healthier habitat and cleaner water in this creek. It is an important county stronghold for wildlife, home to not only coho, sockeye and Chinook, but freshwater mussels and sponges, river otters, crayfish and a teeming community of aquatic insects that stoke a web of life.

Nearby, just steps from busy Avondale Road, Bear Creek wound through cedars, alder and fir, shading clear waters. This natural area, long stewarded by the Hussey family, was recently purchased for preservation.

King County acquired the 7.6-acre property for $740,000, using a county parks levy approved by voters in 2019 and the Conservation Futures program, funded with a county property-tax levy. The purchase was made as part of the county’s Land Conservation Initiative, created to conserve 65,000 acres of the last remaining, most at-risk open spaces within a single generation before those opportunities are lost.

Indeed, imbued in all of these projects is a sense of urgency in a fast-changing place.

“We have to rectify some of the damage done by remaking of natural systems in our county, to restore natural fish runs for people with treaty rights and also for the fish themselves; they have a right to exist,” said King County Executive Dow Constantine.

Constantine grew up here, when the county was alive with orcas and salmon now threatened with extinction.

“It feels like a mission to bring back these fish.”

WA State Governor Inslee Signs Broadband Authority Bills - One Partial Veto (Office of Governor Jay Inslee, Washington State)

(OLYMPIA, WA) - - On May 13, WA State Governor Jay Inslee signed two bills expanding broadband authority for Public Utility Districts, Public Ports, and municipalities.

Inslee issued a partial veto to HB 1336 regarding funding to communities that are not in compliance with the Growth Management Act. The bill as adopted by the legislature is here.

Inslee signed SB 5383 as passed by the State Legislature.

Guest Opinion: U.S. Rep. Mike Simpson’s Snake River Dam Plan Is No Solution (Spokesman-Review, Spokane, WA)

When the four dams on the lower Snake River were constructed more than 50 years ago, few could foresee the extent of the harm they would cause – not only to Snake River salmon but to orcas and so many other species throughout the vast Columbia River Basin.

Now the fate of the Southern Resident orcas in the Salish Sea is tied to the fate of these dams. Every species of Snake River salmon is teetering at the brink of extinction, including the chinook salmon the orcas depend upon for survival.

The science is clear: Removing the Snake River dams is one of the most important recovery actions needed to save salmon and Southern Resident orcas. For decades environmental organizations have gone to court, using the Endangered Species Act and Clean Water Act, to keep these iconic species of the Pacific Northwest from going extinct, hoping to secure a better and more permanent solution.

A few months ago Idaho Rep. Mike Simpson, R-Idaho, proposed a plan to breach these four dams. In doing so he became the first member of Congress to offer a solution for the Snake River.

Unfortunately, his proposal is a Trojan horse. It would sacrifice clean water, human health, environmental justice and the fate of other endangered species across the Columbia River Basin in a cynical trade to breach these four dams.

Under his proposal, Simpson would exempt all agriculture from every requirement under the Endangered Species Act and Clean Water Act for 25 years. It would give a blanket extension to every other dam in the Basin for 35 years – effectively ending any real environmental accountability for the operations of those dams. And it would funnel $35 billion mainly to special interests in the region, rather than the tribes and other affected communities that should be prioritized.

Simpson has made no effort to hide his goal to bolster big agribusiness by gutting environmental laws and abolishing judicial review. He did it when he delisted wolves in Idaho and Montana, and he wants to do it again now. But his dam-removal proposal is far more egregious. If approved, imperiled species across the region would lose critical protections under the Endangered Species Act. Agribusiness will get a huge influx of taxpayer dollars to increase activities that pollute our waters. At the same time, communities across the Columbia River Basin would lose the protection of bedrock environmental laws and would have no recourse when their water is polluted.

Two months after it was first proposed, Simpson’s proposal remains the only one on the table. Decision-makers in Washington and Oregon have said little publicly on the matter, but behind closed doors, it’s a different story.

The four lower Snake River dams have got to go. And we finally have a federal administration committed to modernizing our nation’s infrastructure. We must invest in the communities that will be harmed by the removal of the dams. But we don’t have to trade clean water and vibrant wildlife populations throughout the Columbia River Basin in order for the dams to come down. Shortsightedness got us into this mess, and it won’t get us out.

Simpson has capitalized on the political vacuum in Washington and Oregon and offered the region its most anti-environmental trade in modern history. The belief that there is no other way is a failure of imagination and leadership.

It is time for Sens. Maria Cantwell and Patty Murray, as well as Oregon Sens. Jeff Merkley and Ron Wyden, to step up and chart a better path forward. Simpson’s plan can’t be the only one up for consideration and debate. We need a solution that promotes environmental justice, fully supports the Tribes and preserves our core environmental laws for future generations.

Quinn Read is Oregon policy director at the Center for Biological Diversity; Sophia Ressler is the Washington wildlife attorney at the Center.

 

Small Modular Reactors: NuScale Eyes New Equity Partners After Raising $40 Million (Portland Business Journal, OR)

NuScale Power is looking for more investors, a month after announcing a $40 million equity buy-in from a Japanese contractor with a background in nuclear projects.

The Oregon company, founded in 2007, is working to deploy its first small modular reactor (SMR) power plant in Idaho before the end of the decade in a deal with a consortium of Western states municipal utilities.

NuScale said it retained Guggenheim Securities “to explore financing options to accelerate the commercialization” of its SMR technology, which the company is also pitching around the world.

The search for new investors is part of a strategy by Fluor Corp. (NYSE: FLR), NuScale’s controlling partner, to reduce its equity stake in the company.

The recent $40 million investment came from JGC HD, a Japanese engineering, procurement and construction group.

Fluor’s chief executive, David Constable, said last week the company is looking to “unlock more value from NuScale for Fluor's shareholders.”

He suggested interest was high.

“It's very exciting times and not just in the U.S., but internationally,” he told analysts. “Canada, obviously, is a nuclear country as is Japan and many others that we're getting a lot of incoming interest. ... So we've got renewed interest from existing investors that we've got and new investors post the JGC announcement.”

NuScale expenses, net of contributions from the U.S. Department of Energy, have averaged $63 million per year for Fluor over the past three years, according to its recent annual report.

NuScale’s SMR last August became the first of its type to receive a final safety evaluation report from the Nuclear Regulatory Commission, although an advisory committee highlighted issues that will have to be resolved when a prospective owner applies to build and operate a plant.

The prospective first owner is Utah Associated Municipal Power Systems. A few of its members have gotten cold feet due to costs concerns, but NuScale has moved to de-risk the project and make it less expensive.

Agreements announced in January took the parties a step closer to an order of NuScale power modules in 2022, and a combined license application to the Nuclear Regulatory Commission in 2023.

The U.S. Department of Energy last year approved a $1.4 billion cost-share award for the UAMPS project, subject to future appropriation by Congress. The American Jobs Plan that President Joe Biden is pitching includes support for advanced nuclear power.

 

Oregon House Votes to Boost Electric Vehicle Rebates, Deepen Utility Investment (Portland Business Journal, OR)

Oregon lawmakers took another step on Thursday toward doing something to increase electric vehicle adoption that has fallen short of goals. But how their efforts will shake out in the end remained fuzzy.

The latest action in the Legislature was in the House, which passed a bill that strengthens the state’s EV rebate program and the ability of investor-owned electric utilities to spend ratepayer money on charging infrastructure.

House Bill 2165 now moves to the Senate, which in March passed a bill with similar utility investment provisions.

Oregon fell 16,000 EVs short of a Gov. Kate Brown's goal to have 50,000 registered in the state by the end of 2020. Both bills are intended to take on the issue.

But there are key differences.

Senate Bill 314 doesn’t have the rebate provisions, and it would allow natural gas utilities to rate-base investments that support vehicles that run on renewable natural gas or hydrogen. Many climate activists object to that.

Sen. Lee Beyer, sponsor of the Senate bill, told a House committee looking at the bill this week that he hopes to see both bills adopted and their differing provisions reconciled.

The Senate passed its bill by a bipartisan 25-2 count in March.

No Republicans backed HB 2165 on Thursday as it passed 35-22 in the House. Two points of criticism were that the legislation would increase electricity bills and could give the utilities an unfair advantage in the charging station market.

The utilities are already doing some rate-based investments, but the bill would make it more automatic, requiring Portland General Electric and PacifiCorp to assess a charge of 0.25% on customer bills to raise funds for transportation electrification investments.

Oregon CUB, the state's official ratepayer advocate, endorsed the bill. Even at higher levels, CUB said, the investments would pay off for ratepayers by increasing electricity sales that support a distribution system that everyone pays for.

On the rebate side, HB 2165 removes a 2027 sunset on the state’s rebate program, and keeps $12 million flowing annually into the program from a 0.5% tax on new-vehicle sales in the state. It also increases the value of the add-on Charge Ahead rebate, available to low- and middle-income earners, from $2,500 to $5,000, meaning those residents could get rebates worth up to $7,500.

 

Facebook's 100% Renewables Goal Is Safe, For Now, Under Oregon PUC Decision (Portland Business Journal, OR)

Facebook can rest easy about meeting its 100% renewable energy goal in Oregon this year.

State utility regulators have made that possible by providing additional space in a PacifiCorp program that allows the electric utility's big customers to pay a premium to link their service to specific renewable energy projects.

Facebook has relied on that program, called Schedule 272, to claim its massive — and growing— Prineville data center complex is backed with 100% renewables.

The claim was jeopardized when the Public Utility Commission capped Schedule 272 pending an investigation, citing concerns the program might pose risks for other PacifiCorp customers.

But the PUC was also leery of abruptly derailing a pathway to renewable energy for green-conscious corporations.

So on Tuesday, commissioners unanimously accepted a staff proposal that excludes a new 240-megawatt PacifiCorp wind farm in Montana from under the cap. Facebook said it expects that exclusion to provide it room to get enough Schedule 272 renewable energy to meet its needs in 2021.

In recommending the exclusion, PUC staff said they were "sympathetic to customers that require options to meet their sustainability goals given the dearth of other options in PacifiCorp’s portfolio."

It was the Montana wind farm, called Pryor Mountain, that prompted the commission's focus on Schedule 272.

Previously, PacifiCorp had done power purchase agreements with independently owned power plants to supply renewable energy credits to Facebook. But with Pryor Mountain, PacifiCorp acquired the project outside normal competitive bidding rules specifically to serve Facebook’s needs.

The PUC found the wind farm to be a prudent investment by the utility, and allowed it into rates. But the commission remained concerned that the project, essentially undertaken for Facebook's benefit, hadn't gone through the normal planning and analysis process.

"There is a risk that (PacifiCorp ratepayers) will not ultimately realize economic benefits over the long term," the commission wrote in March, when it ordered an investigation into Schedule 272. "If market prices are lower, the wind project underperforms, or lower cost zero-carbon resources are available when there is a demonstrated need for the capacity, (PacifiCorp ratepayers) bear the risk of higher costs."

In its decision this week, the commission barred PacifiCorp from acquiring new resources to meet Schedule 272 needs. And with any new power contracts under Schedule 272, the utility will have to provide additional information including "analysis supporting the cost and benefits of the resources to all customers."

No timetable has been set for the Schedule 272 investigation.

 

In Our View: Dam Proposal Provides Framework for Debate (Vancouver Columbian, WA)

A proposal from Rep. Mike Simpson, R-Idaho, regarding the future of four dams along the Lower Snake River needs robust debate and thoughtful consideration. It does not need churlish infighting designed to distract from the issues.

Rep. Jaime Herrera Beutler, R-Battle Ground, is wise not to be drawn into the internecine squabble that has erupted. Herrera Beutler has been vocal in her opposition to the plan and articulate in her reasoning why the dams should remain; she need not distract from those topics, as some of her colleagues have done.

The other three Republican representatives from the Pacific Northwest — Washington’s Cathy McMorris Rodgers and Dan Newhouse, and Oregon’s Cliff Bentz — last week publicized a letter they sent to Simpson criticizing his “secret” discussions with Oregon Gov. Kate Brown.

Simpson posted a response that included, “How is that secret? My staff has had discussions with nearly every governor, member of Congress, and U.S. senator in the Columbia Basin on this proposal.”

Simpson has worked on the proposal for three years, conducting some 300 meetings. “I expected pushback when this all started,” he said. “What I did not expect was colleagues with whom I have worked for a number of years on a number of issues to question my integrity, to insinuate I have lied about my motivation and in fact have nefarious intentions — to — what? Sabotage the economy of my own state?”

Concerns about unsavory intentions should be dismissed so Congress can get to the business of considering the proposal. Because there is much to discuss.

The plan, dubbed the “Columbia Basin Initiative,” would breach four dams along the river — partly out of a desire to improve salmon recovery throughout the region. Most of the proposed $33.5 billion cost would go to replacing the electricity the dams generate and the barging capacity they provide, along with irrigation that is necessary for the agriculture industry.

Herrera Beutler has opposed the proposal, signing on to a statement that says, “The clean, renewable power generated by the dams along the Columbia and Snake rivers supplies half of the Pacific Northwest’s energy and is critical for a reliable power grid.”

That is a reasonable position that deserves consideration. So does Simpson’s complex proposal.

Any potential plan must include protections for fish and tribal interests, clean-energy solutions, flood control and farm-to-market provisions for farmers without soaking taxpayers, and Simpson has boldly attempted to strike that balance.

Environmental groups quickly decried the proposal, partly out of concern that it calls for a 35-year moratorium on lawsuits related to the dams. The plan also would suspend some environmental regulations for other dams throughout the Columbia Basin. But those same conservation groups long have called for dam removal, saying it is essential for the survival of the region’s salmon — and, by extension, orcas. That provides hope that some middle ground can be found.

Any proposal that has some aspects supported by all stakeholders and other aspects those stakeholders oppose is a good starting point. It should generate debate rather than claims of villainous wrongdoing. But such is the current state of politics, where accusations take the place of discussions and proposals infrequently are considered on their actual merits.

Diminishing salmon runs dictate that thoughtful action be taken. Simpson’s proposal provides a framework for that thinking to begin.