Citizens' Utility Board of Oregon

About two years ago, CUB reported on the results of the 2007 Oregon legislative session which passed the landmark Renewable Energy Standard and increased incentives for building renewable energy generating resources.

However, as the 2009 legislative session winds down, it is looks like the legislature may back away from its commitment to renewable energy. Rather than pass legislation that makes additional progress towards development of clean energy, the 2009 legislature could be poised to weaken the requirements that Oregon has already put in place.

The Oregon's Renewable Energy Standard is seen as a model nationally because we didn't credit ourselves too much for existing resources (i.e. large-scale hydropower and old biomass) and made sure that the standard we set would result in real kilowatts from new renewable generation resources. The goal has always been to push development of new renewable resources, not to pat ourselves on the back for resources that were developed in the past.

Several bills propose to take us off that course we plotted two years ago. Here's how:

May Goes Out Like a Bear

In the last week of May, CUB won a couple of important victories that should save customers of PGE and NW Natural tens of millions of dollars. Both of these came in dockets that dealt with incentives for utilities and demonstrate how pretty obscure technical issues can shift millions of dollars in costs to customers.

We know the current recession has harmed customers. Many customers have lost their jobs. Many have seen their retirement savings reduced. Many are struggling just to pay their bills. Under these circumstances, every dollar that stays a consumer's wallet makes a real difference.

Consumers to Bail Out PGE

Executive Compensation and Corporate Bailouts have been in the national news recently, but they are also a local issue. Many folks may have seen Steve Duin's column in the Oregonian concerning recent controversy over PGE's Executive Compensation. What many readers may not be aware of is that PGE hopes to be bailed out for its lost profits during the current recession. And this bail out is going to come from ratepayers, in the form of a surcharge on our electric bills, not the government.

Like nearly all businesses in the country, PGE is seeing its retail sales fall. Unlike nearly all other businesses, however, PGE may get to make up its lost profits during this recession by tacking them onto our future electric bills. But that is not all - because of the design of the bail out, PGE will actually get to recover more than its lost profits.

This means that when a small business lays off an employee, PGE sees its profits increase. A house that is vacant and on the market for months also increases PGE's profits.

These are the results of a little-noticed PUC decision in January that granted PGE a decoupling mechanism. The theory behind decoupling is to "decouple" the link between a utility's profits and the volume of electricity the utility sells. According to the theory, by eliminating this link, utilities should be more interested in investing in energy efficiency. Because energy efficiency is a cheaper resource than investing in new power plants and reduces electric bills, decoupling should lead to lower costs for customers.

Energy Efficiency for All

What are public purpose funds? There's a lot of confusion about what those funds are, what they are not and where they come from. Much of the debate over the years - and raised again recently it seems - is that these funds are "public" or "taxpayer" funds. They are not; they are ratepayer funds and, in some form or another, have always been a part of rates.

It has long been Oregon's policy to require utilities to make investments in energy efficiency. What changed in 1999, when the legislature passed SB 1149, is that the legislature gave some specificity to the policy. The law changed so that there was at least three percent of utility revenues to be dedicated to energy efficiency (and some renewable energy development as well).

So, rather than having energy efficiency investments wrapped into rates and fluctuate wildly up and down as happened throughout the 1990s, the law required that the cost of those investments be pulled out and listed "above the line" so that consumers could see exactly how much was being dedicated to energy efficiency.

CUB Mourns the Loss of Our Voice

Shannon Floyd, CUB's Business and Special Projects manager passed away this past week. Among her work at CUB, Shannon was the founder of this on-line newsletter (our blog) and has been the writer behind it since its inception.

When Shannon first approached me and proposed that CUB start a weekly blog as a communications tool, I was skeptical. It seemed like a great deal of work for a product that few people would notice.

I was wrong. Shannon was right. From Day One we have gotten a great deal of positive feedback on the blog. People have repeatedly told me how amazed they have been at the ability of CUB to take wonkish energy issues and explain them in understandable terms. What folks did not know was that this was due to a single person here: Shannon. Not only did she take our wonkish policy issues and explain them to people, she did so in a personal manner with a sense of humor. She provided a voice for CUB's blog. And we have gotten more positive feedback about that voice than anything we have created in the last 15 years.

We will continue the blog, but I worry that without Shannon's voice, it will not be the same. CUB will continue to do important policy work, but our ability to communicate it in an appealing way has been diminished. If we get too wonkish, or too boring, please have patience. What she did was not easy.

Shannon was an amazing woman. She was more than our Business Manager. She was our friend. She was 39, a great mother and a
trained opera singer (this was a surprise to many of us...listen to a sample of her work at the links in the right-hand column. She had a truly beautiful voice.) It was about a year ago that she found out she had breast cancer and less than 2 months since she found out the cancer had spread. She was well-loved here at CUB and over the last few weeks, as friends have come out of the woodwork to offer her support, we have found that she was well-loved by many, many people.

At CUB she had a central role. I was dependent on her for everything from payroll and bookkeeping to editing my writing. And
she was the best editor I ever found. She would pull out her red pen and mark up the document. And she would mark it up a lot. I mean a lot. But when she was done, there would be no grammatical errors left, and the wording would be changed and improved in ways that made it much more interesting. People will find that I am much less articulate now that I do not have Shannon.

Some of my fondest memories are sitting around the conference table in our office eating lunch. At those times we talked about raising children, food, literature, music, politics, traveling and countless other subjects. We watched clips of the Daily Show and laughed. For most of her time at CUB, Shannon was the only one who could reset the time on our clock without standing on a chair. She was a tall woman in a largely height-challenged office.

Shannon was also a very good friend of my wife, Jill. They met regularly for lunch, sang karaoke, went to movies and every year
they got together to watch the Academy Awards. Her 6 year-old daughter Hana is a friend of my 7 year-old daughter Macy. This
is a personal loss and a loss for my entire family.

Shannon was one of the nicest people I have known. Everyone who met Shannon liked her. Even at the most stressful times, Shannon was calm and caring. Jason Eisdorfer, our former staff attorney went to visit her on Monday, a few hours before she passed away. She was very concerned that Jason makes sure that he is helping and giving support to our new staff attorney, Catriona McCracken. That was Shannon. Even at that point, she was worrying about others and trying to organize support for someone else.

This is a hard time for many of us. Shannon was too young, too nice and too important to us for this to have happened. Her daughter had an amazing mother and deserved to grow up with Shannon in her life. But life is not fair. We all know that intellectually and today we feel that in our gut.

But we will remember her. Every time we send out a blog, we will remember her as the founder of the blog. Every time I write testimony, I will remember her ability to transform my writing. Every year when the Academy Awards are on, we will remember how she loved the movies and loved the spectacle that is the Academy Awards. Every Fall and Spring when we have to reset our clocks we will remember her doing so without standing on a chair. And every time we invite her daughter over for a play date we will be reminded of how much they look alike.

Ultimately, we will remember Shannon, not for the loss we feel today, but for the love that she gave us.