11th Annual CUB Policy Conference Draws Diverse Audience to Discuss Reliability & Resilience

The 2021 CUB Energy Policy Conference, Changing Climates: Reliability and Resilience in our Energy Systems, took place in a virtual format on Friday, October 15. Those in the audience represented a wide range of stakeholders in the energy policy space, including both investor-owned and publicly-owned utilities, regulators, law firms, environmental justice organizations and advocates, journalists, consultancies, clean energy associations, and more.

The program kicked off with a presentation from CUB Executive Director Bob Jenks that gave a snapshot of the conditions in the Pacific Northwest that inspired this year’s conference theme: increasingly extreme weather events and unpredictable seasonal trends, an uncertain and risky future for natural gas, the persistence of our annual greenhouse gas emissions despite more ambitious climate regulation, major challenges in decarbonizing transportation, and the need to keep energy reliable and maintain grid resilience while grappling with all these challenges, without compromising affordability for customers. Successfully keeping all these proverbial balls in the air is no easy feat, and Bob’s presentation ended on a less than hopeful note. But he pointed out that hope can be found in exactly the kinds of policy discussions that were planned in the rest of the day’s agenda.

Bob then facilitated a discussion with five executives of Pacific NW utilities in the day’s first panel, The View From the Top. Larry Bekkedahl from Portland General Electric, Stefan Bird representing Pacific Power, Kevin Christie on behalf of Avista, John Hairston from Bonneville Power Administration, and Kim Heiting from NW Natural each offered broad pictures of what their companies are doing to meet these challenges. The panelists touched on the challenges of resource planning in the face of more extreme weather, especially in the eastern and southern parts of Oregon, and the many factors in play in determining future roles for natural gas and maximizing return on the gas system. They discussed how they are working to build cross-agency collaboration and communicate with vulnerable customers, and the need to think and plan more ambitiously on a regional level to effectively integrate more variable and renewable resources. John Hairston spoke to his experience and frustrations as a CEO of color in a still mostly white field of utility executives. And in response to an audience question, Larry Bekkedahl and Kevin Christie spoke about what their utilities are working on in the realm of differentiated/income-based ratemaking.

The first breakout session of the day featured a panel on the future of heating in the face of climate change and a panel on resilience. The heating panel, moderated by CUB General Counsel Mike Goetz, discussed the climate and policy imperatives to decarbonize heating in buildings and how best to achieve that without increasing the already disproportionate energy burden on low-income customers. Debra Gore-Mann from The Greenlining Institute pointed to lessons Oregon can learn from California in this arena, in terms of centering those most harmed by inequities, pollution, and severe weather in decision-making. And Sherrie Villmark of Community Energy Project laid out that equitable access is core to the project of decarbonization and sharing the benefits of renewable resources and efficiency. Major barriers include cost, control of the property (landlords have little incentive to make heating upgrades on behalf of their renters), and family legacies of the home maintenance skillsets that come with generations of property ownership but are not so accessible to those with long histories of renting. The panelists discussed the need to incentivize high quality wifi in all homes so that low-income renters can access the benefits of smart appliances and thermostats. And they talked about the need to convene advisory groups and other steps to make planning processes more inclusive.

The other panel in this session, Resilience: Who is it Good For?, was moderated by CUB Economist Sudeshna Pal. As the title implied, a core focus of this panel was who actually benefits from resilience projects and whether resources are being allocated effectively to meet community needs. Oregon Public Utility Commissioner Letha Tawney pointed out the need to unpack resilience and move beyond its buzzword status by examining the scale of focus, metrics of success, how to prioritize the most vulnerable populations, and the need to improve modeling on “low probability, high consequence” events. Alessandra de la Torre of Rogue Climate brought these issues down to earth in describing her experience of the chaos following the 2020 Almeida complex fire and the summer 2021 heat waves, and damage to communities that is still ongoing. She pointed out that involving environmental justice groups in planning is essential to understanding what investments are needed, both to alleviate vulnerabilities and harms in the short-term, and to build long-term community wealth.

Our lunchtime keynote session was led by the Oregon PUC’s Director of Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion, Ezell Watson. Mr. Watson painted a vivid metaphor of incorporating equity into the energy space as a process of learning a new dance. As he developed this metaphor, he led the audience in a dance lesson that was equal parts fun, rousing, and challenging. Diversity and inclusion were represented by getting asked to the dance, while equity equaled how much space one gets on the dance floor and belonging was who gets to choose the music. He presented Oregon’s historic list of “DJs”, i.e. public utility commissioners, and discussed the history of exclusionary zoning laws and discriminatory allocation of property rights that created legacies of unequal access to affordable, clean energy and unequal consequences of environmental pollution. He laid out a series of dance steps and their relationship to making and measuring progress, listening to stakeholders, and holding multiple perspectives in decision-making. Mr. Watson concluded by describing PUC proceedings on investigating the impacts of COVID-19 and electrifying transportation as examples of how folks can get involved in “the equity dance,” and finally a question: “What will it take for you to join me on the dance floor?”

The second and final breakout session of the conference featured a panel on Oregon’s recently passed 100% clean electricity law, HB 2021. 100% Clean Electricity: What Does It Take?, moderated by CUB Advocacy Manager Sam Pastrick, examined whether Oregon’s new law “meets the moment” and what comes next. Nikita Daryanani from Coalition of Communities of Color discussed the bill in the context of the larger Clean Energy Communities campaign, a historically comprehensive policy development effort by the Oregon Just Transition Alliance, a large and diverse coalition of environmental justice groups. The campaign was driven by the principle “no decisions about us, without us” and the panelists largely attributed HB 2021’s success to the grassroots focus of the campaign. They also explored deeper issues of racism, colonialism, labor rights, and the need to build community wealth and a just recovery from COVID-19 and recent wildfires, all of which underpinned the development of HB 2021.

The session’s other panel, Meeting Oregon’s Energy Demand, examined lessons Oregon can learn from the capacity shortfalls in California that occurred in August 2020, along with other recent extreme weather events, impacts they had on the grid, and implications for future resource and transmission planning. The panelists discussed the Western Resource Adequacy Program, hosted by the NW Power Pool, which is in its final stages of pre-launch development. The program will allow participating utilities to share resources during “tight grid operating conditions.” Panelists pointed out that the program will allow parties to transact with more ease and transparency and serve as a foundation for future market developments in the West. Crucially, the program also establishes a unified load forecasting standard which all participants must commit to, though the program’s initial phase is nonbinding. Dr. Ahmad Faruqui of The Brattle Group provocatively pointed out that the industry had known for years about the risks that led to California’s rolling outages, but the state was caught flat-footed anyway. Many Californians were left “wondering whether the green revolution is worth it” - the lesson in this is that utilities must reflect on why it took so long to develop this new program and be transparent with their customers as regional planning efforts continue.

Bob Jenks closed out the day with a message of renewed hope. He reflected on the equity and community emphasis that was woven through the fabric of the conference as a whole, saying that the day’s conversations had done much to rebuild his own sense of optimism.

CUB is deeply grateful to all our panelists, to Ezell Watson for his powerful keynote address, and to our board chair Christy Anderson Brekken who served as master of ceremonies. Thanks also to our generous sponsors for making this event possible, particularly Polar Bear sponsors NW Natural, Pacific Power, and Portland General Electric, Brown Bear sponsors 3Degrees, Avista, Idaho Power, and NW Power & Conservation Council; Media sponsor Clearing Up; and Technology sponsor Oregon Department of Energy.

Thanks, last but certainly not least, to everyone who attended the 11th annual CUB conference. To keep up on plans for our 2022 conference, subscribe to our email list (click “Policy Conference” in the sign-up form) and follow us at the social media links below.

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