2017 In Retrospect: It’s Time to Celebrate!

One of the most exciting things about closing out one year and heading into another is the opportunity to celebrate success while also planning for how to succeed in the next year.

Success of course has many definitions, however at CUB we consider ourselves successful when we have all the pieces in place to influence policy, regulation, legislation, and advocacy that protects and empowers Oregon’s residential utility consumers.  We are happy to be able to report that 2017 has been a year of success.

In January, CUB and the CUB Policy Center merged into ONE 501(c)3 nonprofit known as Oregon Citizens’ Utility Board (CUB). As our ED, Bob Jenks put it in our blog, this change benefits CUB by “streamlining business practices, increase our opportunity for fundraising, and give us a hand up in staff retention by allowing staff to take advantage of student loan-forgiveness programs available only to (c)3 nonprofit employees.” In addition, we took advantage of these pivotal changes to update our branding and overhaul or website. As we come to the end of our first year as a “new” CUB we can say unequivocally that it has been a great change!

This winter CUB was pleased to announce the successful agreement among stakeholders on “Moratorium for Shutoff” rules, in which we played a key role. The following rules were agreed to and put into regulation:

• Moratorium takes effect when the daily high temperature is forecast below freezing;
• Moratorium takes effect during a NWS Heat Advisory declaration;
• Once declared, the moratorium stays in effect for at least 24 hours;
• A utility can elect, instead, to create/offer an opt-in/voluntary “winter protection plan” in all or part of its service territory.

For an explanation of these rules see “Oregon Gets Long Overdue Severe Weather Shutoff Rules”.

CUB’s most significant win in the legislature this spring was passage of SB 978 which requires the Public Utility Commission (PUC) to investigate how industry trends, new technologies, and other policy drivers affect the existing utility regulatory system and incentive structure. A report back to the PUC by the end of 2018 is also required. We believe this is important because the utilities and other energy providers must begin to take into account the opportunities made available by 21st century technology, and our regulations may need to incentivize things differently. For more information, see CUB’s Fall 2017 newsletter, page 3, “2017 Legislative Wrap-up and Next Steps”.

Saving you money is what we do best and this summer we successfully argued against Avista’s rate increase request, resulting in customer savings of about $5.3 million.

Also this summer, CUB was encouraged by the Public Utility Commission’s decision not to acknowledge PGE’s investment in gas plants and disallow new renewables development in the Columbia Gorge, which largely follows CUB’s recommendation. The commission did invite PGE to come back with a different proposal for renewable acquisition, stressing that their current proposal was too risky for customers. In addition, several months ago CUB called for PGE to pursue contracts from existing hydro facilities instead of trying to build new gas plants. It is good to see PGE embrace that strategy and to hear that it is likely to be successful.

After years of bugging PacifiCorp (PAC) to seriously analyze phasing out coal plants rather than spending billions of dollars to retrofit, they finally figured it out. In late January of this year, PAC presented analysis of the least cost/least risk way to comply with Regional Haze pollution standards on 14 coal units that were facing retrofits. Their analysis found that phasing out the plants rather than retrofitting would save their customers $1 billion. Almost a full year later, in the fall PAC brought some proposals for renewals to the table that may work.

In the fall our big success is always our Annual Policy Conference. Attended by about 235 utility leaders and stakeholders, this year our conference, Utility Regulation 2.0: Empowering What’s Possible wrestled with the role of regulation in light of quickly evolving technology, and changing customer expectations. We welcomed CEOs from Oregon Utilities as well as many thought leaders impacting national, regional, and state energy policy. To check out our speakers and sponsors, visit oregoncub.org/cubcon17.

We’ve had so many more wins than we are able to tell you about here, and we invite you to check out the Accomplishments page on our website to read about more of them. If you have more time, check out our blog feed and our newsletter archives.

Again, we at CUB are grateful for your support and your interest. We wish you and yours the very best in 2018 and hope you will check back with us periodically to see what good things we are doing in the new year.

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