Clean Energy Communities / Reliable Systems: That’s a Wrap!

The 9th annual CUB Policy Conference took place on November 8, 2019, and was CUB’s most successful event yet. Focusing on the theme Clean Energy Communities / Reliable Systems, this conference gathered representatives of northwest utilities, the Oregon Public Utility Commission, advocates, and stakeholders from across the utility sector to discuss emerging issues, challenges, and opportunities.

The conference began with a brief welcome from US Representative Earl Blumenauer, who spoke to the political significance and timeliness of the day’s theme. CUB Executive Director Bob Jenks then made a presentation to kick off the day. Bob described the demands on utilities, regulators, and stakeholders related to decarbonization, reliability, and customer and community choices, and the tensions between these distinct mandates. He urged conference attendees to focus on these tensions, because these are where we find the problems that we need to solve.

The first panel of the day convened Pacific NW utility executives to provide insight into how their organizations are coping with those same tensions introduced in Bob’s opening address. Panelists included Larry Bekkedahl - Portland General Electric, Stefan Bird - Pacific Power, Kim Heiting - NW Natural, Elliot Mainzer - Bonneville Power Administration, and Dennis Vermillion - Avista. The group discussed issues related to reliability of the region’s grid, the interaction between natural gas and electricity as it pertains to both decarbonization and reliability, the challenges of meeting state and local communities’ climate goals and policies, and how to manage these in a region where hydro production can vary widely.

Panelists in the day’s first breakout panel, Wholesale Markets: Decarbonization and Reliability, discussed the benefits that a wider market structure can bring to our region. Utilities and stakeholders are exploring options to continue capitalizing on market-based benefits of participation in the California Independent System Operator’s (CAISO) Western Energy Imbalance Market (EIM). Though not to the full scale of a regional transmission organization (RTO), CAISO’s EIM enables utilities throughout the West to share resources over a broader footprint. Our expert panelists discussed the customer benefits yielded from increased generation dispatch efficiency and integration of low-cost renewable energy. Capacity sharing through market-based systems can also help alleviate emerging regional resource adequacy concerns. As we grapple with how to expand this paradigm, panelists agreed that rollout of an Extended Day Ahead Market (EDAM) appears to be the next logical step. The EDAM would enable utilities to schedule dispatch of generating resources a day ahead, and our expert panelists believe this extension can bring flexibility and diversity benefits to the broader system.

Panel #2, Clean and Renewable: Oregon’s Path to “100%”, unpacked the growing movement among states and electric utilities to establish increasingly ambitious decarbonization goals. The goals appear different depending on the politics state by state, or relative carbon intensity of the utility’s energy supply mix today. But the unifying mission is to drastically lower carbon emissions by the middle of this century in response to global climate change. Among other topics, the panelists discussed how social and environmental equity and inclusion considerations factor (or not) into their thinking about utilities’ and states’ decarbonization plans. Answers split along utility and non-utility lines, with NW Natural and Idaho Power representatives emphasizing the need to keep rates low to leave low-income communities unharmed. While agreeing, the panelist from NW Energy Coalition also acknowledged a need for participation in policy making and implementation. The panelist from BlueGreen Alliance emphasized the critical and historically underutilized influence of organized labor. While our fifth panelist, Attorney/Consultant David Van’t Hof, cautioned against ignoring opportunities in the transportation sector.

CUB was delighted to welcome Oregon PUC Chair Megan Decker as our mid-day keynote speaker. Chair Decker’s speech highlighted the need to address reliability and “unpack” its inherent characteristics – specifically, that it’s a joint responsibility of utilities, regional institutions, and regulators - to better understand it as we transition to a clean energy future. While ensuring reliable service is at the heart of all energy policy, she also cautioned against using this as an excuse to shy away from facing the emerging challenges and complexities of a changing resource mix, retirement of coal plants, commitment to Oregon climate policies, and harsh realities affecting our neighbor utility customers in California. Chair Decker showed a spirit of optimism, referring to the formation of regional wholesale energy markets in the PNW as the biggest and least-cost solution to looming reliability and resource adequacy needs. She also called for creative energy efficiency investments at local, state, and regional levels so that PNW efficiency trends continue and can be tailored to meet peak demand. She highlighted the importance of engaging customer participation in the grid and smarter use of flexible resources in meeting reliability needs. And she offered thanks to the utilities for having their “boots on the ground” in meeting customers’ reliability needs.

Bob Jenks noted in his opening remarks that CUB has concerns about the applicability of Community Choice Aggregation (CCA) in Oregon. The afternoon panel Accelerating Local Clean Transitions discussed pros and cons of CCAs, specifically exploring what problem they are solving in Oregon, given the significant decarbonization commitments made by our state’s major private utilities and how those advances might be jeopardized by Oregon’s lack of organized energy markets. CCAs in California, in contrast, have grown more effective at delivering renewable energy projects with significant community choice, since their enabling legislation was adopted more than ten years ago. Panelists also discussed options like voluntary green energy projects and municipal “opt out” renewable service agreements in partnership with existing utilities. Notably, this panel didn’t just focus on how the energy used in a community is produced, but also discussed transportation sector decarbonization opportunities. After all, emissions from transportation are higher than those from the electric sector, and are growing. Local governments and other community players make significant public transit, land use, housing, and other decisions that intersect with transportation policy and can enhance decarbonization goals. Finally, panelists touched on the importance of ensuring broad community involvement, especially from front-line constituencies, to ensure significant co-benefits in any local clean energy initiative.

Breakout panel #4, Capacity Realities: Avoiding a Regional Resource Shortfall, discussed the March 2019 event in which problems at a regional storage facility, along with a pipeline rupture in Canada, created significant natural gas transmission constraints. This, when combined with a rare late-season cold snap, caused a borderline resource adequacy crisis. This event garnered the attention of regulators, utilities, and stakeholders throughout the region. Utilities must always have enough capacity to keep the lights and heat on, even when stress on the system is at its highest. This regulatory construct, “Resource Adequacy”, has been a burgeoning issue since before last March’s scare. As our panelists noted, with many baseload coal and thermal plants closing throughout the West, and most new resources being renewable and inherently variable, our region is in need of more firm, dispatchable capacity. While that could take a variety of forms, such as pumped hydro, battery storage, or increased regional resource pooling, the path to the future is currently unclear. This panel discussion shed light on how current and future resources can help alleviate the capacity concerns of our system. And the panelists pointed to a conversation currently in process, among stakeholders from across the industry, to explore how a resource adequacy program could be structured to solve our region’s particular challenges.

The fifth panel of the day, Empowering Customers in New Utility Partnerships, focused on new demand side resource programs in Oregon and provided a broad perspective from individuals across the utility industry. The panelist from Portland General Electric discussed the company’s newly deployed Smart Grid Test Bed – an attempt to build a virtual power plant, powered by customers’ devices rather than traditional generation. A representative from the Energy Trust discussed the ETO’s new program with Pacific Power and NW Natural, which is exploring using targeted energy efficiency for gas and electric utilities to avoid expensive infrastructure upgrades. And a panelist from Oregon Housing and Community Services explained how low-income weatherization could help mitigate the energy burden faced by some Oregonians.

And finally, the panel Toward a More Resilient Energy Future offered comments on resilience preparedness by the panelists’ respective organizations. It was reassuring to learn that several planning efforts by utilities, policymakers, regulators, and communities are underway. The panelists touched on some fundamental issues like distinguishing between resilience and reliability, and admitted that there is a need for clearer definitions and metrics for resilience. It was clear to all that coordination among electric utilities, telecommunications service providers, policymakers, and communities is a critical step toward building resilience, and much work needs to be done for effective communication among parties. It was fascinating to learn about community resilience efforts like the Hood River Microgrid and the City of Portland PrepHub projects. The panel also highlighted issues that could pose challenges to invest in and implement resilience measures. One major example is the challenge of accurately estimating costs and benefits of such investments, and effectively communicating that information to the customers who will ultimately be responsible for paying for these investments.

Rounding out a full day of dynamic conversations, CUB presented the 4th annual Consumer Champion Award to Representative Pam Marsh, who then delivered a closing keynote address. Rep. Marsh told a personal story of her and her family moving to rural Oregon decades ago and her now representing District 5, which increasingly feels the impacts of climate change. She carefully braided the intertwined policy concepts of digital inequality and combating climate change by way of state legislative action. To this end, she discussed The Rural Telecommunication Investment Act (RTIA), a bill she plans to introduce in the 2020 legislative session. Her pitch was simple: As Oregon legislators work to reprise the Clean Energy Jobs bill, they must also prioritize RTIA and digital inequality more generally – because for communities to realize the full potential of clean energy systems, they must also realize the full potential of the digital society and economy.

CUB is grateful to our generous sponsors for their support of this event – with particular thanks to Polar Bear Sponsors NW Natural, Pacific Power, and Portland General Electric; Brown Bear Sponsors Avangrid Renewables, Bonneville Power Administration, Idaho Power, NW Power & Conservation Council, and Oregon Department of Energy; and Media Sponsor Clearing Up. You can view a full list of sponsors on the back page of the conference program. And we encourage readers to revisit the 2019 CUB Conference webpage to learn about our panelists and presenters, and to view our collection of supplemental reading materials, including the opening and midday keynote slide decks, and policy briefs on our six breakout panel topics (generously prepared for the CUB Conference by Oregon Department of Energy staff).

Stay tuned for information about the 10th anniversary CUB Policy Conference, and in the meantime Save the Date: Friday October 16, 2020 at the Lloyd District DoubleTree Hotel! To receive email updates about this and future CUB Conferences, join our Email List.

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