CUB Staff Energized and Educated at Oregon’s Energy Future Conference
Posted on June 4, 2015 by Amelia Lamb
Tags, Energy, Conference & Events
NEBC’s 9th annual Oregon’s Energy Future Conference took place on April 16th, and I was happy to attend along with my colleague Samuel Pastrick, CUB’s Development Associate. We enjoyed an educational and fun day, packed with insights from energy professionals from across the state on all manner of issues. CUB was also proud to support the event as a community partner.
The day started with breakfast and a morning keynote delivered by PGE President and CEO Jim Piro. He discussed PGE’s commitment to renewable energy and efficiency investment, adaptation and resilience, the IRP process, and high-quality service for all customers, specifically mentioning HB 3257. The bill offers an extended collections period for low-income customers struggling to pay their electric bills, and was signed into law by Governor Brown on May 28th.
From there, we split up to attend morning breakout sessions. Sam attended the session “Building a Flexible & Efficient Transmission System” wherein the panelists discussed Oregon’s growing need for a grid that can flexibly coordinate a variety of distributed assets. The Pacific NW Smart Grid Demonstration Project and Pacific Power’s entry into the CAL-ISO Imbalance Market were cited as promising examples of how utilities and regulators can work together on a regional level to achieve flexibility without compromising reliable, affordable service.
Meanwhile, I attended “The Politics of Clean Energy”, which offered a run-down of energy bills under consideration in the current legislative session, as well as perspectives from PGE and PNGC Power about the politics of renewables investment, energy facility siting, and building coalitions for pilot projects.
Mid-morning session offerings included “Energy Planning – Current Perspectives”, which discussed impacts on energy planning from the fluctuating Natural Gas market, the evolution of energy efficiency, emerging technologies, and the EPA’s new 111(d) rules. We also heard about a variety of case studies in the session “Market Mechanisms to Drive Efficiency”. We heard from Erik Larson, co-founder of Building Energy Inc., a Portland-based startup offering a simple, open-source system for tracking and sharing data about energy use in commercial buildings. Vinh Mason presented another interesting study: the Portland Bureau of Planning and Sustainability’s proposed new policy for commercial building energy performance reporting (the policy was passed by the City Council on April 22nd.)
Lunchtime offered up a wonderfully insightful keynote address from Karl Rábago, Executive Director of the Energy & Climate Center at Pace School of Law. Mr. Rábago argued passionately against the assumption that customer price structure needs to mirror business costs. He urged Oregon lawmakers to price carbon and think about flowing carbon savings back into utility rate structure. He recommended a reexamination of cost-plus pricing – by segmenting customers and using emerging tools to apply risk-adjusted discounts, utilities can reflect full term-of-life costs without overcharging customers or sacrificing profits for investors. All in all it was a very thought-provoking lecture, demonstrating that Oregon still has much progress to make in innovating policy to ensure equity for low-income customers.
Standout sessions in the early afternoon were a panel on the EPA’s new 111(d) rules, and a discussion of “New Models for Utility Regulation”, which illuminated Oregon’s particular spread of opportunities and challenges in complying with 111(d) and evolving our utility sector to meet 21st century needs. Oregon’s need to push forward on shutting down coal plants is less urgent than in many other US states because we only have one left (Boardman) and it’s already slated to close in 2020, but Mr. Rábago argued that Oregon’s position on the progressive end of the national energy policy spectrum might make us well suited to proactively adapt to the challenges presented by climate change and massive future increases in grid load and energy demand.
Our day rounded out with a closing session on “Utility Perspectives”. Representatives from Pacific Power, PGE, and PNGC Power each discussed what their companies are doing to transition away from coal, support demand response and rooftop solar, plan for a carbon tax, and adapt to the growing demands of the indoor/outdoor marijuana agriculture industry. Scott Bolton from Pacific Power summed things up nicely in saying that utilities have many responsibilities beyond reliability. Now is an exciting time with lots of incentive to innovate for customers who may want to build a stronger relationship with their utility.
With that, we headed back to the office, our brains packed with ideas to share with our coworkers and to feed into CUB’s upcoming 5th annual policy conference, Utility 2025: Building the Northwest’s Energy Future. We are grateful to NEBC for putting on such an engaging event, and look forward to attending again next year!
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05/01/17 | 0 Comments | CUB Staff Energized and Educated at Oregon’s Energy Future Conference