Legislation to Phase Out Coal Passes Oregon Legislature
Posted on March 3, 2016 by Bob Jenks
Tags, Energy
Yesterday, we made news. The Oregon Legislature passed the Oregon Clean Electricity & Coal Transition Plan which will phase out the use of coal by 2035 and increase our investment in renewable energy to 50% by 2040.
CUB has been working hard to pass this bill because it will protect customers from the financial risk associated with coal plants. Coal is no longer a cheap resource. A few years ago PGE faced a requirement to spend more than $500 million on a retrofit of their Boardman coal plant. CUB was able to work with PGE on their Boardman options and was able to demonstrate that phasing out the plant would save customers millions of dollars.
While Boardman is the only coal plant in Oregon, ratepayers of PGE and PacifiCorp are served by approximately two dozen out-of-state coal plants. Many of these plants are facing the need for expensive retrofits that will be required for the plants to keep operating past 2030. All of these plants are subject to the EPA’s proposed Clean Power Plan. In addition, there is likely to be additional regulation of carbon emissions from these plants. While Oregon cannot make other states close coal plants, we can reduce the economic risk of coal to Oregon households by mandating that our utilities stop importing coal to serve their Oregon customers.
As we phase out our use of coal, the legislation directs utilities to double the amount of renewables in their power mix, going from 25% in 2025 to 50% in 2040. This ensures that the utilities will replace the coal power with significant amounts of clean, renewable power and adding renewable power to the grid will reduce carbon emissions significantly.
This bill is an extremely affordable way to reduce our risk from coal. The impact on utilities’ rates will be small – at worse, we expect less than a 1% overall effect on rates. In fact, if the future sees natural gas prices increase, or carbon regulation becomes significant, this bill will actually help lower rates.
This was truly a team effort. Beginning last November, CUB, the utilities, and some environmental and renewable advocates began meeting to see if we could agree on a way to eliminate coal from our power mix and increase renewables. I thought the likelihood of agreement was small, but it was worth the effort. It took a lot of time, but folks listened to each other and ultimately were able to come around this important piece of legislation.
I was proud to be part of this effort. And, I appreciate the hard work of the CUB team that helped push this bill, and helped the world understand it. And of course I am grateful to everyone who wrote letters and contacted their legislators. Grassroots support was critical.
It is important to recognize the work of our partners in this effort: PGE, Pacific Power, and Oregon’s environmental and renewables community.
Three legislators were critical to the passage of this bill. Representatives Jessica Vega Pederson and Mark Johnson led the bi-partisan effort in the House to get the bill passed, and Senator Lee Beyer led the effort in the Senate. There is no doubt: this bill would not have passed without their leadership.
And we made news. I have been pretty focused on passing this bill and did not even realize the degree that folks were watching this bill. I was surprised that by the time I had gotten home yesterday, there was already a NY Times story about it. This morning I woke up and found out that there was a bunch of national media coverage of this bill. The eyes of the country really were on Oregon as we passed this legislation.
I have been saying for years that reducing Oregon’s use of coal is the single most important action that Oregon can take to protect ratepayers from future costs associated with carbon regulation while also reducing carbon emissions. This bill does exactly that: protects our pocketbooks while also protecting our environment – that is what Oregonians value and what CUB is here to deliver.
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12/08/16 | 0 Comments | Legislation to Phase Out Coal Passes Oregon Legislature