Regulators Adopt Phase 1 FAIR Energy Act Proposal

Posted on July 22, 2026 by Cassie Allen
Tags, General Interest, Energy

Woman paying her energy bill on computer and phone

Last year, CUB secured a monumental victory for customers: we passed the FAIR Energy Act (HB 3179)! The 2025 law aims to rein in back-to-back energy bill rate hikes, addressing one of the root causes of Oregon’s energy affordability crisis. Now, Oregon’s state regulators are implementing the new law, and customers just scored another big win!

Regulators were considering a proposal to require all for-profit utilities to create five-year spending plans, meet community-supportive metrics, and stick to a budget. Utilities wanted to maintain the status quo, but regulators pushed back. CUB and energy advocates supported the changes. We’re excited to announce that regulators adopted these new customer protections!

Want even more details? See the full docket! Docket AR 676 is available on the Public Utility Commission website.

Phase 1 Complete: Spreading Out Increases

To implement the FAIR Energy Act, regulators are in the process of developing specific rules for spreading out utility rate increase requests over multiple years by the end of 2027. The goal of this process is to limit how often utilities can raise customers’ energy bills, protecting customers from frequent large increases. It’s beyond time that customers are centered in utility decision-making!

In early July, regulators adopted a proposal that would require all for-profit utilities to create five-year spending plans, stick to a budget, and meet community-supportive metrics. This brings to a close the first phase of turning law into reality.

Big Wins:

Five-Year Plans: Utilities must create five-year plans for spending, investments, and more
Stick to a Budget: Utilities have limits on how much money can be added to customers’ bills over the length of their five-year plans.
Community Benefit Metrics: Utilities will have performance standard requirements on disconnections, maintaining their system, and (for electric utilities) community-based clean energy.

With the new rules, regulators will be able to better control when and how often rate increases happen. Previously, utilities would choose when to ask regulators to change billing rates, and regulators had to respond. The longer process not only protects customers from frequent large increases but also allows regulators and advocates to dig deeper into what utilities are asking for in their requests, improving administrative efficiency.

Big Win: Five-Year Plans

Adopted: Utilities must create five-year plans for spending, investments, and more.

Without concrete plans for rate increases, Oregonians’ energy bills have increased by nearly 50% over the last five years. By requiring utilities to create five-year plans for spending, investments, and more, utilities won’t be able to keep requesting endless increases. The multi-year spending plans will help ensure utilities better control their costs, protecting your home energy bills.

While the proposal has been adopted, this policy will not take effect until each utility files its first spending plan, starting in 2027. This will go through 2029, with only one electric and one gas utility filing each year.

Going forward, utilities will be held accountable for controlling their own costs. Creating a standard expectation of what will go into these plans helps regulators, advocates, and customers know what to expect in the near future. The finer details of this will be determined in Phase 2, which begins at the end of this month.

Big Win: Utilities Required to Stick to a Budget

Adopted: Utilities have limits on how much money can be added to customers’ bills over the length of their five-year plans.

We are all tied to a budget, and our utilities should be, too. After five years of near-constant increases in our energy bills, Oregonians are feeling the pinch. Disconnections are at an all-time high, leaving many households to make impossible choices. We’re all living in a reality where we need to be careful with what we spend–so why aren’t our utilities more budget-conscious?

The short answer is profit. Utilities are allowed to recover the costs of capital investments from customers by increasing energy billing rates. Meaning they’re incentivized to keep spending on big projects, regardless of how that drives up energy costs for customers over time.

PGE has been a major offender in allowing costs to balloon without much accountability. In 2020, PGE set a capital spending target for 2024 at $500 million. By February of 2023, it had grown by almost 50% to $730 million. But its growth kept accelerating, to $1.34 billion in April of 2024 - a 268% increase from the original spending target in just four years.

One major goal of the FAIR Energy Act is to get utility increases under control by changing utilities’ incentives to spend, slowing the rise of energy bills. By limiting how much money can be added to customers’ bills over the length of their five-year plans, utilities won’t be able to keep requesting endless increases, creating more predictability for regulators and customers alike.

Big Win: Utilities Required to Meet Community Benefit Metrics

Adopted: Utilities will have performance standard requirements on disconnections, maintaining their system, and (for electric utilities) community-based clean energy.

Oregon’s for-profit electric utilities need some encouragement to make choices that reflect Oregonians’ values. In addition to the FAIR Energy Act, state legislators also passed Performance-Based Regulation (SB 688) in 2025. With this new framework, a portion of utilities’ profits would be tied to what Oregonians value most. These priorities can be related to affordability for customers, reducing emissions, meeting safety standards, and other goals.

Now that utilities will be required to meet community benefit metrics, Oregonians’ needs will be more adequately met by utilities. The legislature directed regulators to require utilities to go further than the company’s necessities: reliability, safety, and customer service.

Now, they will be required to meet performance standards to:

reduce household disconnections
make the most of our existing infrastructure to limit unnecessary investments, and
make more investments in renewable energy that support our communities.

The specifics of these metrics and requirements will be decided in future phases of this process.

Next Steps for the FAIR Energy Act

Last Fall, regulators at the Public Utility Commission opened four dockets as part of their process to roll out the FAIR Energy Act over multiple stages. Regulators plan to accomplish the big goals set out in this process by mid-2027. The five main components include:

Building frameworks for required multi-year plans for rate increases (Phase 1 completed)
Setting a schedule for when utilities can request major bill increases
Banning winter rate increases for households
Customer impact analysis filed with each utility proposal to raise rates
Utility reporting expectations (bill increases and what costs are causing rates to go up)

These wins mark the completion of phase 1 of the multi-year rate increase plan. Stay tuned for specific actions you can take to ensure the next phase of the FAIR Energy Act is implemented with customers top of mind!

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