CUB Evaluates Post-Election Energy Landscape

One day post-election and we are taking stock. What does this election mean to CUB and to you, utility consumers? We believe that this new day indicates a shift from campaigning on change, to opening the door to true opportunity. Many candidates at all levels of our government made big promises for a different way of approaching our energy needs and the major environmental crisis of global warming. Now it’s time to make sure they follow through.

We congratulate all the winning candidates, from President-Elect Obama, to Congressional members, statewide office holders, our State Senate and House Representatives, and County and City elected leaders. At the federal level, it seems that we will finally have a Presidential Administration that will seriously address global warming pollution. President Bush promised in his 2000 campaign to regulate carbon dioxide emissions, but that never happened. Instead, his Administration has, for the most part, subsidized coal and fossil fuels, instead of investing in renewable energy sources and energy efficiency. We should watch carefully and keep the pressure on the Obama Administration to make sure that he actually does work to combat global warming. And while we recognize he is going to have a very full plate, and that new programs will take time to develop, we need to help him succeed in making those promises real.

Meanwhile, it is imperative that we push ahead here in Oregon, show the leadership for which our state is known nationally, and work to create global warming policy on a statewide level.

We are ahead of the game, the federal game anyway, having the Western Climate Initiative (WCI) framework ready and waiting for specific policy to be implemented in the 7 Western states and 4 Canadian provinces who participated. The Governor’s Climate Package which he hopes to move through the 2009 Oregon Legislature, includes a bill which would authorize the Department of Environmental Quality (DEQ) to create rules for a cap-and-trade policy in Oregon.

Within Oregon, we saw a number of candidates who campaigned on a platform of addressing global warming. We have to demand that they follow through with these campaign promises, and that they work with long-time progressive energy advocates such as CUB and members of the Fair and Clean Energy Coalition to craft policy that is meaningful, cost-effective over the long term, and smart. Oregon’s energy map is complex, and good intentions often aren’t enough, when the ramifications of suggested policy are not fully thought through.

Creating meaningful, smart climate policy here in Oregon is important for many reasons. We need to protect our own rivers, mountains, coastlines, and farmland from the impacts of global warming pollution. We need to provide a model for federal legislation of what needs to be done in the Pacific Northwest, and how it should be done for maximum effectiveness, with minimal amount of hardship. And finally, energy consumers need a climate policy sooner rather than later, because utilities are making investment decisions in the context of climate change, but as of yet, no climate change policy.

For example, PGE is working to decide whether to invest half a billion dollars of customers’ money in a retrofit of their Boardman coal-powered electricity generating plant in order to meet the standards of the Clean Air Act, to clean up the air in nearby National Parks. If they do make this huge investment, that coal plant will not be closed for a very long time, perhaps decades. However, coal is the dirtiest, most carbon-intensive source of electricity we have, and if we had a climate policy in place, it might make sense for PGE to close that plant. This is one of many decisions that are long-term, big-dollar decisions that shouldn’t be made in the dark. Utilities, and customer advocates such as CUB, need to discuss resource decisions with an eye to the future and a fuller sense of what the carbon policy context will be.

Election Day is a momentous occasion, and one which has, in this case, ushered in a wave of change, as promised. Now to work on keeping the rest of the promises made over the past year (or two). Oregon has a significant foundation of good energy programs on which to build, and good energy policy going forward must cause no harm to existing renewable and energy efficiency programs, while building and expanding toward a clean and affordable energy future. We here at CUB will work to our utmost ability to help create such future policies for Oregon.

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