Sustainability - - A Focus On Carbon

A bill (SB1547) signed into law in March '16 does not contain language banning coal-fired electricity from delivery to Oregon's retail customers.  Even so, the Oregon Global Warming Commission’s 2017 Biennial Report to the Oregon legislature (Report) erroneously reports the existence of such a ban after 2030.   It also erroneously reports that both Portland General Electric (PGE) and PacifiCorp (PAC) are prohibited from allocating to Oregon retail customers any cost or benefit from coal-fired plants.  Figures 7-9 in the Report illustrate past and future CO2 emissions by these two utilities (Fig. 7 for PAC and Fig. 8 for PGE) and the statewide CO2 emission levels (Fig. 9) assume that Oregon takes credit for lowered CO2 emissions, even though SB1547 did not address coal plant operation in any way.  Furthermore, the statute in question expressly permits PGE to continue to include costs of its portion of Coalstrip in Oregon retail rates after 2030.  The law als...

Trump’s announcement that the US is withdrawing from the Paris climate accord is deeply disappointing.  His decision flies in the face of solid science on the role of human activity in climate change.  What is needed is climate policy grounded in a solid set of facts.  It is for this reason I take issue with the Resolution adopted by the Portland City Council and Multnomah County at the Council Session on June 1st.   "Until economic forms of utility-scale electricity storage are achieved, it will be next to impossible to economically replace all fossil fuel electricity generation with renewables."   Two policies were adopted in that Resolution.  Both policies apply community-wide, not just to City or County facilities.  One goal states that  by 2035  all residents and businesses in the City and County will only use electricity generated from renewables.  This means that PGE and PacifiCorp must deliver electri...

In a word, No. Governor Kate Brown did sign the The Clean Electricity and Coal Transition Plan (“the Plan”). While news reports heralded it as the first of its kind in the nation, those reports were wrong. For example, Oregon Public Radio (OPB) ran a story with a narrative that reflected the environmental community’s pitch. OPB’s report noted that the Plan “... put an expiration date of 2025 on all coal-fired power coming into the state and. . . require[s] utilities to replace electricity from coal with power that is 90% cleaner.” Other examples include the following headlines: “Oregon Passes Historic Bill to Phase Out Coal and Double Down on Renewables (NRDC)”; “Oregon Set To Become First Coal-Free State (Huffington Post”); “Oregon Gov. Kate Brown signed one of the nation’s most aggressive pieces of pro-climate legislation into state law Friday (U.S. News and World Report)”; and “How Oregon plans to quit coal (CS Monitor).” PAC’s press release correctly stated its first key ...