This article was produced for the local propublicic report network in association with Public broadcasting of Oregon. Enroll in Packing To get our stories on your entrance tray every week.
Electrical companies in Oregon and Washington rush towards the deadlines to stop using the energy generated by coal, gas and other fuels that contribute to global warming. However, states are not close to achieving their objectives, and the dramatic consequences are already being felt.
Duration A winter storm in January 2024, for example, the northwest had hardly enough energy to meet demand, since the owners increased electric heaters and energy prices increased to more than $ 1,000 per Megavatio-Hora, or 18 times higher than the ontual price. The electricity lines were so congested that the owners of the transmission network obtained $ 100 million selling access to the highest sentence.
Multiple utilities operated in emergency duration states, storm, preparing for rotating power cuts.
The storm “highlighted a turning point and demonstrated how close is the region of a resource adaptation crisis,” Western Power Pool wrote, a regional public service organization, in its evaluation of the event.
Price peaks such as this are one of the reasons why the clients of the main public service companies in Oregon are paying 50% more in their energy invoices than in 2019. The number of public services clients disconnected last year for failures shot at 7000, the number to 70,000,
The forecast predict periods of extreme weather in the northwest will only bring more problems in the future: the threat of blackouts in the decade if current energy trends continue.
The wind, solar energy and other renewable energies are the only forms of energy that can be added to solve the problem, thanks to Oregon’s green energy mandates and Washington. However, better transmission lines are needed to transport new energy sources in the windy and sunny oriental parts of the region to large cities west of the Cascade mountain range.
Experts say that adding transmission lines in runners that currently lack would also allow public services to maintain the energy that flows when ice storms or forest fires threaten other parts of the network.
The largest owner of these transmission lines, the Federal Energy Administration of Bonneville, has taken to spend on updates, and Slow to approve new green projects Until updates are made.
The Bonneville matrix agency, the Department of Energy, refused to make officials available for an interview, but Bonneville answered written questions.
“The potential for blackouts in the northwest of the Pacific is incredible,” said the agency. “Network planners and operators will continue to ensure reliability.”
Washington and Oregon legislators could not board the Bonneville bottleneck when they approved clean energy mandates in 2019 and 2021, as Propublic and OPB reported recently.
The Oregon representative, Ken Helm, a Democrat from the Portland area who was sponsor of the 2021 Legilation, said that the lack of prioritization of the transmission lines was the only defect with the legislet. He said that the bill did not provide responsibility, without having sanctions for when a public services company did not reach certain deadlines to acquire solar or wind energy. Helm said now, the Draft Law of the House of Representatives 2021 is “Dead, Let Law.”
“Senators and representatives like me, we cannot continue with our own PR, that we have a successful leg in the promotion of a future of renewable electricity,” said Helm, a member of the Climate, Energy and Environment Committee of the House of Representatives. “We do not head in that direction, and we will have to take measures to change that or note that will be willing to happen.”
Some legislators tried to catch up this year. Legislators in each state obtained plans for state transmission authorities that could finance independent improvements or public services and Bonneville. Those efforts failed.
“Oregon desperately needs to take some leadership here,” said Nicole Hughes, executive director of the Northwest Renewable Group, who advocates to weave the region of fossil fuels.
The situation of the Northwest is expected to only get worse. It is forecast that the region’s electrical demand will double in the next 20 years, in large part because the data centers, Rewarded with tax exemptions Both in Oregon and Washington, they are driving a Increased energy use The region has not experienced since the early 1980s.
The renewable energy laws of Abandonon Oregon and Washington He would not help, says the public services board of Citizens of OregonBecause the new fossil fuel power plants would cost taxpayers rather than wind or solar. These plants would still have to change with transmission lines that have no space for their power.
Meanwhile, the utilities of the region say they would like to add 29,000 megawatts of generation capacity in the next 10 years, an unprecedented addition is approximately equivalent to all the electricity that the northwest. Time. The projects on their pending tasks are completely fed by renewable energy.
However, public services added only a bit of half of power to their systems they planned for last year. In fact, of the 469 projects that applied to connect to the Bonneville network in the last decade, the only one to gain the approval of the agency was in 2022. Green energy growth in 2024 came from projects that began to look for a connection with the Bonneville network before 2015 or that connected to smaller transmission networks owned by private public services.
If public service companies continue to fall as below their objectives as they did in 2024, then the projections of the Western electricity coordination counter suggest that residents will spend the equivalent of almost a month annually all circuit towers annually.
“In the coming years, we can begin to have some difficult decisions about the availability of electricity,” said Hughes.
Hughes has spent 20 years in the renewable energy industry.
For now, he said, the family decided to buy a gas generator at times when his home loses energy.
