EVERGREEN STATE COLLEGE, Olympia — Power planning forecasts in the Northwest show trouble ahead, in spiking demand for energy, transmission worries and no quick or cheap answers.
The state and its neighbors are going to face challenges in keeping the lights on while complying with environmental mandates, including rebuilding salmon runs and meeting commitments to get off fossil fuels, a panel of experts told the Northwest Power and Conservation Council in its monthly meeting Tuesday.
The council is an interstate agency, authorized by the Northwest Power Act of 1980 and approved by the Legislatures of all four Columbia Basin states, Idaho, Montana, Oregon and Washington. It is charged with protecting fish and wildlife, while ensuring an adequate and affordable power system.
The challenges facing the Northwest all are exacerbated by the region’s new energy hog: data centers, which make the demands of the now-defunct Northwest aluminum industry look dainty by comparison.
The Northwest is going to need 4,000 megawatts of additional generation — about 20% of the region’s current output — just to keep pace with power demand over the next five years, according to the most recent forecast by the Pacific Northwest Utilities Conference Committee, a trade association of consumer and investor-owned electricity utilities and other power industry interests.
That’s not counting another 1,600 megawatts in energy demand from more data centers that popped up in just the last several weeks, panelist and energy consultant Randy Hardy told the council. Hardy, a former superintendent of Seattle City Light and administrator of the Bonneville Power Administration, said the region also needs to greatly expand and upgrade its transmission capacity to move all that electricity. But that is typically a slow, expensive process with lots of community opposition.
Rate increases to pay for it all could hit double digits back to back for years to come, Hardy warned. “How is the region going to react to that?”
Meanwhile, the increasing demands of electrification to help blunt the worst effects of climate change are still coming, with everything from cars to heating systems that presently run on fossil fuels being replaced by electricity. And climate commitments by regional governments to clean up their power supplies to be carbon neutral mean just turning on coal and gas plants to meet demand won’t be an option. Those resources are being powered down.
Congress in 1980 created the council, with two representatives each from Washington, Oregon, Idaho and Montana appointed by their governors. One of its tasks is creating a 20-year Regional Power Plan, which is updated every five years.
The council is in the midst of crafting its next plan for meeting the region’s energy needs while protecting the environment. It took big energy transfers between Washington and California just to get through four days of subfreezing temperatures in the Northwest last January. What’s next?
Some see a crisis building with no answers or quick fixes. “Cost is going to be extreme; the transmission isn’t there. Keeping the lights on in the next coming years is going to be a huge challenge. I am fraught with anxiety,” said Douglas Grob, a power and conservation council member representing Montana.
Nancy Hirsch, executive director of the Northwest Energy Act Coalition, said energy efficiency and conservation has got to be a big part of the supply solution, instead of just building more generation. The Northwest also is behind other regions in reducing demand, through customer incentive programs are common in other regions, Hirsch told the council. “There is a lot more we can do.”
Fish also can’t just be forgotten because of energy demands, noted Robert Lothrop, manager of policy development and litigation support for the Columbia River Inter-Tribal Fish Commission, which represents four tribes with treaty rights to fish in the Columbia and Snake river basins.
“We need to think about this from a fish-first perspective,” Lothrop said in an interview. “It is easy for these concerns to drown out that very important perspective.” Hydropower dams on the Columbia and Snake are the powerhouses of the region — but they also are one of the reasons salmon and steelhead are battling extinction where they once thrived.
In some ways, Tuesday’s gathering turned a circle of history. After the panel discussion, the council reconvened in the House of Welcome, the longhouse on the Evergreen campus, to honor Dan Evans. In addition to his other accomplishments as a three-term governor from 1965-77 and U.S. senator for Washington, Evans was the founding chairman of the power council, serving from 1981-83.
Evans took the lead of a council created in part in response to crisis: the region’s catastrophic decision to build five nuclear plants, based on wildly inaccurate energy demand forecasts. Only one of the five plants built was ever turned on, and the failed construction program eventually sank under its spectacular delays and cost overruns. The Washington Public Power Supply System was forced to default on $2.25 billion in bonds. It was the largest municipal bond default in history.
A fervent conservationist who as Senator sponsored legislation to create wilderness areas by the millions of acres, Evans as council chairman helped lead a new approach for the region, embracing energy efficiency and conservation as the lowest cost source of power.
Since 1980, the region has saved enough electricity to power nearly seven cities the size of Seattle, saved ratepayers millions of dollars and avoided 24 million metric tons of carbon dioxide emissions, according to council data. That is the equivalent of the emissions from nearly 6 million gasoline-powered passenger vehicles driven for at least a year.
At a reception held in his honor, Evans was asked questions by current council members about the steps they should take in their role today. At 98, Evans — a former president of Evergreen, who also as governor famously rappelled down the Evergreen clock tower — had this advice to share:
“We worked together. We didn’t fight. And that did the region enormous good.”
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