Tony Schick and Monica Samayoa of OPB join the Exchange to discuss their investigation conducted in partnership with ProPublica.
OPB articles by Tony Schick and Monica Samayoa:
How the Pacific Northwest’s dream of green energy fell apart
Oregon and Washington trailed most states in adding renewable energy during the past decade, despite pledges to eliminate fossil fuels from power generation.
What’s held the Northwest back is a bottleneck that lawmakers paid little attention to when they set out to go 100% green, the investigation found: The region lacks the wiring infrastructure needed to deliver new sources of renewable energy to people’s homes, and little has been done to change that.
Of the 469 large renewable projects that applied to connect to Bonneville’s grid since 2015, only one has reached approval. Those are longer odds than in any other region of the country, the news organizations found. No major grid operator is as stingy as Bonneville in its approach to financing new transmission lines and substations needed to grow the power supply, according to industry groups that represent power producers.
Among key findings from the OPB and ProPublica investigation:
- In addition to suspending all new federal wind permits, the Trump White House has added Bonneville to the long list of agencies cutting federal jobs. Three Bonneville employees, requesting anonymity for fear of retribution, said the cuts will make building out the transmission system even harder.
- Portland energy developer David Brown’s company, Obsidian Renewables, has proposed to build one of the state’s largest solar farms but has been waiting for five years for Bonneville Power Administration’s approval.
- There are hundreds of projects like Brown’s: more than 200,000 megawatts worth of renewable energy awaiting Bonneville’s signoff, or enough to power the Northwest nearly 10 times over. One proposed wind farm has been in Bonneville’s queue for more than 16 years.
- A further frustration for wind and solar developers that is unique to Bonneville: The grid operator makes them absorb an outsize share of the cost for projects that help the transmission network accommodate their electricity — and it requires a big deposit up front. That’s true even if the new power lines benefit a wide network and will be around for many generations of customers.
- In most parts of the country, each grid has a central, independent operator, known as a regional transmission organization, typically run by a board that represents customers, electric utilities and other groups. Bonneville recently rejected joining a California-based energy market that advocates described as the Northwest’s best bet at accelerating the adoption of renewables.
- In Texas, which runs its own grid, large renewable projects applying to connect in the past decade took a median of 19 months to get the green light, or nearly two years less than the one project Bonneville approved in that time frame. California and the Midwest were also faster than Bonneville.
