Dive Brief:
- The Northwest Power and Conservation Council on Wednesday published a draft of its regional power plan, calling for 9 GW of renewables, 2.1 GW of natural gas and 5.2 GW of energy storage to meet accelerating load growth in the Pacific Northwest. The plan calls for an estimated $2.3 billion in fixed expenditures by 2032.
- Data centers are expected to drive electricity demand growth in the near term, according to the plan, while transportation, buildings and industry are expected to add to demand over the longer term. Overall, regional electricity use is projected to grow by about 50% over the next six years and could nearly double over the plan’s 20-year outlook, the council said.
- The NWPCC will hold public hearings in Oregon, Washington, Idaho and Montana in September and October before targeting final adoption by the end of 2026 or early 2027.
Dive Insight:
The NWPCC unanimously approved the draft Ninth Power Plan for public comment, proposing a diversified portfolio of resources to meet rising electricity demand across Oregon, Washington, Idaho and Montana.
The plan assumes no new gas plants in Oregon and limited new gas development in Washington, due to state restrictions. While the modeling shows most of the roughly 2,100 MW of new gas being built in Idaho and Montana, the final recommendation does not assign state‑by‑state targets, leaving siting decisions to the utilities.
The council estimates the portfolio would have a fixed cost of $2.3 billion in 2032, equivalent to about 0.15% of the four-state region’s $1.46 trillion gross domestic product in 2025.
The proposal was designed to identify the lowest-cost mix of resources that can meet future needs across a wide range of possible outcomes, according to Jennifer Light, the council’s power division director.
“If the loads came in only on the low end, it would be a bit overbuilt. If it came in only on the high end, it wouldn’t be fully adequate. But when you look at that range and uncertainty, it is adequate across that risk,” Light said in a media briefing.
The council said its planning process was tested against variability in load growth, extreme weather, resource and transmission availability and operations of the Columbia Basin hydrosystem.
Bonneville Power Administration, the federal agency that markets power from the Columbia River dam system, is central to the Ninth Power Plan. BPA is legally required to acquire resources consistent with the council’s strategy. The draft plan anticipates Bonneville may need to buy new generating capacity, not just energy efficiency. The council urges the agency to favor renewables for energy needs and weigh batteries against new gas plants for capacity as regional electricity demand surges.
Studies by the Western Transmission Expansion Coalition, or WestTEC, an industry-led transmission planning effort, underpin assumptions about future power lines and how much new generation the grid can accommodate, according to the NWPCC draft Ninth Power Plan.
“This strategy does assume some of that transmission gets built,” Light said. “That is definitely something the council will be tracking as part of its midterm assessments on this plan.”
The draft also proposes energy-efficiency standards for new data centers and calls for working with data center operators on flexible electricity consumption, including demand response and use of backup generation.
The council is required to review its plan at least every five years, and adopted its last power plan in February 2022.
