Dive Brief:

• PacifiCorp and Portland General Electric could sell renewable power to large customers under a green tariff, which could be attractive to data centers and other technology companies setting up shop in Oregon.
• The green tariff provision is part of a compromise bill that would tweak Oregon's renewable portfolio standard requirements.
• The bill, which passed out of a House committee, allows smaller public power utilities to meet their RPS requirements with renewable energy credits.

Dive Brief:

The compromise bill is driven by Umatilla Electric Cooperative's planned ballot initiative that would have let utilities use hydroelectric resources to meet their RPS requirements. The measure would effectively gut the 25%-by-2025 RPS because the state's power supply is about 40% hydro.

Under the bill, Oregon's investor-owned utilities (IOU) could retain or attract large customers that want to use more renewable energy than is in the utilities' standard mix. Tech companies are increasingly focused on getting more of their power from renewable sources so this could be a big win for the IOUs.