Reliable electricity is critical to every aspect of modern civilization, including food, shelter, medical care, education and entertainment. When you think about it, electric utilities are really in the health, safety and well-being business. 

And while customers and policymakers rightly engage in holding utilities accountable for providing affordable and environmentally responsible electricity, when it comes to delivering on reliability, there is nobody with more skin in the game than utilities. Failure to “keep the lights on” can be a matter of life and death and will always be the metric by which utilities will receive their harshest critiques and ultimate judgments. 

Unfortunately, overly aggressive clean energy policies in Washington and Oregon have boxed many Northwest utilities into a corner by taking reliable technologies off the table before we have dependable carbon-free replacements like nuclear in place. To compound the problem, political leaders in both states are actively advocating for diminishing hydropower through excessive spill. And in the case of the Lower Snake River dams, outright removal. 

With the shutdown of coal plants occurring across the Northwest, the perfect minute-by-minute balance of supply and demand required by grid physics has fallen more on hydropower and natural gas. But with the punitive financial penalties included in clean energy laws, existing natural-gas plants are on the ropes and no new gas plants are being proposed in Oregon or Washington. This means hydropower will increasingly carry the grid reliability burden which is most critical on the hottest and coldest days of the year. 

When it comes to grid reliability, controllable hydropower is to the Northwest as natural gas plants are to California and most of the rest of the United States. And based on multiple studies and common sense, many utilities are deeply concerned that drought conditions affecting hydro, together with an unwarranted belief that uncontrollable wind and solar can replace coal power, may be walking us closer and closer to a blackout cliff.  

To compound the growing reliability risks, Northwest utilities are facing significant uncertainty in planning for an “electrified” future driven by inflation, supply chain constraints and long lead times that come with capital intensive and impactful infrastructure projects. Thankfully hydropower is standing in the gap for now.  

One frustrating irony is that some of the same entities who helped convince policymakers to back utilities into a corner and force a deeper dependence on wind and solar power, are continuing to irresponsibly call for the erosion of carbon-free hydroelectric generating capacity. The very hydropower on which Washington and Oregon’s 100% carbon-free electricity laws and bragging rights were established.  

And rather than celebrating our existing nation-leading clean energy capabilities, anti-hydro interests are capitalizing on a shift in political power together with emotionally charged arguments and opinions to weaken support for hydro, while falsely promoting wind and solar technologies as environmentally benign and operationally equivalent replacements. 

Citizens need to be aware of the “development friction” that comes with land and material intensive wind and solar and how project delays are contributing to a growing fragility of the Northwest power grid. The next round of Northwest coal plant shutdowns will be in 2025 when the total amount of capacity removed from the grid will reach 4,000 megawatts (MW). This is equivalent to removing the dependable electricity supply provided by four Columbia Generating Station nuclear plants. 

The growing grid reliability uncertainty likely will be amplified when you consider the potential pushback by citizens and agencies representing Montana and Wyoming – states that continue to be identified by Washington and Oregon policymakers as essential to the wind, solar and transmission-line development necessary for achieving 100% carbon-free electricity.  

Shockingly, Washington’s energy vision for the Northwest claims 63,000 MW of onshore wind farms will need to be constructed, representing more than 100 Seattle-sized wind farms located somewhere other than inside state borders. Only 2,000 MW of onshore wind (3.2% of the Northwest total) is envisioned for Washington due in part to low or zero wind speeds that typically accompany deeply cold winter weather characterized by high pressure inversions.   

Unlike the intermittent and variable generation from wind farms, the availability of affordable and reliable electricity provided by Northwest hydro has been considered a certainty for decades. But we must not take it for granted. In the greater Northwest grid, hydropower often represents 50% of the critical generating capacity needed to avoid blackouts on the hottest and coldest days. The other 50% has historically come from dependable coal and natural gas. But those days are coming to an end unless natural gas gets a legal reprieve. 

Shutting down coal before we have new dependable technology in place is already having negative consequences. Keeping electricity affordable and reliable is going to be hard enough for utilities, so it makes little sense to reduce generation from carbon-free hydropower. 

Benton PUD customers expect us to hold the line on electricity rates. And they will always hold us responsible when the lights go out. Washington’s electrify-everything clean-energy policies will require unprecedented capital investments, resulting in significant upward pressure on electricity rates. And if it’s going to be carbon-free and reliable, we will need every drop of hydropower we can get.