ODOE Director Janine Benner Talks Clean Energy Transition with University of Oregon Green Business Initiative
On April 13, ODOE Director Janine Benner was pleased to give a keynote address at the University of Oregon Green Business Initiative’s annual symposium. Janine gave a brief overview of Oregon’s current energy landscape, discussed our climate and energy goals, and shared how recent federal funding investments can be a game-changer for an equitable clean energy transition.
The Green Business Symposium is held annually by the Environmental and Natural Resources Law Center and Green Business Initiative Student Association. Janine enjoyed the opportunity to connect with students and faculty about Oregon’s bright – but challenging – energy future. Read Janine’s full keynote below.
Director Benner Keynote Address
Good evening. I’m Janine Benner, and I’m proud to serve as the director of the Oregon Department of Energy. I’d like to thank the University of Oregon and the Green Business Initiative for the invitation to join you tonight to talk a little about energy in Oregon and how recent federal investments can be a game-changer for our equitable clean energy transition.
But first, I realize some of you may not be familiar with the Oregon Department of Energy, or ODOE, as you might hear us referred to. We are the state’s dedicated energy agency, and our mission is to help Oregonians make informed decisions and maintain a resilient and affordable energy system. We advance solutions to shape an equitable clean energy transition, protect the environment and public health, and responsibly balance energy needs and impacts for current and future generations.
So we are all in on the clean energy transition at ODOE.
And we should be. Energy – from the fuels we use in our cars and buses to the resources that generate our electricity – causes greenhouse gas emissions. In fact, nearly 30 percent of our emissions come from electricity. Another 14 percent is from direct natural gas use. Over 35 percent, the largest slice of the pie, comes from petroleum use. For those of you who can do fast math, that’s nearly 80 percent of the state’s greenhouse gas emissions that come from the types and the way we use energy.
While energy is clearly a cause of climate change, that means it can also be a solution. We can reduce emissions by using less energy and changing the types of energy we use.
And Oregon has a long history of working to reduce emissions from energy. Did you know that, back in 1990, the state passed the nation’s first law to curb carbon dioxide emissions – the CO2 standard for power plants? It was a small step, but one that set the stage for further action by state lawmakers and the electricity industry.
Fast forward to 2007, when the Oregon Legislature recognized the need for stronger action and developed a set of goals for Oregon to reduce our greenhouse gas emissions by at least 75 percent by 2050. The first benchmark in that bill was that by 2020, Oregon’s emissions were supposed to be at least 10 percent below the emissions level we had in 1990.
2020 came and went – and we weren’t even close to meeting the goal.
But don’t get too depressed: the last few years have brought significant positive changes to energy in Oregon, and we’re making progress. I want to share five examples.
The state’s only coal-fired power plant, PGE’s Boardman facility, closed in October of 2020. That means we no longer generate electricity from coal in Oregon. We still import some coal electricity, which accounts for about 27 percent of our state’s electricity use, but that will be phased out by 2030, thanks to an Oregon law passed in 2015.
We recently celebrated more than 60,000 electric vehicles on Oregon’s roads – a 60-fold increase in just over a decade. Does anyone here drive an EV? If you do, you know that in many ways it’s such a better driving experience, not to mention how great it is to not have to buy gas. So I expect the numbers to increase exponentially as prices come down and more people catch on to how great they are.
After letting clean energy incentives for businesses and homeowners expire in 2017, the state has again started helping consumers offset the upfront costs of renewable energy and energy efficiency. ODOE has launched new financial incentive programs for rooftop solar and batteries, for community renewable energy projects, and for energy efficient wildfire recovery; we’re now working on setting up new programs to get energy efficient electric heat pumps into Oregon homes, building on programs already in place at utilities like the Eugene Water & Electric Board.
The type of large energy facilities being reviewed by the state’s Energy Facility Siting Council, which is staffed by ODOE, has completely changed in the last few years. We no longer have new natural gas plants to review – and that was even before the legislature passed HB 2021, which prevents EFSC from siting new gas facilities. The Council is now seeing mostly solar, and even facilities that combine wind, solar, and battery storage, like PGE’s first of a kind Wheatridge facilities in Morrow and Umatilla counties. EFSC also just approved the Boardman-to-Hemingway transmission line, a 300-mile, 500-kilovolt transmission line, that will help bring some of this clean power to market.
And there were two significant Oregon policies that came to be in the past two years that will help ensure these clean energy trends are here to stay:
The Oregon Department of Environmental Quality’s Climate Protection Program sets a declining limit/cap on greenhouse gas emissions from fossil fuels used throughout the state. Fuels like natural gas and liquid fuels must reduce greenhouse gas emissions by half by 2035 – and by 90 percent by 2050. This includes fuels we use for transportation, in our homes, and in our businesses and industry.
Two years ago the Oregon Legislature passed House Bill 2021, a landmark bill that not only set one of the fastest timelines for emissions-free electricity in the country (100 percent clean by 2040 for most of the state's electricity), but also centers communities of color and rural, coastal, and low-income communities in the transition to clean energy.
It’s hard to overstate how important these two policies are – together, this pair of policies accounts for 97 percent of the modeled reductions Oregon would like to see in the next decade.
Quick commercial break: you can learn about all of these events and more in ODOE’s Biennial Energy Report. The Report includes an interactive online history timeline that can help you understand the events that shaped Oregon’s energy system and provide context for where we are today.
There is no doubt that our state is transitioning toward a clean energy future. But is it happening fast enough?
This year, based on the best available science, the Oregon Global Warming Commission — a governor-appointed body focused on tracking Oregon’s greenhouse gas goals — has recommended updating the state’s goals, making them stronger. The new goals would call for:
Emissions at least 45 percent below 1990 levels by 2030 – just seven years from now
95 percent below 1990 by 2050, and
By 2050, or as soon as practicable, achieving net zero emissions and ultimately net negative emissions.
The Commission outlined a set of actions Oregon can take to reach our next ambitious goal in what the Commission called a “Climate Action Roadmap to 2030.”
Recommendations include strong energy efficiency measures like strengthening the energy code and weatherizing buildings, investing in more renewable energy like solar, supporting more energy storage options, and many others.
What’s remarkable is that the Commission’s analysis found that if Oregon fully implements all existing policies — including 100 percent clean electricity by 2040 and the Climate Protection Program, we could meet our previous 2035 targets. And if we also do the actions outlined in the Roadmap, Oregon could be on track to meet the new goal of at least 45 percent below 1990 levels by 2030.
We could do it. We know how to get there.
That’s quite a turnaround from missing our 2020 goal.
But getting there won’t be easy. There are some big ifs – making sure those programs and policies work as planned, and supporting Oregonians through this transition to make sure it sticks will involve hard decisions. And getting to our 2050 goal will involve aggressive policy and technology advancements.
The 2022 Biennial Energy Report includes a policy brief titled “Charting a Course for Oregon’s Energy Future” that explores what it will take to deeply decarbonize Oregon’s economy by mid-century. ODOE staff reviewed 20 technical studies that indicate it’s possible for Oregon to achieve its climate and clean energy goals through some combination of actions within the four core pillars of deep decarbonization:
Increase energy efficiency to reduce energy consumption: EE is the least cost, least risk, win-win strategy.
Electrify as many end uses as possible: from transportation to heating fuels.
Transition to a clean and renewable electricity system: which means getting rid of all the fossil fuels on the grid and building a lot more renewable energy facilities, and
Develop low-carbon fuels, like hydrogen and renewable natural gas, for those hard-to-electrify sectors.
It sounds simple when you break it down into those four key strategies. But there are multiple pathways within those strategies and combinations of those strategies, and each of those presents unique opportunities and challenges for the state.
We know the path needs to lead toward a more equitable energy future. It’s clear this clean energy transition needs to move forward in a way that doesn’t leave any Oregonians behind.
If you go read the history timeline from the energy report, you’ll see that past energy transitions were not always equitable. For example, as the region installed large hydropower facilities – dams – that generated vast amounts of electricity, these dams blocked the flow of our rivers, flooded sacred fishing grounds, and launched the decline of native salmon populations.
Past programs to incentivize energy efficiency improvements or renewable energy purchases were not equitable. Oregon used to have tax credits for efficient appliances and rooftop solar. In most cases, only homeowners with a tax appetite could take advantage of those incentive programs. They were out of reach for Oregonians with low or moderate incomes who didn’t have the upfront capital to afford improvements. I’m proud that the new incentive programs that ODOE is running avoid some of these issues, in part because they are in the form of grants and rebates instead of tax credits — and also because we are proactively working to make them available to Oregonians with low and moderate incomes and who live in environmental justice communities.
It’s also important to remember that all of these pathways to a clean energy future come with tradeoffs and challenges. For example, electric vehicles have low or zero emissions and lower maintenance costs, but currently they have higher upfront costs than traditional gas-powered vehicles. And not everyone has access to charging at home or in their communities. And how about all that renewable electricity we’re going to need to power those cars and to replace fossil fuel plants. We’ll need to build a lot more wind and solar plants, and they have to go somewhere. Whose land and surrounding communities could be affected?
Doing this right, choosing a path, and making our way down it is going to be a challenge.
The good news is that we’ll have some help. This is where all that federal funding comes in. The 2021 Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act and the 2022 Inflation Reduction Act will bring a significant amount of federal dollars to Oregon to strengthen and support our clean energy transition. That federal funding will help make sure the best choices pencil out and that we can get through this transition in a way that protects consumers and invests in vulnerable communities.
Let’s just talk for a minute about how much money: we’re talking billions of dollars for electric vehicles, battery storage, grid resilience, home energy efficiency, and more. This will be the single largest investment in programs to fight climate change by the federal government in history.
So what does this all mean? Well first of all, it means a lot of hard work. Hard work to prepare, to apply for the funds, to manage them, to ensure transparency and accountability, to provide oversight.
But mostly, this is a huge opportunity. An opportunity to support the state’s clean energy transition and ensure it’s done in a way that improves quality of life and health and safety for our state’s most vulnerable people. It’s an opportunity to do things differently than we have in the past.
I think this is exactly what the smart folks who drafted this legislation, like our very own Professor Dotson, had in mind.
Built right into these federal dollars is a strong equity lens to ensure communities aren’t left behind. The Justice40 initiative requires that at least 40 percent of the benefits from these investments flow to disadvantaged communities, including communities of color, Tribes, Oregonians with low incomes, and other underserved groups.
In preparing for this funding, ODOE has been meeting with stakeholders, communities, and members of the public. A key principle is to use this as an opportunity to work closely with community-based organizations, local governments, like the city of Eugene, and academic partners, like the University of Oregon. It's important that we engage with and learn from communities, ask the hard questions, and push ourselves to come up with collaborative, creative solutions. For example, we have a lot to learn from Eugene’s experience in creating their Climate Action Plan, in which they put together an equity panel and engaged the expertise and lived experience of people who are often left out of these conversations.
I want to end by talking about some of the specific things we’re going to be able to do with these federal dollars. I’ll mention four programs we’re following closely:
Later this month we’ll be submitting an application for $50 million in funding to help improve the resilience of our electric grid. It will help Oregon utilities strengthen their infrastructure and prepare for grid disruptions from wildfires, extreme weather, or even a Cascadia Subduction Zone earthquake.
Moving from community resilience to household resilience, we’re also preparing to apply for $113 million for home energy efficiency retrofits and electric appliance rebates. In addition to reducing energy use and saving Oregonians money, this funding can be used to help people afford heat pumps, which can keep them warm in the winter and cool in the summer. After the 2021 heat dome event in Oregon claimed the lives of more than 100 Oregonians from heat-related illnesses – some in their own homes, the state embraced the idea of increasing the use of life-saving heat pumps – and this federal funding will help us do that.
You may have heard about hydrogen – if you attended PIELC, you may have seen my colleague Rebecca on a panel talking about the opportunities and challenges that hydrogen presents for the state. Oregon has joined Washington and other regional partners to form the Pacific Northwest Hydrogen Association, which submitted an application to the U.S. Department of Energy just last week for a billion (with a b) to develop a clean hydrogen hub in the Pacific NW. The hub would be a combination of projects that generate clean hydrogen and use it to help decarbonize the hard-to-electrify sectors.
Finally, my agency is working closely with the Oregon Dept. of Environmental Quality on the US EPA’s Climate Pollution Reduction Grants, which will fund climate action planning and implementation. This is an opportunity to build on the work of the Oregon Global Warming Commission and put the state on a path to meet our 2050 goal.
Some of this federal funding will arrive through existing energy programs. For other opportunities, Oregon is competing with other states for a share of the available dollars. Some funds will be allocated directly to Oregon communities, while others will come through the Oregon Department of Energy or other state agencies to administer.
We’re hoping Oregonians across the state will get involved and engage with the process to ensure new programs are thoughtfully designed to meet their needs and not leave underserved communities behind.
ODOE is considering equity at every step as it seeks federal funding. We are working to ensure external partners and the public are informed, supported, and know how to participate. We are ready to provide technical assistance to build community capacity and support potential grant recipients where we can, and we’re building cross-agency partnerships to leverage expertise.
We’re especially excited to partner with Tribes and local governments, many of whom – like Eugene – have been at the forefront of efforts to reduce GHG in their communities for years.
It is essential that Oregon gets this right.
We cannot afford to miss meeting our greenhouse gas goals. And it will take fully implementing every program and every policy to make sure we don’t.
This once-in-a-generation federal investment paired with strong Oregon leadership can get us there.