Opportunity to Comment: Draft Report on Reducing Barriers to Clean Energy Deployment
Submit comments through July 2, 2026
The Oregon Energy Strategy identified five pathways that together represent the direction Oregon needs to take to meet its energy policy objectives – including an energy transition that will deliver clean, reliable, and affordable energy to all Oregonians. The five pathways are: (1) Energy Efficiency, (2) Clean Electricity, (3) Electrification, (4) Low-Carbon Fuels, and (5) Resilience.
The second pathway, Clean Electricity, highlights the need to increase transmission capacity to access out-of-state generation resources as well as the potential benefits – from energy resilience to local economic development – of deploying more clean energy generation within the state. The Energy Strategy calls for the state to facilitate energy infrastructure enhancement and expansion while avoiding, minimizing, and mitigating negative impacts on Tribal trust resources, energy burden, natural and working lands, cultural resources, and communities (Clean Electricity Policy 2a).
As one near-term policy action (Electricity Action 5), the Energy Strategy recommended investigating why some proposed clean energy facilities have received approved site certificates from the Energy Facility Siting Council only to wait months or years before beginning construction or simply abandoning their project. Governor Kotek’s Executive Order 25-29 directed the Oregon Department of Energy, in coordination with the Public Utility Commission and the Department of Land Conservation and Development, to conduct such an investigation and produce a report.
The report seeks to understand and identify ways to reduce barriers to the deployment of proposed wind, solar, and battery storage facilities with a nameplate capacity over 20 megawatts that have received siting approval from the Energy Facility Siting Council (via an approved site certificate) or from a county but are not yet built. ODOE hopes that identifying and addressing the barriers these types of clean energy facilities face may provide value to proposed clean energy facilities of all sizes and technology types.
ODOE is now seeking comments on a draft version of the report. Written comments are due by 5 p.m. on Thursday, July 2, 2026. Written comments may be submitted online. ODOE will also hold a listening session on Monday, June 29, 2026, beginning at 4:30 p.m. to receive oral comments. We will host an office-hours event to discuss environmental justice and equity perspectives throughout the report with a particular focus on the Equity and Justice Framework from 9-10:30 a.m. on June 17. Meeting log-in information and other materials will be available on ODOE’s Oregon Energy Strategy website.
ODOE is also working on other implementation efforts, including a Report on Siting and Permitting Large-Scale Electricity Infrastructure, and expects to release a draft for public comment in June 2026.