Section 1: Introduction

1.1 Commitment to Monitor and Evaluate the Region’s Evolving System and Produce a Mid-term Assessment

The Council’s work to monitor and evaluate the region’s evolving system and policies will keep pace with the rapidly changing industry. These changes will be reported as new results and analysis are available and reflected in the 2021 Power Plan’s mid-term assessment. The Council will continually monitor and assess a range of uncertainties underlying the resource strategy with significant implications for resource adequacy.

Section 3: Demand Forecast

3.1 Zero- or Low-Emission Vehicles as an Emissions Reduction Strategy

The Council recommends policy makers and utilities that are pursuing regional emissions reductions utilize strategies that increase the adoption and use of zero- or low-emission vehicles. As these strategies are pursued, we recommend working with the Council, other regional bodies and power planners to ensure an adequate electric system through the vehicle stock transition.

3.2 Renewable Natural Gas in Long-Term Planning and as a Method to Reduce End-Use Natural Gas Emissions

The Council recommends incorporation of renewable natural gas into utility and other regional long-term planning including identifying the least-cost and lowest net emission profile projects to produce renewable natural gas that may be blended into the gas system. The Council also recommends regional utilities support renewable natural gas, when appropriate, as a method to reduce end-use natural gas emissions, supply low-carbon fuel for transportation, and provide diversity and price stability with a regionally sourced fuel product.

Section 5: Energy Conservation Program

5.1 Regional Conservation Target

The Council recommends Bonneville and the regional utilities plan to acquire between 750 and 1,000 average megawatts of cost-effective energy efficiency by the end of 2027 and a minimum of 2,400 average megawatts by the end of 2041. 

5.2 Bonneville Conservation Target

To support both Bonneville’s and the regional power system’s needs, the Council recommends that Bonneville acquire between 270 and 360 average megawatts of cost-effective energy efficiency by the end of 2027 and at least 865 average megawatts by 2041. Aligning with the Council’s analysis of remaining potential and historical achievements, this level represents 36 percent of the overall regional target. Within the first six years, the Council recommends that Bonneville plan to acquire a minimum of 243 average megawatts of cost-effective efficiency from programmatic savings. This includes savings currently funded through Bonneville’s program, whether via the Energy Efficiency Incentive or self-fund utility contributions, as well as NEEA market transformation initiatives. The remaining efficiency may come through additional programmatic activity, market change, or codes and standards

As such, to help ensure that the necessary levels of cost-effective conservation are acquired, we recommend the Bonneville:

  1. Maintain ratepayer-funded efficiency programs (utility direct programs and market transformation initiatives) at a funding level sufficient to achieve the 2027 goals;
  2. Continue to fund research and development on emerging technologies in an amount commensurate with 2020 levels or greater;
  3. Continue to fund regional market research, stock assessments, evaluation, and related analysis in an amount commensurate with 2020 levels or greater;
  4. Support initiatives to enhance building codes and appliance standards, at both the state and federal governments.

Bonneville should work with the Council on budgeting and evaluation of energy efficiency achievements to accomplish the Council’s recommendations and to understand and address the underlying cause of any shortfall.

5.3 Actions in Support of the Target

  1. Conservation acquisition programs should be designed to ensure that regionally cost-effective levels of efficiency are economically feasible for the consumer.
  2. Conservation acquisition programs should be targeted at conservation opportunities that are not anticipated to be developed by consumers.
  3. Conservation acquisition programs should be designed so that their benefits are distributed equitably.
  4. Conservation acquisition programs should be designed to secure all measures in the most cost-efficient manner possible.
  5. Conservation acquisition programs should be designed to take advantage of naturally occurring “windows of opportunity” during which conservation potential can be secured by matching the conservation acquisitions to the schedule of the host facilities or to take advantage of market trends. In industrial plants, for example, retrofit activities can match the plant’s scheduled downtime or equipment replacement; in the commercial sector, measures can be installed at the time of renovation or remodel.
  6. Conservation acquisition programs should be designed to capture all regionally cost-effective conservation savings in a manner that does not create lost-opportunity resources. A lost-opportunity resource is a conservation measure that, due to physical or institutional characteristics, will lose its cost-effectiveness unless actions are taken now to develop it or hold it for future use.
  7. Conservation acquisition programs should be designed to maintain or enhance environmental quality.
  8. Conservation acquisition programs should be designed to enhance the region’s ability to refine and improve programs as they evolve.

5.4 Important Attributes of EE

The Council determined a target amount of energy efficiency higher than the baseline conditions portfolio model results to reflect the values of adequacy, resilience, and flexibility… as described as part of the recommendation to the RTF, the Council recommends the region work to better define and quantify these attributes of energy efficiency for enhanced modeling in the next power plan. 

5.5 Importance of NEEA

Looking forward, to achieve the energy efficiency targets, the region will need to continue to support NEEA at levels at least commensurate with 2020 levels.

5.6 Recognizing the Value of Research

 The Council recommends continued support of these five main areas of research: evaluation, market research, regional stock assessments, emerging technology research, and end-use load research.

5.7 Addressing Equity with EE

The Council has identified the four following recommendations in support of programmatic equity efforts:

  1. Establish diversity, equity, and inclusion metrics for programs,
    • The Council recommends that the region convene a series of workshops to investigate existing equity data—encompassing generation, transmission and distribution, and demand-side resources—, share publicly available data sources, and perform a gap analysis to identify areas where further research and data are needed.
  2. Targeted weatherization,
    • In addition to the amount accomplished under the target, the Council recommends the region and Bonneville continue to invest in weatherization programs, targeting those homes that are leaky (in need of duct or air sealing) and/or have zero or limited insulation. The Council recommends the region and Bonneville have a focused effort on finding those homes that have been missed by prior activities.
  3. Develop commercial end-use intensity database and target buildings with high intensity
    • There are historic inequities in the delivery of energy efficiency to commercial customers these specific measure gaps are difficult to identify due to the many building types and customer segments. To better understand the needs, NEEA, with support from the region and Bonneville should develop a reliable commercial building energy use intensity data set. This data set should leverage existing sources and at minimum should capture information about energy use, building type, location, size, and other important customer segment characteristics
  4. Pursue co-funding opportunities.
    • There may be some energy efficiency that the region and Bonneville wants to pursue above and beyond the cost-effective amount to capture those benefits and address past inequities. In these cases, programs should explore co-funding opportunities, partnering with other organizations to achieve the mutual benefit.

5.8 Recommendations for the RTF

To support implementation of this plan, the Council recommends the RTF undertake the following activities: improve valuation of flexibility and resiliency, increase rigor of measure cost analysis, improve measure load profiles, explore the energy efficiency and demand response interface, explore potential guidelines for incorporating equity in evaluation.

  1. Improve Valuation of Flexibility and Resiliency—To improve future power planning the RTF should investigate methods for quantifying the value of flexibility and resiliency for EE measure while insuring symmetric treatment across demand and supply side resources.
  2. Increase Rigor of Measure Cost Analysis—To ensure that EE is treated equitably relative to other supply side resources, the region should invest more resources into improving its incremental cost analysis for EE measures, the RTF in particular should allocate more resources to incremental cost analysis, working to increase the rigor of analysis and identifying areas of uncertainty.
  3. Improve Measure Load Profiles—The RTF should continue to improve its measure load and savings shape profile library for future analysis and invest resources in improving load profiles for temperature sensitive measures to ensure analysis is accurately representing loads across a range of temperatures.
  4. Explore the EE/DR Interface—The RTF should take a more holistic approach to its assessment of measures that provide both EE and DR, including understanding the impacts of energy and capacity savings, as well as costs and benefits, when considering EE and DR opportunities in tandem.
  5. Explore Potential Guidelines for Incorporating Equity in Evaluation—The RTF should explore expanding its Guidelines to provide consistent regional guidance on how best to incorporate equity metrics into the established evaluation process. Through this exploration, the RTF should work with regional entities and equity experts to leverage existing work and determine how it might best fit into the RTF analytical framework.

5.9 Model Conservation Standards

The MCS for the 2021 Power Plan have two main components. The first is that the Council adopts two specific components to the standards to ensure equity in efficiency adoption through codes and standards. The second component provides the standard for conversions (similar to prior MCS) to an electric space or water heating system from another fuel.

  1. Common Appliance Standards—To further efficiency and limit market disruption, Northwest states should consider adopting common standards and work to synchronize updates.
  2. No Backsliding on Codes and Standards—Once a code or standard has been adopted, no state or federal agency should change the standard such that a subset of buildings or appliances are subject to less stringent standards.
  3. Conversion to Electric Space Conditioning and Water Heating—Jurisdictions pursuing economy-wide decarbonization goals should pursue multiple approaches to reduce carbon, including significant energy efficiency investment. Those jurisdictions (state or local governments) or utilities with such decarbonization goals should take actions through codes, service standards, user fees or alternative programs, or a combination thereof, to achieve electric power savings from buildings. These savings should be comparable to those that would be achieved if each building converting to electric space conditioning or water heating were upgraded to include related conservation measures at least as efficient as the lowest-efficiency measure included in the 2021 Plan or adopted by the RTF   

5.10 Surcharge Recommendation

The Power Act authorizes the Council to recommend a surcharge and the Bonneville Administrator may thereafter impose such a surcharge on customers that have not implemented conservation measures that achieve energy savings comparable to those which would be obtained under the Model Conservation Standards in the plan. The Council does not recommend a surcharge to the Administrator under Section 4(f) (2) of the Act at this time.

Section 6: Resource Development Plan

For recommendations on Conservation see 5.1.

6.1 Renewable Resources

For generation resources, the Council recommends the region acquire at least 3,500 megawatts of renewable resources by 2027, as a cost-effective option for meeting energy needs and reducing emissions. The Council also recommends that policymakers and utilities pursuing aggressive emissions reductions evaluate adding more renewables as a means of displacing emissions both within their portfolio and in the broader market.

6.2 Siting for New Resources

The Council recommends that the region be mindful of individual and cumulative impacts when siting new resources so that new renewable resource development is carried out in a manner that also protects the wildlife, fish, and cultural resources of the Pacific Northwest.

6.3 Demand Response

The Council has several recommendations related to demand response in the Northwest:

  1. The Council recommends utilities examine two demand response products: residential Time-of-Use (TOU) rates and Demand Voltage Regulation (DVR) as a means to offset the electric system needs during peaking and ramping periods and to reduce emissions.
  2. The Council recommends Bonneville and regional utilities consider the value of adequacy, capacity, and emissions reduction when evaluating demand response in integrated resource plans and other analyses.
  3. The Council encourages Bonneville, regulators, and utility leadership to support investment in AMI architecture as a tool to encourage the most efficient use of grid resources.  

The Council will track regional demand response implementation to assess progress, recognizing that the lack of a regionwide economic signal for capacity makes adopting demand response challenging.

6.4 Electricity Markets

The Council recommends Bonneville and the regional utilities, along with their associations and planning organizations, work together and with others in the Western electric grid to explore the potential costs and benefits of new market tools, such as capacity and reserves products, that contribute to system accessibility and efficiency.

We also recommend the region concurrently work toward more collaborative understanding of the impacts of changes in market liquidity outside the region and the implications especially for peaking and ramping periods and pursue additional collaborative approaches to mitigate identified risks.

6.5 Mid-term Assessment

In the mid-term assessment for the 2021 Plan, we will update and examine findings related to the plan and examine any changes since the plan was finalized. While some circumstances will undoubtedly change after publication of the plan, we will examine if anything calls into question the fundamental strategy described in the plan.

Section 8: Recommendation for Amount of Power and Resources Bonneville Power Should Acquire to Meet or Reduce the Administrator’s Obligation

For recommendations on Conservation see Section 5 recommendations.

8.1 Enable Customer Utilities to Pursue Demand Response Measures

Bonneville should work to enable and encourage its customer utilities to pursue these and other low-cost and high-value demand response measures in an equitable manner.

8.2 Use Mid-Term and Long-Term Markets Resources When Needed

We recommend that Bonneville, when it has needs beyond the recommended energy efficiency and demand response resources, look to mid-term and long-term market resources for additional energy.

When Bonneville has needs for electricity in specific locations where the ability to deliver power from the federal system is limited, the Council still anticipates the mid-term and long-term market resources will likely be the low-cost resource alternatives.

8.3 Compare Market Products to Direct Power Purchase Agreements

While the Council recommends purchasing market resources to meet Bonneville’s needs for additional energy, we recognize that there may be situations where a more general market resource may be more expensive that a direct power purchase agreement, or similar arrangement, tied to a specific renewable resource. The Council recommends that Bonneville compare power purchased in this manner to alternative market products, both in price and capability, to ensure that the lowest-cost product that suffices to meet any need identified is purchased on behalf of the region’s electricity consumers.

8.4 Explore Impacts of Rapidly Shifting Market Dynamic on the Hydro System

The Council’s analysis shows a rapidly shifting market dynamic in the Western electricity grid. The impacts, both challenges and opportunities, need to be better understood and explored by all regional entities that have a role in operating the hydro system.

The Council recommends Bonneville play a central role in these future efforts. Bonneville can do this by both incorporating these impacts into its analyses and supporting broader regional efforts, at the Council and other organizations, to study and understand these impacts.

8.5 Considerations for Bonneville’s Next Contract Negotiation

Bonneville should consider in its next contract negotiations how to mitigate the financial risk of acquiring power that may be least-cost but longer duration. Further, it should explore how a wide range of potential future Council recommendations on resource acquisition could be contractually accommodated without substantial risk of shifting costs among regional consumers of electricity at the end of contract periods.

Additionally, in the current contracts, many Bonneville customer utilities see little value in pursuing demand response and are limited in the ability to provide a demand response resource to another utility, both within and external to the pool of Bonneville customer utilities. In future contracts, Bonneville should consider provisions supporting its customer utilities’ development and export of demand response resources.

Section 10: Recommendations for Research and Development

The Council recommends research and development in four key areas:

10.1 Research to Support Effective Implementation of the Conservation Program

The Council recommends the region continues to invest in research in the areas of evaluation, market research, regional stock assessment, and end-use load research. To support this effort the Council recommends:

  1. Continued investment in energy efficiency evaluation, at levels commensurate with today’s investment;
  2. NEEA, Bonneville, and the region’s efficiency programs continue to invest in market research;
  3. The region, through NEEA, continues to invest in regular stock assessments for the residential and commercial sectors;
  4. NEEA, with support of Bonneville, Energy Trust and regional utilities, develop a reliable commercial building energy use intensity dataset; and
  5. The region invest in another stock assessment for the industrial sector (including water and wastewater), with particular focus on motors and motor-driven systems

10.2 Exploration into Alternative Approaches to Power System Operations

The Council recommends the region with our support explore renewable generation impacts on hydro operations, alternative approaches to support renewable integration, transmission and non-wires alternatives, and the role of hydrogen and fuel cell technology.

  1. The Council intends to organize and support an investigation into the potential impact of changing hydro operations due to the increasing penetration of renewable generation and the impact on markets as well as changes in climate, and the potential power system impacts of limiting those changes in hydro operations;
  2. The Council recommends that the region’s utilities, regulators, and Bonneville conduct a study to explore how market liquidity by season and time of day can create price barriers for flexible resources and the cost of mitigating those barriers through greater reserves;
  3. The Council recommends that Bonneville and utilities research opportunities to use demand response to support system balancing;
  4. The Council recommends that the region’s transmission providers work with utilities, load serving entities, NorthernGrid, and others to develop a comprehensive review of the existing state of the transmission system, research potential short-term and long-term solutions to alleviate new resource development barriers while balancing existing long-term contracts and compensation to transmission providers, and explore the potential benefits of implementing a regional transmission operator in the Pacific Northwest;
  5. The Council recommends that the region consider the role of battery storage, targeted demand response, and other demand-side resources to address existing transmission capacity challenges and on a case-by-case basis to address local needs; and
  6. The Council recommends a study of the impacts, benefits, and challenges that large-scale demand and production of hydrogen in the region might have on the power system overall; and in particular, hydro and renewable power.

10.3 Research of Emerging Technologies to Support Development of Future Resource Options

The Council recommends the region continue to invest in researching emerging opportunities in supply-side resources and on demand-side innovations. To support this effort the Council recommends:

  1. The national labs, research institutions, trade allies, and utilities continue to work with developers and manufacturers to research and explore the regional resource potential of supply-side emerging technologies such as offshore wind, small modular nuclear, enhanced geothermal systems, energy storage, carbon sequestration technologies, and other carbon-free resources;
  2. The region to identify potential barriers to deployment of new emerging supply-side resources, including costs, transmission, siting, etc., and work together towards solutions when it is in the best interest of the region;
  3. Efficiency programs, through NEEA, regional universities, national labs, and others should continue to invest in its emerging technology research for efficiency measures;
  4. The RTF increase the rigor of its measure cost analysis to support improved comparison with alternative resources in future resource planning; and
  5. Additional research around demand response opportunities including continuing to develop “non-traditional” application that may provide more value than standard peak reducing products.

10.4 Development of Data and Tools to Enhance Future Power Planning Analysis

The Council recommends the region work on data and tools, the valuation of model inputs, and enhanced metrics and tools for improved modelling. To support this effort the Council recommends:

  1. The region convene a series of workshops to investigate existing equity data—encompassing generation, transmission and distribution, and demand side resources—, share publicly available data sources, and perform a gap analysis to identify areas where further research and data are needed;
  2. Working with the Northwest Gas Association and other interested regional bodies to design a study and define a course of action with the goal being to more fully quantify the upstream methane emissions related to the natural gas consumed within our region and a follow-up study on how best to limit the intended and unintended methane releases related to the natural gas consumed in the region;
  3. The Regional Technical Forum investigate methods for quantifying the value of flexibility and resiliency for energy efficiency measures;
  4. Bonneville, the national labs, NEEA, and regional utilities study the impacts of voltage regulation under current conditions and explore how these results might change with future expected loads; and
  5. The region—including national labs, universities, and state agencies—analyze emissions sources and sinks that may have implications for future power system planning;
  6. Bonneville and the region’s utilities investigate adequacy standards that capture the frequency, duration, and magnitude of potential shortfall events to better understand issues that occur in a system with high renewable generation penetration working with the Council to incorporate improved metrics into future power planning;
  7. Bonneville and the regional utilities working with the Council develop and coordinate on methods to estimate the frequency, magnitude, and duration of potential extreme weather events;
  8. The region, including national labs, universities, and other experts, research how effective the current power system models are at forecasting or simulating system operation and at projecting the future drivers of the demand for electricity. This research should focus on production-cost models, load-forecasting models, and capacity-expansion models.

Section 11: Methodology for Determining Quantifiable Environmental Costs and Benefits and Due Consideration for Environmental Quality, Fish and Wildlife, and Compatibility with the Existing Regional Power System

11.1 Recommendations to Siting Authorities on New Renewable Resource Development

Siting authorities should work to ensure that new renewable resource development is carried out in a manner that also protects the wildlife and fish resources and cultural resources of the Pacific Northwest. The emphasis should be to incorporate “least impact, less conflict” siting principles to push development away from high value lands; ensure deliberate, strategic outreach and engagement in siting processes with fish and wildlife agencies and tribes, and with communities directly impacted by development; and ensure tribes are consulted to understand and preserve cultural resources and traditional uses in the vicinity of developments.

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