This report is available for public comment through Friday, Dec. 20, 2013. Comments may be sent to comments@nwcouncil.org or mailed to Mark Walker, Director of Public Affairs, NPCC, 851 S.W. Sixth Avenue, Suite 1100, Portland, Oregon, 97204.
According to the draft report, the Northwest’s electricity system remains the cleanest in the nation. More than 70 percent of the region’s energy supply, including energy efficiency, is carbon-neutral, and the efficiency of electricity use continues to improve. The Northwest is on track to meet the Council’s goal in its Sixth Northwest Power Plan (2010) to improve efficiency by 1,200 average megawatts in the five years between 2010 and 2014. Expressed as power generation, that is enough for a city the size of Seattle.
Development of renewable resources, mainly wind power, has continued in the Northwest, but the pace may slow in the future because of changes in renewable energy policies in California, where much of the wind power generated in the Northwest is consumed.
Meanwhile, in 2013 the Council began a once-every-five-years process of reviewing and amending its Columbia River Basin Fish and Wildlife Program, the largest regional effort of its kind in the nation. The program directs more than $250 million of Bonneville Power Administration revenues annually to habitat improvements, hatchery operations, hydropower system fish-passage improvements, research, and related activities. Key issues identified by the Council for consideration in the amendment process include the future use of fish hatcheries; biological objectives for the program; habitat in the Columbia River estuary; the impact of the ocean environment; and monitoring, evaluation, research, and data management.
