Continuing its series of interviews with the Northwest's leading energy officials, nwcurrent this month talks with Margie Harris and Tom Foley of the Energy Trust of Oregon. Margie Harris, the Energy Trust’s first full-time employee, serves as the executive director. Tom Foley, who currently serves as president and chairman of the Energy Trust board, has been a member of the board since the organization’s inception.

Established in 2000, the Portland-based Energy Trust of Oregon is currently funded through 2010* by a “public purpose charge,” which constitutes 3 percent of Portland General Electric’s and PacifiCorp’s electricity revenues. Its initial 10-year goals include saving 300 average megawatts (aMW) of electricity, helping meet 10 percent of Oregon’s generation needs with renewable energy over a 10-year time period and bringing energy-saving and renewable energy opportunities to consumers who historically have been under-served.

In Part I of this exclusive interview, Harris and Foley discuss Oregon’s biggest opportunities for energy efficiency, some of the challenges the Energy Trust faces in attempting to meet its goals, and ways in which Oregon's renewable energy portfolio standard would change the Energy Trust's direction.

nwc: What do you see as some of the biggest opportunities in Oregon for energy efficiency?
Foley: They abound. If you look at the industrial sector, you are going to get the biggest results. But on the other hand, if you get a million refrigerators that each is saving a couple hundred kilowatt hours (kWh) each year — which is doable — you get 23 MW or so. So we have to pay attention to all of these sectors, not only because of the numbers game we’re talking about, but because technology can change at any moment and open up big opportunities in some places.
Harris: We waste at least 30 percent of what we use in electricity everyday, and everyone therefore has an opportunity to make a difference. If you are only going to do one thing, the simplest thing to do is change out incandescent light bulbs and put in compact fluorescents (CFLs). The cost of CFLs has come down, the quality has gone up and the availability is very widespread. If you go to Costco, like I did very recently, you’ll see a little sticker on the shelf that says “$9.99 rebate from Bonneville Power Administration.” That’s part of the “Change a Light, Change the World” campaign going on now. Everyone has an opportunity to make a difference.
For businesses, we can match up the business need with the expertise available. The first step is information: What is my opportunity, how do I access your programs, and what will I need to know in order to make a thoughtful decision about my investment? The second piece is dollars. We package together the most opportune things that can be done, and we match those with the financial incentives. Those are the two things we do: We make it easy.

nwc: What are some of the challenges in meeting your goals of saving 300 aMW of electricity and helping meet 10 percent of Oregon’s generation needs with renewable energy?
Foley: When we set the 300 aMW goal, we thought at the time it was a stretch goal. We got some push back from staff who thought it would be hard to attain. But the board thought there was a bunch of things that could happen: Technology was going to change in the 10 years; we are going to get better at implementing it; and there will be, at some point, heightened awareness of what we do because of global climate change, etc. I think all those things have happened to some degree. And I think that what was once a stretch goal is now considered attainable in the 10-year time frame.
Relative to the renewables goal, we set that as a very high goal, and we caveated that by saying we would “help to achieve that.” One of the challenges with that goal is renewable portfolio standards (RPS) passed in Washington and California, and the attractiveness of renewable opportunities in Oregon to help those states meet those standards grew. Our green tag policy was somewhat constraining, and people could get a better deal from California and Washington, so we’ve changed our green tag policy to make it somewhat more flexible.
The 10 percent goal ... could go up to 25 percent, and we’ll focus on some different areas of renewables. I don’t see that as a major challenge, but it would be a shift for the staff.
Harris: The challenge I see is that there is so much interest out there, and people want to shift their interest into action. So it’s funneling them into programs that suit their needs and interests, and keeping those programs accessible, easy and quick, and making sure people can utilize what we have to offer. I call it “surfing the green wave.” There is so much interest in the mainstream publications — not just Sustainable Industries or nwcurrent. It’s everywhere and so persuasive, and yet it creates a lot of heightened awareness. That’s the first step in the continuum. Where we come in is to actually serve people and enable them to take action. And that’s one of the main challenges — making that connection.

nwc: How will the Oregon Renewable Energy Act affect the Energy Trust?
Foley: It will benefit Oregonians. We spend a lot of time with utilities developing utility-scale wind projects. The bill limits us to going after resources below 20 MW. These are the resources that need a lot more hand holding in some ways. They are not as sophisticated as utilities. It’s a niche I think we can play in really well.
Margie: It creates a new focus for the renewable energy programs that we have for 20 MW or less. Starting in January, we will be doing projects that are smaller in nature. We have a good foundation for that through our existing community-scale wind, biopower, solar electric and open solicitation programs. Those programs will continue and we will be shifting resources that had previously been linked to our utility-scale program into those other approaches. We can go further and deeper. We will also be discussing with our board, utilities, the public utilities commission (PUC) and others, different strategies, different partners, perhaps different technologies that are made possible through the advent of this law.
This law allows energy-efficiency investments above the 3 percent and that would apply to PGE and Pacific Power. We are already in discussions with PGE regarding additional opportunities to capture more cost-effective achievable potential energy savings. The law only addresses that fund for residential and commercial customers, not industrial customers. We will be working closely with utilities, our board and the PUC to discuss where the best investment opportunities lie.
The third way the bill impacts Energy Trust, is our life was initially created for 10 years, 2002-2012. Now we will be collecting the public purpose charge through 2025. We’re the singles largest administrator of that public purpose charge. Assuming we will continue to serve in that capacity, it gives us a much more stable source of funding for a longer planning horizon.

*Editor's note: The Oregon Renewable Energy Act extends the life of the Energy Trust of Oregon to 2025. At the time of this writing, Oregon Gov. Ted Kulongoski had not signed the bill into law.