Trump’s energy secretary orders a Washington state coal plant to remain open
The year-end state of emergency that exists in Washington state was caused by record rainfall and widespread flooding. (President Donald Trump declared a federal state of emergency and authorized disaster aid.) Thousands of people have been displaced, and damage to major highways will take months to repair.
“It is so ironic, when we are facing a real emergency, that they have chosen this moment to manufacture an energy emergency,” said KC Golden, a member of the Northwest Power and Conservation Council, an interstate agency created by Congress to ensure reliable power while protecting the environment.
Although there is no emergency power shortage in the Pacific Northwest, the region, like much of the United States, faces a serious and worsening electricity supply problem in the long term.
Washington and Oregon are home to approximately 100 data centers. Oregon is second to Virginia in data center capacity, and the centers consume 11 percent of Oregon’s power supply, nearly three times the national average, according to the Sightline Institute, a Seattle think tank.
Energy consumption is rising alongside the region’s booming high-tech economy, its outsized appetite for electric cars (the Seattle Times reported that 26 percent of new cars registered in Washington in October were electric vehicles), and the climate change-driven growth of home air conditioning. The North West could face an electricity deficit of 9 gigawatts by 2030, according to a recent report funded by energy consultancy group E3. Nine gigawatts is roughly Oregon’s electricity load.
“We’re facing a real energy supply challenge and we’ve been slow to address that challenge,” said Golden, who represents Washington state on the Northwest Energy Council.
The Pacific Northwest gets more of its electricity from hydroelectric dams than any other part of the country (60 percent in Washington), and the region has long enjoyed cheap electricity rates. But drought and climate change (less snow, more rain) have undermined the reliability of the system, which draws most of its energy from large federal dams on the Columbia River, North America’s largest hydroelectric resource.
