Pacific Power and Portland General Electric — the state’s two largest investor-owned monopoly electric utilities — will need to show continual progress towards the state's emissions reduction targets, a judge recently ruled. (Dana DiFilippo/New Jersey Monitor)
Oregon’s largest electric utilities will need to show continual progress towards the state’s greenhouse gas emissions reduction targets or face enforcement from the Oregon Public Utility Commission, a judge ruled.
Tuesday’s written ruling from Marion County Circuit Court Judge Channing Bennett follows a spoken directive Bennett gave in November and clears up any uncertainty over the commission’s authority to ensure progress is met on House Bill 2021.
That law requires Pacific Power and Portland General Electric — the state’s two largest investor-owned monopoly electric utilities collectively serving nearly 75% of the state’s electricity users — to reduce their greenhouse gas emissions 80% by 2030, 90% by 2035 and 100% by 2040.
Bennett rejected an appeal from lawyers for PacifiCorp, Pacific Power’s parent company, who argued the commission lacked the power to hold the company accountable for showing “continual progress” in meeting the targets established by the state Legislature five years ago. That’s because commissioners had not defined what “continual progress” meant, the lawyers said.
The case stemmed from a 2023 clean energy plan the company submitted to the Public Utility Commission as required by state law, meant to outline steps the company would take to reduce emissions and ensure reliable service and affordability.
Commissioners determined Pacific Power’s plan was insufficient as it did not include contracting with new clean energy producers to buy more power from them and cancelled a procurement process the company had begun in 2022 for purchasing more clean energy from producers. Instead, the plan outlined several strategies the company might undertake to reduce emissions, but did not commit to them.
“We simply cannot find that backsliding on emissions reductions without committing to a plan for improvement is continual progress, even if it represents a company’s best efforts under challenging circumstances and even though PacifiCorp has continued to advance its analysis and planning,” commissioners wrote.
In 2024, they proposed requiring the company to buy more clean energy from producers on the open market, which PacifiCorp appealed.
Bennett’s ruling affirmed that the commission has the power to ensure companies are making continual progress and that it does not need to define what that means.
“Absent a definition by the Legislature or the Commission, the phrase ‘continual progress’ is to be interpreted in accordance with the plain meaning of those two words,” Bennett wrote. “Backsliding on emission reductions without committing to a plan for improvement does not meet the plain meaning of ‘continual progress.’”
The watchdog Oregon Citizens’ Utility Board, the Green Energy Institute at Lewis and Clark University Law School, and the nonprofits Sierra Club and Renewable Northwest intervened on behalf of the Public Utility Commission in the case. They argued that Pacific Power was attempting to delay implementation of the state law and its legally mandated emission reduction targets, and to delay adding more clean energy resources to its power mix.
“The legislature didn’t anticipate that the utilities would do nothing and then all of a sudden in 2030 reduce their emissions, but that every year they would be taking steps to reach that target,” said Rose Monahan, senior attorney for the Sierra Club. “We were very vindicated to see that a judge who isn’t steeped in the weeds here also just sort of got it.”
Monahan said advocates suspected PacifiCorp’s 2023 Clean Energy Plan did not include more plans to buy clean energy on the open market or to build it themselves due to financial insecurity over the company’s liability in several 2020 powerline-ignited wildfires.
Simon Gutierrez, a spokesperson for PacifiCorp, said in an email that Pacific Power has improved upon its 2023 clean energy plan, and that its most recent clean energy plan presented to the commission in 2025 shows it will exceed the state’s timeline for decreasing emissions by creating and buying clean energy.
By 2030, he said, the company will reach an 85% reduction of emissions in Oregon, and reach a more than 90% reduction by 2035.
But, he added, “the current plan for clean energy deployment in Oregon will impact the cost of living for Oregonians and is becoming increasingly risky for utilities. PacifiCorp urges state leaders to consider these affordability challenges and also work to streamline the approval process for major infrastructure projects.”
The Public Utility Commission “remains committed to ensuring all regulated utilities make continual progress toward the state’s emissions‑reduction goals,” said Kandi Young, a commission spokesperson. “These standards were established by the Legislature to protect Oregon customers, support grid reliability, and advance the state’s transition to a cleaner energy future.”
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