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The Transition from Legacy to the Future
While saving the 775 aMW was a major accomplishment, the nature of the conservation game changed in the early 1990s because of deregulation at the wholesale level and the development of a new generation of gas turbines. Utilities were competing to keep their rates low and any additional costs attributable to conservation were difficult to absorb.
The governors of the four Northwest states created the Comprehensive Review of the Northwest Energy System in 1996 to assess the impact of deregulation on the utilities in the region and to find ways to retain the benefits of the hydro system in the Northwest. The Comprehensive Review recommended that BPA not be responsible for meeting any of the region's load growth and, therefore, not acquire any new resources. This shift away from BPA's centralized conservation purchasing programs led to the Comprehensive Review's recommendation that the region's utilities take up any slack by investing 3 percent of their retail energy service revenues in conservation and renewables.
For more information, call (503)230-3158 or email here.
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