A draft report to Congress briefly outlines progress the Northwest Power and Conservation Council made in fiscal year 2023 on its Power Plan and Columbia River Basin Fish and Wildlife Program. The draft report was approved to go out for public comment until Dec. 10 by the Council last week at its meeting in Portland.
Each year the Northwest Power and Conservation Council delivers a report to Congress on its fiscal year activities and progress for both power and its fish and wildlife program. The “Fiscal Year 2023 Annual Report to Congress” (https://www.nwcouncil.org/fs/18952/2024-5.pdf) is required to be submitted every January by the 1980 Northwest Power Act.
The final report will be submitted to Senate Committee on Energy and Natural Resources, House Committee on Energy and Commerce, and House Committee on Natural Resources. Comments should be submitted to [email protected].
The report is a brief overview of progress on the 2021 Northwest Power Plan as well as progress in the Council’s Fish and Wildlife Program mitigation efforts, and it includes reports on Council public affairs and administration. The draft report provides very little detail and instead puts a spotlight on selected accomplishments.
Fish and Wildlife
In his introduction to the draft report, Bill Edmonds, Executive Director of the Council, wrote that the Council’s “Columbia Basin Fish and Wildlife Program is one of the largest fish and wildlife mitigation efforts in the world. Ongoing staff work has focused on understanding and assessing the investments made over the last 40 years of the Program, no small feat given the breadth and diversity of projects and partnerships. While the challenges have been considerable and varied, and there is still much to be done, the Basin would no doubt have looked very different without the Council’s Program and decades of dedication and hard work from federal, state, and tribal fish and wildlife managers.”
The report touts 40 years of the Program, with the latest being the 2020 Addendum to the 2014 Program. Over that 40 years, the Columbia River basin has seen uneven returns of adult salmon and steelhead. In a graph, it shows Chinook, coho and sockeye salmon, along with steelhead returns from 1983 to 2001 that add up to under 1 million anadromous fish each year, and more generally around 500,000 total returns. More recently, the graph shows returns more consistently (not every year) at 1 million or more fish. 2015 returns are the highest at a total of 2.5 million fish. Returns in 2022 were about 1.8 million and in 2023 returns were just under 1.5 million fish.
The report highlights salmon reintroduction efforts in the upper Columbia River where fish habitat has been blocked since 1938 when Grand Coulee Dam was built. Since 2000, the Council’s Fish and Wildlife Program, at the recommendation of Upper Columbia tribes, has included a provision calling for consideration of the feasibility of reintroducing anadromous fish into areas where they had been blocked by dams, the report says. The Council’s Fish and Wildlife Program has continued to include reintroduction under a science-based, phased approach.
Reintroduction got a boost in September 2023 when the Upper Columbia United Tribes – the Confederated Tribes of the Colville Reservation, the Coeur d’Alene Tribe, and the Spokane Tribe of Indians – and the U.S. government struck a historic, 20-year agreement to reintroduce salmon in the Upper Columbia that could garner up to $300 million in federal funding. BPA committed $200 million over 20 years to the plan, while other federal agencies committed to seeking an additional $100 million from Congress, the draft report says.
The Council’s Fish and Wildlife Division is beginning the process of updating the 2014 Program and 2020 Addendum.
Power
In his introduction, Edmonds wrote that the “Council’s 2021 Power Plan was adopted as major shifts in the Northwest power system were underway. The decreasing cost of wind and solar made renewables more competitive, ambitious clean energy and decarbonization policies and goals were set at federal, state, and local levels, and utilities made plans to retire or convert coal plants across the West. These trends continued in FY 2023, with additional challenges including increased forecasts for load growth driven by data centers and electric vehicles, climate change and extreme weather events, and transmission system constraints.’
The Council is a leader in the nation to adopt a sophisticated multi-metric approach to loss of load probability. With a multi-metric approach, it is now possible to fully understand the shape and size of adequacy issues, which is a major advancement in helping the Council and the region plan for needed solutions, according to the report. The adequacy metrics were adopted in 2023.
The Council’s 2021 Power Plan recommended development of at least 3,500 MW of renewables. This was driven by low costs and a regional commitment to greenhouse gas emission reductions. Energy efficiency, demand response (lowering consumer energy use at peak times), and balancing reserves were also core components of the plan strategy, the draft report says.
The region is making progress on renewables, implementing demand response programs, achieving cost-effective efficiency and keeping sufficient balancing reserves available in the short-term. “Over the long-term, the Western Resource Adequacy Program and markets should send the signals necessary to ensure sufficient reserves,” the draft report says
Since 1983, the Regional Technical Forum, which advises the Council on energy efficiency, is reporting over 7,600 average megawatts in savings from energy efficiency, avoiding more than 24 million metric tons of CO2, which is the amount of carbon sequestered in 29 million acres of U.S. forestland annually.
The Power Division of the Council has begun an update of its 2021 Power Plan, which is due for completion in 2025.
Public Affairs
“Congress gave us a third charge in the Northwest Power Act: to inform and involve the public in our decision-making processes in each of our four states – Oregon, Washington, Idaho, and Montana,” Edmonds wrote in his introduction to the draft report.
In FY 2023, the Council held meetings in Corvallis, OR, Coeur d’Alene, ID, Victor, MT, and Wenatchee, WA, in addition to the Council’s main office in Portland. All meetings are open to the public and can be accessed via webinar, Edmonds wrote.
The Council’s website, www.nwcouncil.org, provides news, documents, databases, and other information. Since 2008, the Council has hosted an annual field trip for staff members of the Northwest congressional delegation during the August congressional recess.
Administration
The Bonneville Power Administration funds the Council based on an estimate of Bonneville’s forecasted annual firm-power sales. Funding for the Council does not come from annual federal appropriations or from state governments, the draft report says.
The Council says it is conservatively managing its budget that has grown over the past 40 years at a rate less than inflation, but it is now bumping up against the cap established by the Power Act. The Act envisioned that Bonneville’s firm power sales would increase as the region’s electric utilities were allowed to place additional loads on Bonneville, but that has not occurred. BPA’s forecasts for firm power sales over the past 20 years has not increased significantly and has even declined in some years, due in part to the Council’s energy efficiency work authorized and required by the Act.
The Council says it is engaging with Bonneville in “mutually identifying and developing a path forward that will allow the Council to carry out its responsibilities as mandated by Congress.”