For a long time, the Northwest’s electrical grid was relatively easy to manage. Demand was flat, planning advanced at a steady pace, and utilities reliably kept the lights on at a reasonable cost. We are now living in a new era. 

Data centers are rapidly expanding in our region, and their energy needs are surging along with our electricity bills. The high end of projections forecast data centers using as much as 4,000 MW by 2029 in the Northwest (that’s enough energy to power five Seattles!). Additionally, manufacturers need more power, folks need more cooling, and everything from cars to home heating are going electric.

The question facing Oregon and Washington isn’t whether we need more power. It’s how we meet that demand while protecting reliability, affordability, and our clean energy commitments.

The evidence is clear: the most reliable and affordable path forward is faster deployment of clean energy, paired with transmission expansion and grid modernization. Clean energy is affordable, reliable energy. The greatest risk to reliability isn’t clean energy, it’s delay.

Why a rush to new gas plants increases risk rather than reduces it.

This Congress and the Trump administration’s unprecedented attacks on the renewables industry threaten to make wind and solar projects harder to build and more expensive. Yet the federal push to prop up coal plants and push new gas plants will solve neither affordability nor reliability problems for consumers.

Across the country, the fossil fuel industry is taking advantage of surging energy demand to push huge new gas plants and pipelines as a “bridge” solution, and to prop up expensive coal. Last month, the Trump administration even forced Washington’s last coal plant to stay open past its long-planned retirement in December 2025, pointing to an alleged “energy emergency.” (Climate Solutions and others are fighting that illegal order!)

Here in the Northwest, we’ve already seen through the false promise that expanding fossil fuels can save us. Major new investment in gas would lock ratepayers into decades of higher costs, expose us to volatile fuel prices, and risk creating stranded assets as clean energy continues to get cheaper. It would also run counter to our region’s own planning and needs.

The Northwest Power and Conservation Council (NWPCC) has been minding these trends of accelerating load growth driven by data centers and electrification, with winter peak risks tied to cold weather and hydropower variability. Regional and state analyses, including Oregon Department of Energy’s recent State Energy Strategy, consistently find that renewables paired with storage, demand response, and energy efficiency can meet growing demand and reliability needs more affordably than expanded reliance on fossil fuels, if deployed quickly. 

That’s worth repeating. Expanded gas buildout is unnecessary to maintain reliability if clean energy resources are deployed at scale and on schedule. What the region lacks is not fossil fuels, but rather clean, flexible capacity that can respond quickly to peak events and system stress. Unnecessary delays in clean energy and transmission development are what could truly risk system reliability. 

National trends back this up: solar, wind, and storage are the lowest-cost and fastest-to-deploy sources of new electricity, outperforming gas even in states without clean energy requirements. Nationally, over 90% of new energy capacity that came online in 2025 was solar, wind, and storage.

In contrast, fossil gas exposes customers to fuel price volatility and long construction timelines. With supply chain bottlenecks, it can take 5-7 years to deploy a new gas turbine, after which average customers will be forced to cover the cost of any new gas plants for decades, even after they become obsolete. Our region also doesn’t produce its own gas (or coal, or oil), meaning we have to import these fossil fuels from far away and are vulnerable to paying more when there are global price shocks. In contrast, solar and wind energy can be homegrown and stored locally right here in the Northwest.

Unleashing affordable, reliable clean energy is the best way to meet the growing demand.

Reliability, affordability, and climate progress are not competing goals. Acting quickly to scale up clean energy and transmission is the lowest-risk, lowest-cost way to power the Northwest’s future. Here’s some top ways we can accelerate this path forward:

• Get more out of the existing grid and energy system

Grid-enhancing technologies (GETs) can increase transmission capacity quickly and at lower cost than new lines alone. Utilities are already beginning to deploy cost-effective GETs to relieve congestion and improve reliability, but broader policy direction and regulatory clarity would accelerate adoption.

Energy efficiency, demand response, and virtual power plants—leveraging EVs, heat pumps, and “smart” meters and buildings to be a valuable resource for grid resilience—are proven tools for reducing winter peak demand, one of the Northwest’s primary reliability challenges. Replacing expensive, inefficient electric resistance heating with heat pumps would lower both peak load and folks’ energy costs. 

• Build clean energy and transmission faster 

Delays in permitting and siting of new solar, wind, storage, and transmission projects are creating a reliability risk. Oregon Governor Tina Kotek and Washington Governor Bob Ferguson have recently issued executive orders to accelerate affordable clean energy development ahead of looming federal tax credit expirations. More is needed from both states’ legislatures and agencies, as well as utilities and the Bonneville Power Administration (BPA), to speed things up while maintaining environmental, tribal, and community protections.

Transmission expansion is especially critical to bring more power to where it’s needed. Strong coordination with BPA (who owns 75% of all transmission in the region) is essential to ensure timely investment and improved interconnection processes that benefit ratepayers across states. New approaches, such as establishing state Transmission Authority-type entities to facilitate state-level planning, financing, and development, can help get crucial transmission projects off the ground.

No single utility can meet reliability needs alone. Cross-utility and cross-state planning reduces redundancy, lowers costs, and avoids unnecessary gas buildout.

• Invest in distributed, local resilience

  Distributed energy resources, including community and local solar + storage projects, microgrids, and demand response, can help address the Northwest’s specific risks more effectively than centralized new gas plants. These resources improve reliability during cold snaps, reduce transmission congestion, and keep critical facilities powered during outages.

  Large new loads, including data centers, could bring clean supply and flexible demand with them. A new study by Grid Lab and Sylvan Energy Analytics shows what a game changer this large load flexibility could be to address reliability risks. A recent Rewiring America study found upgrading households to heat pumps, solar and storage would be a fast and beneficial way to harness the energy these power-hungry data centers need. Ensuring that load growth is met by clean energy, energy efficiency, and demand response participation, coupled with laws like Oregon’s POWER Act that protect other customers from the data centers’ energy costs, could turn reliability challenges into system assets.

Scaling up affordable, reliable clean energy is the most effective way to meet growing demand. By moving quickly on renewable energy and transmission, we can deliver the dependable power, lower costs, and real climate progress we need now and for the future.

Want to support our efforts to make this reliable, affordable clean energy future a reality in the Northwest? Here are near-term opportunities in both states’ legislative sessions to deliver near-term solutions that protect affordability, jobs, and community resilience: