February 5, 2025
Via electronic filing
Oregon Public Utility Commission
201 High Street SE, Suite 100
Salem, Oregon 97301-3398
Re: UM 2348 – Investigation into Integrated Resource Plan (IRP) and Request for Proposals (RFP) Modernization – Comments on Workshop #3
The Green Energy Institute at Lewis & Clark Law School, Multnomah County Office of Sustainability, Mobilizing Climate Action Together, Sierra Club, and Northwest Energy Coalition appreciate the opportunity to provide comments to Commission Staff in docket UM 2348 regarding modernizing the current IRP and RFP Guidelines. We offer four recommendations on Staff’s proposals to improve the RFP process. We also offer four recommendations regarding the IRP process.
Recommendation 1: Direct Utilities to Incorporate Community Impacts in RFP Scoring
We appreciate Staff’s intention to more closely align RFP design and shortlist outcomes with the analysis around IRP preferred portfolio selection in order to attract and capture bids that bring to life the benefits analyzed in the IRP. We also support Staff’s desire to make the IRP–and all the work the utilities and stakeholders put into identifying a preferred portfolio–more useful.
However, we encourage Staff and the Commission to adopt additional steps in the IRP/CEP guidelines and in the RFP guidelines to ensure that community benefit indicators (CBIs) impact both the IRP analysis and bid selection in the RFP. Applying IRP portfolio analysis to the shortlist would be an important step, and revised guidelines should direct utilities to expand and better quantify CBIs in the IRP/CEP. However, that cannot be the only step to ensure that projects selected reflect CBIs, as that would assume that the utility has properly undertaken that analysis and appropriately reflected community benefits and impacts in its preferred portfolio selection process. We support Staff’s efforts to update IRP/CEP guidelines so that the work that goes into IRPs serves a more practical purpose, but we are concerned that these changes alone will not necessarily translate to a project selection process that considers price and also community benefits and impacts.
We recommend specifically revising the draft RFP guidelines to require inclusion of non-price scoring factors that properly represent the CBIs that the utility used in its IRP/CEP analysis. For example, some non-price scoring criteria might include ability to contribute to local economic development, resilience benefits, sited on a brownfield or disturbed land, commitment to utilize agrivoltaics, commitment to pollinator-friendly habitat, sited in an environmental justice community, or commitment to enter into community benefit agreements. Better quantification of these benefits in the IRP will help inform the non-price scoring factors in subsequent RFPs, and clearer quantification of these non-price metrics will help bidders to identify projects that score
well on both traditional price factors, as well as non-price factors that demonstrate value beyond cost and begin to capture the community benefits identified in the IRP.
The RFP guidelines are an appropriate venue for this direction because, while they apply to all utilities regardless of HB 2021 obligations, they could specify that this obligation only applies to resources that the utility plans to use for HB 2021 compliance. However, should Staff or the Commission disagree, the Commission could direct utilities to use non-price scoring factors that reflect CBIs in its CEP Rules or Guidelines.
Recommendation 2: Eliminate Preference for Previously Selected IE
We disagree with Staff’s proposal to allow the utility to use the Independent Evaluator (IE) it selected for the last RFP. We recognize that Staff has retained discretion to direct the utility to use a different IE, but we think it is unwise to build a preference for incumbency into the regulations. The current practice allows the utility to request permission to use the previous IE, allowing stakeholders and the Commission to reflect on the performance of the previous IE and weigh the risk of allowing a continuing relationship. Staff’s proposal puts the onus on the regulator or stakeholders to proactively object to a continued relationship with an IE without the benefit of an explanation from the utility of the advantages.
Recommendation 3: Adopt RFP Streamlining for Certain Categories of Procurement
We support Staff’s recognition of the value of expedited review of certain kinds of RFPs, including PPA-only RFPs and prior-approved RFPs with updated procurement targets (and no other modifications). With respect to PPA-only RFPs, we agree with NIPCC that an affiliate should not be permitted to access this streamlining option, nor should ownership be transferred to the utility with a right of first refusal because such utility involvement or benefit triggers the need for full competitive bidding protections. We also support Staff’s suggestion that a prior-approved RFP with redlined modifications may warrant a limited review, assuming the process allows for discussion of whether the modifications fully address any issues identified with the previously approved RFP.
Recommendation 4: Seriously Consider Developer Recommendations for Improving the RFP Process
Renewable energy developers face historical levels of uncertainty from the federal administration, while at the same time IOUs face historical load growth and non-emitting capacity needs. Oregon agencies should eliminate barriers to participation in Oregon’s energy market. Eliminating IOU preference in the competitive bidding rules will both encourage participation in utility RFPs and result in better projects for ratepayers. Given the level of expected development, Staff must set Oregon on a course for ensuring the market is as competitive as it can be. Eliminating the possibility of a utility’s benchmark team from accessing highly confidential bidder information from any potentially relevant RFPs, providing access to utility-owned assets if the utility itself plans to use those assets in its benchmark bid, and appealability of orders at the conclusion of the RFP process.
Recommendation #5: Consider a process that allows non-bidder stakeholders to request portfolio runs in the selection of the final shortlist
We appreciate Staff’s proposal to allow the IE and Staff to request portfolios that the utility must test while engaging in the selection of its final short list. We recommend that Staff include the ability of non-bidder stakeholders to request portfolios that the utility should also run at this stage of the process.
Recommendation #6: The Commission must reassert its discretion to either acknowledge or not-acknowledge IRP Updates
We appreciate Staff’s thinking around streamlining the IRP Update process. Given recent experiences with IRP Updates, we recommend that draft IRP Guideline revisions expressly confirm the Commission’s authority to issue an acknowledgement or non-acknowledgement order for IRP Updates, regardless of whether the utility seeks acknowledgement or not. It is important for the Commission to be able to signal its concern with an IRP Update, even in a future streamlined format.
We also recommend that the Commission acknowledges versus accepts IRP Updates, as we understand that these documents will likely continue being an important source of inputs for PURPA and Energy Efficiency avoided cost determinations, as well as evidence in future rate cases. Absent some clarity of the implication of shifting from acknowledgement to acceptance, acknowledgement (or not) is the more appropriate determination. We are concerned about introducing a new regulatory term that could cause confusion, especially if it remains unclear what the value of “accepting” an IRP Update is to the utility’s planning and future investment decisions or to the calculations that rely on IRP Update numbers.
Recommendation #7: CEP Guidelines should retain the requirement that CEPs include Community Based Renewable Energy targets
In its January 8, 2025 comments, Pacific Power states that it “opposes any requirement to establish a [CBRE] target or a quota, as it could undermine the relationships and goodwill it has cultivated with . . . communities.”1 Staff referenced that feedback in Workshop 3. Pacific Power justifies its position by stating that “CBREs are inherently community-led initiatives, developed in collaboration with the Company[,]” and that it “cannot impose projects on communities that do not wish to proceed.” We support Staff’s draft language requiring that CEPs include CBRE targets, and find the Company’s rationale for opposing it flawed and confusing.
The Company claims that it cannot be expected to provide community impact assessments for proxy resources because these benefits need to be developed in collaboration with local communities and are site specific. We have already seen Oregon utilities set CBRE targets in their CEP, and modeling CBREs is not the unviable exercise that the Company describes.2 Pacific Power is familiar with and could rely on proxy CBREs with an adder that aims to capture community benefits, as PGE did in its 2023 CEP/IRP. Pacific Power’s concern about breaking 2 Id.
1 UM 2348, Pacific Power Workshop No. 2 Comments at 8 (Jan. 8, 2025).
trust with communities due to articulating a CBRE target in the CEP is confusing. Like other resources identified in resource planning, including CBRE targets in a CEP does not need or require specifying locations or communities, nor does it force a particular community to accept a resource. Besides, our experience with communities in Pacific Power’s service territory is that they are likely to welcome community-benefitting resources, especially when grounded in the thoughtful outreach that the Company describes in its comments.3 These claims are excuses for not taking a proactive approach to identifying not just the community benefits but also the system benefits of CBREs, which can provide values including avoided transmission system costs and better resilience to upsets.
Recommendation #8: IRP Guidelines should require an accessible public process, and should clarify that advisory groups cannot take the place of an open, public IRP process.
Staff’s Workshop 3 slide include the following question and answer from previously received feedback:
4.f. Define “public” for the purpose of “public input”. Are advisory groups considered “public”? Yes, Advisory groups count as “public”. Participation within the current IRP public input processes conducted by each utility would be sufficient to meet the proposed guidance in 4.b. and 4.f.
We strongly encourage Staff to require a robust public process around IRPs and CEPs. Utilities should not be permitted to select membership and limit participation in IRP and CEP forums as that would negatively impact the IRP process and the ability of stakeholders to learn from one another and meaningfully engage and shape utility planning. For example, one of Oregon’s utilities proposed last year moving to an advisory committee model for its IRP, with utility-selected representatives from various stakeholder sectors. Only advisory-group members would have had permission to weigh in and ask questions during IRP meetings, while those not represented in the advisory group could listen to meetings but would only get to weigh in after the fact. While that change did not move forward, it reinforced for our stakeholder community the importance of Commission direction of public, open process in utility resource planning.
We already have negative experiences trying to effect change when the utility limits public participation. For example, a few other utilities in the wider Pacific Northwest limit input in resource planning in the way the Oregon utility proposed last year. Additionally, some Oregon utilities take, or have suggested, a similarly closed approach to public input in other subject areas. We are worried that these efforts are part of a larger effort to limit public participation in utility planning more broadly, which is anathema to the Commission’s work over the past several years, if not decades, to broaden public input and demystify the Commission’s work for the public. As a result, we recommend that Staff’s draft guidelines require an open process and limit any future efforts to close the public input process in utility resource planning and in clean energy planning.
3 Id.
Sincerely,
Carra Sahler, GEI
Rose Monahan, Sierra Club
Pat DeLaquil, MCAT Steering Committee
Silvia Tanner, Multnomah County Office of Sustainability
Fred Heutte, NW Energy Coalition