News

Members of the Council today elected Bill Bradbury, one of Oregon’s two members, to chair the regional energy planning agency in 2013. Bradbury was vice chair in 2012; the Council elects officers annually.

In just seven years, one of the two coal-fired power plants in the Northwest and one unit at the other will shut down, reducing the region’s power supply by an amount equal to about twice the power demand of Seattle.

The Council recently convened a three-person panel of leading energy planning and analysis experts to review its Regional Portfolio Model (RPM). RPM is the primary analytical modeling tool that Council staff uses to perform cost and risk analyses of resource

Wind power and developments outside the Northwest are changing the character of the Northwest electricity system, but the power supply will remain adequate over the next five years with the addition of new generation and/or additional energy-efficiency equal to the

A report on the importance of food webs to ecosystem health and fish restoration efforts in the Columbia River Basin, written by the Council's Independent Scientific Advisory Board last year, has recently been published as an article for an

The ubiquitous compact fluorescent bulb, which played a major role in improving the efficiency of electricity use and lowering consumers’ bills in the Northwest, was an emerging technology just 20 years ago. Today the hunt for new technologies must continue

Langley Gulch Power Plant in southwest IdahoOne of the trends since the release of the Council's Sixth Power Plan in 2010 has been reduced carbon emissions from the electricity sector.In a recent presentation on CO2 emissions, Power Division Director

In 2011, the Pacific Northwest set a new annual record for energy efficiency improvements -- and did so for one-fourth the cost of power from the most efficient new generating plants, according to a Council survey of the region’s electric

Since the Council released its Sixth Power Plan in 2010, a lot has happened.The mid-term assessment of the plan, a blueprint to an economical and reliable power system, will take stock of the changes and how they affect the Council's

Rhonda Whiting, a Montana member and vice chair of the Northwest Power and Conservation Council, assumed the chairmanship of the four-state energy and fish and wildlife planning agency this month, taking the place of Oregon member Joan Dukes who resigned