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Here's a preview of an interview with Bill Drummond of Western Montana Electric Generating and Transmission Cooperative, which will be in the upcoming Council Quarterly.Q: As a four-state entity, the Council approaches energy planning from a regional rather than

In 2009 we interviewed Idaho Senator James Risch for the Council Quarterly on a number of topics, including the state of the region's energy portfolio.Q: The Northwest's long history of generating electricity from hydroelectric dams, combined with our acquisition of

Interest in demand response, which enables consumers to adjust their electricity use when the power system is stressed, has sharpened recently thanks in part to its potential to help integrate wind energy into the power system.Traditionally, demand response involved enlisting

In an earlier post, we talked about how batteries could help to integrate renewable resources like wind and solar energy into the power system.In another twist on this, Oregon Public Broadcasting is reporting on an unusual partnership between a high-tech

Two years ago, we had the pleasure of talking with Theddi Wright Chappell, the managing director for Cushman & Wakefield's National Green Building and Sustainability Practice and Valuation Services team in Seattle, Washington. Chappell specializes in analyzing the potential value

Interesting story in today's New York Times on using batteries to store electricity:The rapid growth of wind farms, whose output is hard to schedule reliably or even predict, has the nation's electricity providers scrambling to develop energy storage to ensure

One of the interesting trends noted in the Council's Sixth Power Plan was the region's shift from a winter-peaking power system to summer-peaking. This is happening primarily because more homes use air conditioning.Among other things, Northwest energy planners consider three

California is in the midst of an intense debate over its ambitious clean energy initiatives. In 2006, Governor Schwarzenegger signed into law an emissions reduction measure known as AB 32. The law includes both a statewide cap-and-trade plan and aggressive

What began with the discovery of a non-native species of mussels in the Great Lakes has now become a major source of alarm for Western states. The small, thumbnail-sized mollusks were brought into U.S. waters by ocean-going vessels from Eastern

Several weeks ago, a couple of thought-provoking stories came out: Paul Greenberg's Tuna's End in the New York Times and Adam Frank's Inventing the Fish: Science and the Collapse of Ecologies on NPR. Both explore the limits of natural resources