The year-end emergency that does exist in Washington state was caused by record rainfall and widespread flooding. (President Donald Trump declared a federal emergency and authorized disaster relief.) Thousands of people have been forced from their homes, and damage to major highways will take months to repair.
“It's so ironic that when we had a real emergency, they chose this time to fabricate an energy emergency,” said KC Golden, a member of the Northwest Energy and Conservation Council, an intergovernmental agency created by Congress to ensure reliable energy supplies while protecting the environment.
While there are no emergency power shortages in the Pacific Northwest, the region, like much of the United States, has a serious and worsening long-term power supply problem.
There are approximately 100 data centers in Washington and Oregon. Oregon is second only to Virginia in data center capacity, and those centers consume 11 percent of Oregon's electricity, nearly three times the national average, according to the Sightline Institute, a Seattle think tank.
Energy consumption is rising along with the region's booming high-tech economy, its gluttonous appetite for electric vehicles (The Seattle Times reported that 26 percent of new cars registered in Washington in October were electric vehicles) and a climate change-fueled rise in the use of home air conditioners. The Northwest could face a 9-gigawatt power shortfall by 2030, according to a recent utility-funded study. report energy consulting group E3. Nine gigawatts is roughly Oregon's electrical load.
“We're faced with a real energy problem, and we've been slow to solve it,” said Golden, who represents Washington state on the Northwest Energy Council.
The Pacific Northwest gets more energy from hydroelectric dams than any other part of the country (60 percent in Washington), and the region has long been known for low electricity rates. But drought and changing weather patterns (less snow, more rain) have undermined the reliability of the system, which gets most of its power from large federal dams on the Columbia River, North America's largest hydroelectric resource.
