April 06, 2023

GEI in the News

GEI’s Interim Director and Staff Attorney, Carra Sahler, served as a resource on two climate-related Oregonian stories.

On April 5, the Oregonian published Carra Sahler’s thoughts about PGE’s plans to meet Oregon’s clean energy targets. She remains cautiously optimistic about the company’s strategy to deliver clean electricity to Oregon customers, and is especially excited about the planned investments to support microgrids, community-owned battery storage systems, and solar panels, as well as energy efficiency. However, she flagged that GEI is concerned about the possibility that PGE will continue operating its five natural gas-powered plants for sale on the wholesale market, continuing to saddle local communities in Oregon with pollution while simultaneously reporting delivery of clean energy to Oregon customers.

On March 15, the Oregonian published an article about NW Natural’s response to Eugene’s ordinance prohibiting natural gas in new buildings. Carra pointed out that limiting expansion of natural gas infrastructure is a common-sense measure to take now. “We need to eliminate emissions where was have the technology to do so. We know how to decarbonize buildings. We have that technology today.” The full article is available here, behind a pay wall.