the film forum library tutorial contact

Clark Public Utilities Faces Upward Pressure on Electricity Costs by Courtney Sherwood The Columbian, October 26, 2008

Vancouver, Wash. -- The Pacific Northwest's 60-year hold on cheap electricity is under threat. Starting next year and continuing through 2020, customers of Clark Public Utilities will share a growing burden with their neighbors across Oregon and Washington -- a burden that they helped create at the ballot box and that has been compounded by salmon recovery efforts, population growth and climbing commodity costs.

Just how much rates will rise beyond the single-digit increase likely next year is too complex to estimate this early in the game, Clark officials say. Here's what we know so far:

• The cost of natural gas is up 12 to 15 percent in the past year. The gas-fired River Road Generating Plant provides 40 percent of Clark's power.

• The Bonneville Power Administration provides about 60 percent of Clark's power. New contracts that go into effect in 2012 will likely reduce the amount of power available to Clark Public Utilities and raise rates by 15 percent or more.

• By 2019, Washington's largest utilities, including Clark, must get 15 percent of their power from renewable sources, as required by voter-approved Initiative 937. Wind and solar power could be twice as expensive as River Road power, and three times as costly as Bonneville's hydro-power from its series of Columbia and Snake River dams.

"Rate stability is one of our goals," said Mick Shutt, spokesman. "But there comes a time when you can't stop rates from going up."

Change in course

The coming rate hikes mark a startling change for Clark Public Utilities, which was founded by a 1938 vote to bring cheap electricity to Clark County.

For more than 30 years power costs hovered near 1 cent per kilowatt hour -- a typical modern household, using 1,500 kilowatt-hours per month, would spend $15 a month at that rate.

That cheap power created an energy hungry economy in the region, drawing aluminum smelters early on and semiconductor manufacturers as the century progressed.

Beginning in the 1980s rates began to tick up more rapidly. And the power crisis of 2000 and 2001 hit Clark Public Utilities hard, pushing rates from about 4.2 cents per kilowatt hour in the mid-1990s to 7.36 cents per hour today. That 1,500 kilowatt-hour monthly bill would now add up to $117.

Electricity costs across the region have likewise climbed, chasing away the aluminum industry and its thousands of jobs.