Energy Efficiency
Clean Electricity
Low-Carbon Fuels
Electrification
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Resilience

Strengthen resilience across all levels of the energy system, including utilities, communities, and customers, enhancing Oregon’s ability to adapt to climate change and mitigate other risks.

To successfully navigate the energy transition, Oregon must incorporate measures that mitigate vulnerabilities to the energy system, including growing risks due to climate change, ongoing hazards such as earthquakes, wildfires, windstorms, and winter storms, and cyber risks identified in Oregon’s Energy Security Plan. The changing climate is being felt in Oregon today. Extreme events are increasing in intensity, straining our energy systems and economy and threatening public health and safety, particularly in vulnerable and environmental justice communities. This includes strains on the hydropower system, transmission and distribution networks, and on homes and businesses. Available data and comments from external engagement indicate a need to strengthen resilience across the energy system, create community-level solutions, and help adapt the built environment to better protect people from extreme weather, wildfires, and wildfire smoke.

Many measures that mitigate climate change have strong resilience benefits. For example, weatherization can help maintain healthy indoor temperatures when extreme weather hits. Heat pumps can provide life-saving cooling in summer, and protect indoor air from wildfire smoke by avoiding the need to open windows to stay cool. Distributed solar and batteries can make power available during outages, and can be combined into microgrids to support communities. It is also important to recognize that Oregon is dependent on the flexibility and availability of fossil fuels such as gasoline and diesel fuel or natural gas and propane to maintain resilience, reinforcing the need to carefully adjust what resources we use and how we use them in deploying the strategic electrification pathway.

Resilience Policies

Each policy has a short-hand reference shown in italics used throughout the strategy.

5a

Evaluate cross-fuel interdependencies and vulnerabilities to better ensure long-term reliability of the electric grid. This specifically includes strengthening coordination of electricity and natural gas system planning and exploring other cross-fuel areas requiring strategic coordination. (Cross-fuels planning)

  • Oregon’s energy systems are under increasing pressure from wildfire, extreme weather, and other effects of climate change while they are tasked with decarbonizing.

    To mitigate risks and better prepare for and respond to system stress, it is important to strengthen coordination between sectors to manage climate risks and the increasing complexity of cross-sector interdependencies. This is particularly true for the power and natural gas sectors, which face confluent vulnerabilities during extreme weather events.

    In January 2024, the Governor declared a state of emergency after freezing rain and downed trees led to widespread power outages that disproportionately impacted environmental justice communities. During that event, electricity demand across the region exceeded historic records at the same time many electricity generating resources faced performance challenges. Simultaneously, natural gas supply—critical not only for some home heating but also for gas-powered electricity generating resources—was restricted due to an issue at a key gas storage facility.

    As more end uses electrify and the power and natural gas systems decarbonize, it will be important to evaluate how we maintain reliability during times of peak system stress.

    The Oregon Energy Security Plan identifies relationships between these and other sectors and recognizes the growing need for more coordination to ensure a reliable energy transition. The plan identifies additional risks that will be important to plan for, including the risk of an earthquake in the Cascadia Subduction Zone, cyber security threats, and domestic and international terrorism. Other regional studies have similarly identified a critical need for more coordination to ensure a reliable energy supply from the electric and gas systems.

  • Separate entities provide energy services for different fuels, such as transportation fuels, electricity, and natural gas. Those entities have historically focused on their own individual systems, without significant cross-system coordination. Yet such coordination is important to address the interconnected nature of Oregon’s energy sector and the growing threats like climate change that threaten all systems.

    With regulatory oversight over investor-owned electric utilities, the Oregon Public Utility Commission has been encouraging regulated entities to coordinate and share information, particularly in their long-term planning processes; some energy providers have initiated this process. More guidance and support from the state is needed to enable the robust energy security planning needed for a resilient and affordable energy future, not only in investor-owned utility service areas but broadly across the state.

    In the near term, Oregon should focus on facilitating multi-fuel conversations to inform and improve energy reliability and resilience, particularly between the electricity and natural gas sectors.

    Over time, more coordination around distribution system planning may also be needed to manage the process of implementing building electrification where customers transition from gas networks to electric grids.

    • Oregon’s electric and natural gas systems are interconnected and dependent on each other but decarbonization may strain that relationship as end users electrify and the current natural gas business model evolves.

      • The total volume of natural gas used will gradually decline but the fuel will remain critical to the remaining customers and maintaining electricity system reliability as an on-demand resource.

      • Energy planning and forecasting in the Northwest is conducted by a variety of organizations including energy utilities, Bonneville Power Administration, Northwest Power and Conservation Council, and others to ensure resource adequacy. These evaluations are independent of other energy systems and may conflict with the assumptions of other energy providers.

      • Energy demands are increasing from tech loads, industry, and population growth that supports economic development but can be challenging for utilities to service.

      • Utility infrastructure development independent of other energy systems may lead to the construction of redundant resources, stranded assets, or inadequate resources in areas with changing energy demands.

    • Maintaining system reliability while minimizing the costs of the energy transition will require energy service suppliers to share data, assumptions, and work together.

      • The state must support utilities in getting beyond the barrier of market competition and focus on agreement around the rate of electrification in their service areas, emergency response scenarios, resources needed to meet demand, and Oregon’s changing energy landscape.

5b

Fund resilience measures across the energy system, including at utility scale and in homes, businesses, and communities through a combination of ratepayer and taxpayer dollars, particularly where climate adaptation measures can also help advance climate mitigation. (Resilience measures)

  • Strengthening the resilience of the electric grid can reduce disruptive events, like power outages due to extreme weather. Most disruptive events are due to service issues in the distribution network, not generation. Many of the measures that reduce greenhouse gas emissions also deliver resilience benefits. As temperature extremes grow, investments in measures like weatherization, heat pumps for air conditioning, and distributed renewable resources and batteries can reduce greenhouse gas emissions while protecting households from risks such as wildfire smoke, extreme temperatures, and prolonged outages.

    Targeted resilience investments have the potential to offer Oregon communities self-sufficiency and reduce the demand for emergency response. Climate change is also making other measures more expensive. For example, utilities invest in “grid hardening” to reduce risks of wildfire and wildfire-caused damage, which increase costs of building and maintaining transmission and distribution infrastructure. Costs have increased for utilities and could rise more from wildfire damage and litigation, which impacts affordability for customers. Insurance against climate risks has become more expensive. Financial support to cover these infrastructure costs, such as bank loans to investors, is generally less available and more costly to secure.

  • While utilities have a critical role to play in improving the resilience of their systems, resilience measures should not be constrained by a utility’s funding limitations. A utility may not be able to make the investments or operational decisions needed to improve resilience at the local level for individual communities, businesses, and households. State action is needed to ensure investments are made that consider the resilience benefits. This may include policies that can build on existing utility ratepayer funded programs, as well as existing state-funded programs such as the County Energy Resilience Grant Program, Community Renewable Energy Grant Program, and state-funded heat pump programs – all of which are now in jeopardy due to lack of available state funding. Rural, coastal, and low-income communities in Oregon, and those served by consumer-owned utilities, may need higher levels of government support to implement proactive grid-resilience measures and recover from damages caused by wildfire, winter storms, or other disasters. Absent government support, the increased costs necessary to pay for significant resilience or reliability investments will fall hardest on those households and businesses already suffering from high energy costs. It is important to continue to promote and support relationships between Tribes and utilities to focus on resilience projects that benefit tribal communities and lands through programs like the federal Grid Resilience Grant program.

  • Oregon’s existing electricity grid and natural gas pipeline infrastructure is aging and will increasingly be vulnerable to outages, wildfires, and declines in efficiency. Existing infrastructure can also hinder the integration of new technologies and potential solutions to improve the efficient delivery of energy. Utility resilience measures require significant upfront investment and planning to implement, and many utilities in rural communities are the most exposed but have the least amount of resources to address the issues. Supply chain disruptions caused by geopolitical tensions, trade restrictions, and events like the COVID-19 pandemic have resulted in long lead times for equipment procurement and higher costs for utilities.

    Households, businesses, and communities also face increasing risks that fall outside of utility cost-effectiveness calculations. For example, weatherization measures or installation of solar panels plus storage may not be cost-effective from an energy perspective, but can deliver significant benefits in the case of extreme weather and outages. Support is needed to encourage investment in resilience measures across investor- and community- owned utility service areas, and especially in rural and coastal communities that face higher outage frequency and duration.

5c

Maintain emergency response capabilities, including the adaptability and readiness of vehicles, supply of fuels, and fuel storage needs during the energy transition. (Emergency response capabilities)

  • Every day, the thousands of Oregonians involved in emergency management, planning, and response provide critical services to the people of our state, protecting lives, property, and the environment. In turn, these Oregonians rely on vehicles, utilities, tools, and facilities, all of which are powered by energy.

    Today, emergency response vehicles — including fire trucks, police cars, ambulances, wildfire fighting crews, air support, and bulldozers — rely on a steady supply of petroleum liquid fuels.

    Additionally, when grid power is unavailable, backup emergency power is typically provided by liquid fuels or natural gas generators.

    Even as communities increase their resilience by adding distributed generation and storage, liquid and gas fuels will likely still be needed in the foreseeable future to provide on-demand power to emergency response resources, including vehicles, planes, and backup power generation. Low-carbon fuels or other innovative technologies may be able to meet these needs while lowering greenhouse gas emissions, but it will take time to transition to these alternatives, and costs will likely be higher than traditional fuels.

    State and local jurisdictions will need to work with partners to develop guidance on what investments to make for emergency planning while also preparing for changes in how energy is used in the future.

  • Energy Security Plan

    The Oregon Department of Energy published the Oregon Energy Security Plan in September 2024 and updated it in September 2025, following direction from the federal government and SB 1567. The plan is updated annually and identifies risks to electricity, liquid fuel, and natural gas/propane systems, and proposes ways to mitigate those risks.

    The plan is intended to inform Tribes, the state, and local governments as they prepare for supply disruptions and make decisions related to energy systems and infrastructure investments, resilience and hardening strategies, and asset management. However, the Energy Security Plan does not specifically evaluate current statewide or local emergency planning resources or analyze how Oregon’s energy transition may affect emergency response capabilities.

    Emergency Management Resource Needs

    State guidance on future emergency management resource needs can support strategic investment by governments at all levels to better prepare the state to respond and recover from future energy emergencies. It will be important for policies to explicitly include Tribes and rural communities in both the planning efforts to understand local needs as well as implementation.

    With this in mind, it is necessary for Oregon to enact and implement policies that will protect our emergency response capabilities through the energy transition. This includes maintaining a resilient supply of necessary fuels, as well as the infrastructure required to procure, transport, distribute, and store those fuels.

    There is a need for coordinated, strategic energy emergency management planning that aligns with state greenhouse gas reduction goals and identifies short, medium, and long-term energy needs for emergency response. This work should build upon the Oregon Energy Security Plan as well as ongoing coordination between tribal governments, state agencies, and local governments.

    • There are limited alternatives to liquid fuels for most emergency response vehicles and heavy equipment.

      • The need for diesel fuel (or its lower-carbon variation, renewable diesel) and the need for aviation fuel (or its lower-carbon variation, sustainable aviation fuel) will be necessary and vital for Oregon’s emergency response systems.

      • This is especially true for emergency response vehicles serving locations far from the power grid that must be able to operate when the power grid is down and have to respond immediately (and not wait for charging, for example).

    • Oregon faces regular significant natural hazards including major wildfires, winter storms, and floods that are becoming ‘routine’ and seasonal.

      • The state must continue to prepare for a potential Cascadia Subduction Zone earthquake, as well as non-natural hazards such as acts of terrorism and cybersecurity threats, all of which can impact energy systems that we rely upon for life safety.