Strategic Plan 2008

NW Energy Coalition

3- to 5-Year Strategic Plan

 

 

Overview

Over the next five years, the NW Energy Coalition will continue to fight for a clean and affordable energy future, basing its efforts and initiatives around its four “pillars”: energy efficiency, properly sited renewable energy, consumer/low-income advocacy and restoration of Columbia Basin fish and wildlife affected by the regional hydropower system.

 

Since the last strategic plan, the threat of human-caused global warming has moved to the forefront of public and political concern. This development presents myriad challenges and opportunities to the Coalition, its members and all advocates of clean and affordable energy. The Coalition must incorporate those opportunities into its overall mission in the most productive and efficient manner. We must expand our overarching goals of meeting all load growth and replacing the power from the four lower Snake River dams with clean renewables and energy efficiency to include actually shutting down and replacing the power of coal plants that serve this region.

The Coalition has a special role to play – a role for which it is uniquely qualified – in bridging the rifts created in the course of combating climate change. Global warming can intensify the pressures that drive apart people of good will. Those crafting climate policies, such as cap-and-trade/auction schemes, are highly susceptible to wedge politics that pit consumers against environmental progress, investor-owned against publicly owned utilities, or renewables development against salmon survival.

As the embodiment of bringing and keeping diverse groups together in the cause of clean and affordable energy, the Coalition must be the message. It must stand vigilant against the fraying of our fragile-yet-fundamental alliance, underlining the “we” who collectively strive for common solutions and empowering those who now shoulder the burdens of decisions made on high.

Beyond and in furtherance of that special assignment, the Coalition Board has determined that the most appropriate response in the current period is to make energy efficiency its mission of missions, recognizing that energy efficiency is the surest, cheapest way to cut global-warming emissions, reduce consumer costs, and leave the least impact on wild places and living things.

Shorter-term work plans will flow from this general strategic plan. Our major overall goals for the entire 5-year period are to:

1.    Firmly establish energy efficiency as the No. 1 strategy for combating global warming and the bedrock foundation of our clean-energy future.

2.    Meet all regional load growth and replace expiring power contracts with energy efficiency, augmented by new renewable energy.

3.    Begin the shutdown of coal plants now serving the region and replacement of their power with new renewable energy.

4.    Prevent construction or major renovation of any coal-fueled plant in the region that does not capture and permanently sequester at least 90% of its carbon dioxide emissions beginning on the first day of power production.

5.    Challenge the re-emergence of nuclear power as a solution to global warming.   

6.    Help make effective restoration of endangered salmon and steelhead in the Columbia Basin via removal of the four lower Snake River dams inevitable.

7.    Protect and defend the interests of consumers (particularly low-income), labor, disadvantaged communities and people of color in climate-change policy decisions.

Download the entire Strategic Plan in PDF format.