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Draft NW Region Power Plan Lays Road Map to Meet Soaring Demand by Amanda Zhou Yakima Herald, August 31, 2026

20-year forecast projects average annual and peak demand to grow
between around 1.8% and 3.1% per year between 2027 and 2046

The Northwest will need a large expansion of renewable energy alongside battery storage, energy-efficiency measures and natural gas to meet growing electricity demand, according to the latest draft of the region's most comprehensive power plan.

The draft plan calls for 11,000 megawatts of new generation capacity across four states in the Columbia River basin through 2032, including:

• 9,000 megawatts of renewable resources
• 5,000 megawatts of storage
• 2,100 megawatts of natural gas
• Around 1,870 megawatts from energy efficiency and conservation

As a snapshot of what that spending could look like for this expansion, the "fixed cost" of these resources, excluding fuel and operating costs, is estimated to be about $2.3 billion in 2032 alone, which is around 0.15% of the region's gross domestic product in 2025, according to the Northwest Power and Conservation Council. The total money needed to build up to that point will nearly certain be more than that, said Jennifer Light, the council's director of power planning.

The council released the power plan this month. The interstate agency, which was formed out of the Northwest Power Act of 1980, gives the Columbia Basin states a voice in the region's electricity planning.

The council is charged with updating its power plan every five years with an eye toward affordability, reliability and protecting fish and wildlife. The plan includes a 20-year electricity demand forecast and price forecasts.

While it does not include mandates, the plan guides the federal Bonneville Power Administration, which operates dams on the Columbia River and provides power to public utilities, and serves as a planning document for private utilities in the region.

As for the region's electricity demand forecast, the plan outlines five scenarios largely dependent on the region's economic growth and then growth related to transportation, data centers and building and industrial electrification.

As summer and winter energy-demand peaks have grown due to heat waves and cold snaps, the plan also takes into account different climate scenarios and their impacts on hydropower and electricity use.

The 20-year forecast projects average annual and peak demand to grow between around 1.8% and 3.1% per year between 2027 and 2046. For context, electricity demand over the last five years has averaged around 1.7% and in the 1990s fell around 1.1%, according to the council.

While the high-end growth scenario has been met with alarm by the public, it is not entirely unprecedented, council spokesperson Peter Jensen said. In the 1970s after World War II, the Northwest's power system saw a growth of over 5% a year before eventually slowing to an average 3.6% that decade, he said.

However, the Northwest's power system will have to grow between 50% and 100% over the next two decades to cover the low- and high-end trajectories, according to the council plan.

In general to cover the next five years, the council has recommended a "portfolio of different resources," Light said.

"No single resource will meet the needs that we see in the future," she said during a briefing of the plan.

The plan also accounts for Oregon and Washington's climate laws, which limit natural gas development. Light said the modeling indicates most of the new gas will be built in Idaho and Montana with any potential Washington units likely functioning as plants that only operate when demand is peaking.

"There was a very strong signal that even under ... the cases where we had very strong federal policies still incentivizing renewables for example, (there was) a need for some level of gas," Light said.

Fred Heutte, a senior policy associate with the NW Energy Coalition, said he does not expect many more gas resources to be built out beyond Idaho because gas pipelines are maxed out in Washington and building new pipelines and gas plants faces high costs and long timelines.

However, bringing on all 11,000 megawatts of capacity is "quite realistic," he said, though transmission threatens to be the biggest bottleneck for getting renewables connected to the grid.

The Bonneville Power Administration and other utilities are currently doing upgrades throughout the grid to expand its capacity to the scale of "1,000s of megawatts" in the next five years, Heutte said.