Our 2023 budget and action plan are designed to help utility customers and communities in Oregon and Southwest Washington save energy and generate renewable power—including efforts to improve reliability and resiliency of the electric grid. We seek to expand our offers and approaches to reach communities of color, customers with lower incomes and rural communities who haven’t benefitted in the past.
The budget and action plan details where we will invest utility customer funds to deliver benefits like providing low-cost energy efficiency that utilities rely on to meet their customers’ energy needs, adding clean, renewable power to the electric grid; reducing customer utility bills; helping keep energy costs lower than they otherwise would be for all utility customers; avoiding carbon emissions; and strengthening local economies.
Energy Trust’s budget and action plan is designed to achieve three organizational goals in 2023:
Customers will save and generate energy and reduce costs in 2023 and beyond as a result of Energy Trust’s investments in their clean energy projects and upgrades.
Utility partners, communities and policy implementers will achieve their objectives by leveraging Energy Trust’s clean energy solutions that reduce greenhouse gas emissions, support grid management and deliver additional societal benefits.
Customers and stakeholders will gain future benefits from Energy Trust’s investments in preparing for a more dynamic and complex energy industry.
Achieving the goals and strategies in this year’s budget and action plan will result in a wide range of economic and clean energy benefits including:
Lower energy bills and energy burden for participants—$750 million in future bill savings
Opportunities for 1,600 local businesses and investments in workforce development
Local investments that keep dollars in our communities
Cleaner air by avoiding 2.7 million metric tons of carbon dioxide over time
Additional support for community-led clean energy efforts, such as resilience
Video highlights from our 2023 Budget and Action Plan
Watch a video of Executive Director Michael Colgrove highlighting key strategies and takeaways from the draft 2023 budget and two-year action plan from our budget information session in October 2022.
How we develop our annual budget and action plan
We solicit input from Oregon Public Utility Commission, utilities, community organizations, other stakeholders and the public to guide our programs and priorities in the coming year. With input from this public process, our board of directors reviews and approves our final budget and action plan by December 31 of each year. At that time, the budget is posted online.
The primary building blocks of our budget and action plan are our 2020-2024 Strategic Plan, market insights, each utility’s Integrated Resource Plan and other resource assessments. An Integrated Resource Plan is how utilities plan for the energy supply their customers will need over the next 20 years. Additional information for the budget is drawn from renewable resource assessments and Northwest Power and Conservation Council studies.
How is Energy Trust funded?
The vast majority of our funding comes from customers of PGE, Pacific Power, NW Natural, Cascade Natural Gas and Avista in Oregon, and NW Natural customers in Washington. We also hold contracts with Energy Solutions for the state’s Community Solar Program, PGE for the utility’s smart battery pilot, Oregon Department of Energy for the Oregon Landlord-provided Cooling Spaces Initiative and other entities for additional contracted and grant-funded activities.
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