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Podcast: Cascade CounterPoint
Episode: QP: Oregon’s Reliance on Fossil Fuels Is Growing, Not Shrinking
Description: Full-text: During the holidays, the Oregon Department of Energy quietly updated a chart it maintains showing where Oregon’s electricity comes from. The chart shows that from 2012 through 2021, Oregon’s dependence on fossil fuels increased from 44.7% to 46.3% of annual electricity consumed.
This may come as a surprise to people who thought Oregon was phasing out fossil fuels. Indeed, the Oregon legislature banned coal in 2016 and natural gas in 2021, and mandated that most new electricity come from large wind and solar farms.
The problem is that wind and solar facilities are classified as “intermittent” sources because they don...