Portland GE
Maria Pope is the CEO of Portland General Electric. Chris Rogers is West Market Leader, Energy Providers Practice at Guidehouse.
Nearly half of Oregonians receive their electric service from Portland General Electric. Around three-quarters of the state's commercial and industrial activity is within its service territory. The PGE workforce, almost three thousand strong, has big ambitions across several fronts. Not the least of which is reducing eighty percent of its carbon-dioxide emissions by the year 2030, from what they were in 2010-2012, ninety percent by 2035, and a hundred percent by 2040. Leading this charge is CEO Maria Pope and a board of directors with four former CEOs and presidents of utilities and power generation companies.
PGE is well on the way to meet those targets, through the closing of the Boardman coal-fired power plant, a recent request for proposals that has shortlisted thirteen offerings of solar, wind, battery, and pumped storage capacity, the green future impact initiative for customer-supplied solar and wind capacity, etc. Amid these efforts, Pope granted the Public Utilities Fortnightly team a few minutes of her time to talk about this transformation, not only at PGE but industry-wide. Below she answers our questions and one posed by Chris Rogers, Guidehouse's west market leader, who sat in on the discussion.
PUF's Steve Mitnick: How do you see the current state of the utilities industry, and Portland General Electric's role in it?