Northwest Senators call for increased investment in energy infrastructure

Senators Maria Cantwell (D-WA), Patty Murray (D-WA), Ron Wyden (D-OR), Mike Crapo (R-ID), Jon Tester (D-MT) and Senator-elect Jeff Merkley (D-OR) issued a call today for the Obama Administration to make investments in improving and updating our nation's energy transmission system, as part of the economic stimulus package, according to a press release NPI received. This is important to the Northwest because the Bonneville Power Administrations ensures that our region has enough transmission capacity. But BPA needs to update its infrastructure to deal with increased demand for renewable energy sources, future growth, and to create green jobs.

Following is the full text of the letter the Senators sent to Majority Leader Harry Reid, Minority Leader Mitch McConnell, Senator Robert Byrd (still Chairman of the Appropriations Committee, for now), and Senator Thad Cochran (Ranking Member of the Appropriations Committee).

Dear Majority Leader Reid, Minority Leader McConnell, Chairman Byrd and Senator Cochran:

We are writing to request that the economic stimulus package include $5 billion in additional United States Treasury borrowing authority for the Bonneville Power Administration (BPA). Providing BPA access to capital unavailable on today’s frozen credit markets will immediately stimulate the economy by helping create an estimated 50,000 direct and ancillary green jobs and allowing 4,700 megawatts of new renewable resources to come online in the next two years.

In order to remain a world economic leader we urgently need to transform and revitalize our nation’s energy system to be cleaner, more diverse, and more distributed. Now is the time to make the long neglected investments necessary in our nation’s electricity grid to increase its efficiency and reliability and to meet future demand growth by integrating more renewable and distributed sources of energy onto the grid.

According to a recent report by the Department of Energy, 20 percent of the United States could be powered by wind energy by 2030 if approximately $60 billion is invested in new transmission capacity over the next 20 years. However, future demand growth and the need to accommodate vast new wind farms and other renewable resources threaten to overwhelm BPA’s current infrastructure and its ability to meet national reliability standards.

A timely increase in BPA’s borrowing authority is needed to maintain the value of BPA’s existing systems and to add new transmission capacity and smart grid technologies to meet regional load growth and a more diverse array of energy sources. Increasing BPA’s borrowing authority will quickly enable critically needed energy infrastructure improvements to go forward, creating jobs and ensuring the continued economic prosperity and global competitiveness of the Pacific Northwest , which depends on reliable and affordable energy supplies.

In addition, increasing BPA’s borrowing authority will have virtually no long term cost to taxpayers given BPA’s 25-year record of making its annual payments, with interest, to the U.S. Treasury.

We look forward to working with you to include this vital measure in any stimulus bill considered by the 111th Congress.

Sincerely,

Senators Cantwell, Murray, Wyden, Crapo, Tester, and Senator-elect Merkley

It's nice to see our Northwest Senators working together on policy initiatives that will jumpstart our economy and protect our environment. We applaud their efforts and hope to see more teamwork, for the benefit of our region, during the next Congress.