A committee meeting May 29 of the Oregon Legislature was not exactly intended to be about the rising energy bills of Oregonians, but it sort of became about utility bills.

The House Interim Committee on Climate, Energy and the Environment got a presentation from the Oregon Department of Energy about moving toward renewable energy and how the siting of energy facilities fits in.

The agenda didn’t focus on costs to consumers. Legislators kept bringing it up.

“We are looking at an 18% increase (in energy costs) regardless of income and that’s a big press on working families especially in my district that has some of the most expensive homes and affordability issues…,” state Rep. Emerson Levy, D-Bend, began. “Our ratepayers, what burden are they looking at? I didn’t get any emails before about energy costs and now I am. I think this is the issue. And we need to be prepared to talk to the public about what this is going to cost.”

There are, indeed, caps and checks in Oregon’s recent “going green” legislation that require the state to consider costs to consumers. For instance, House Bill 2021 from 2021 requires electrical utilities to decarbonize. Cost to consumers is a factor. The legislation allows — and this gets a bit technical — the Oregon Public Utility Commission to provide an exemption from further compliance with clean energy targets if the utility commission determines that the actual or anticipated cumulative revenue impact calculated “exceeds 6% of the annual revenue requirement for a year.”

Costs for energy have already climbed. And as staff from the Oregon Department of Energy pointed out, there are many reasons that utility costs have gone up, irrespective of compliance with clean energy targets. There’s climate change, wildfire insurance, costs to mitigate wildfire risk, inflation and more.

Between 2010 and 2020, Oregon deployed about 2 gigawatts of new clean solar and wind capacity. Oregon Department of Energy staff told the committee that one study said Oregon needs 30 gigawatts of new solar and wind energy capacity to meet the state’s energy needs by 2025.

The burden of that transition will be paid for by consumers of energy. What will it cost? There would be an environmental and financial cost to doing nothing. But Oregonians will want to know how much more their rates will rise and how the state will try to mitigate the increases.