A controversial proposed natural gas plant near Hermiston is apparently dead.
In an email shared by environmental groups, counsel for the company behind the 415-megawatt Perennial Wind Chaser project said it was terminating a site certificate and the plant “will not be constructed.”
The email was to the Multnomah County Circuit Court, where environmentalists were challenging Oregon Department of Energy orders that allowed Perennial-Windchaser LLC to hold onto the state-issued site certificate.
The email came on April 5, the day before a scheduled hearing that, according to court records, was subsequently canceled.
Attempts to reach Perennial-Windchaser were not immediately successful (see update below). An ODOE spokesperson said the department had not received a formal notice to give up the certificate, but expected one “based on Perennial’s communication as part of the Circuit Court appeal.”
The Sumitomo subsidiary originally received a site certificate for the project in 2015, but it was unable to land a power purchase agreement and the plant remained unbuilt. Facing a September 2018 deadline to begin construction, the company was granted an extension until September 2020.
Activists charged the company missed the new deadline, and said the Oregon Department of Energy bent its rules in allowing unpermitted road work to keep the certificate alive.
On Thursday, the groups claimed victory.
“This is a huge win for Oregonians and the climate,” Erin Saylor, staff attorney for Columbia Riverkeeper, said in a statement.
She went on to say they hoped “the lesson for aspiring developers of new fossil fuel-burning plants in Oregon is clear: Our future is in clean energy, not dirty fossil fuels.”
The future of fossil fuel generation in the region is clearly in doubt.
There is rising concern that coal plant retirements and a growing reliance on renewable energy could bring the need for more firm generating resources in the region in the mid-2020s. Neither Portland General Electric nor PacifiCorp, however, have indicated a need for new gas plants in the region in the next few years or so in their latest integrated resource plans.
State policies either in place or contemplated are also pointing away from new gas plants. Washington in 2019 committed to new limits on gas generation by 2030, and an emissions-free electricity sector by 2045. Oregon lawmakers are considering a bill that would ban siting of new fossil fuel plants while requiring PGE and PacifiCorp to be emissions-free by 2040.
Renewables plus storage, along with energy efficiency and demand response, are seen as key ingredients to an emissions-free grid. Green hydrogen could also be in the mix. The best chances for natural gas could be renewable natural gas, or gas paired with carbon capture, which the Biden administration wants to support with its infrastructure plan.
Update: Late Friday, Perennial released a statement saying that it had "elected to examine various legal steps and regulatory requirements required to terminate our Site Certificate for the Wind Chaser power generating project." The company said it believed the project could help provide grid reliability but "the current environment for such new projects makes it difficult for us to continue investing in these plans."