Inside Clean Energy: The Coal-Country Utility that Wants to Cut Coal

PacifiCorp provides lease payments to local landowners for use of their land for wind turbines. Credit: Pacific Power/Flickr Inside Clean Energy I normally don’t feel sympathy for a utility, but consider what it is like trying to satisfy customers and regulators from coal-loving Wyoming all the way to the parts of the Pacific Northwest that are eager to embrace clean energy. This is the task that confronts PacifiCorp, a subsidiary of Warren Buffett’s Berkshire Hathaway Energy, a company that is aiming to ramp up its use of renewable energy at the same time as it navigates some extreme differences of opinion about what the energy future should look like. PacifiCorp’s territory includes parts of California, Oregon, Washington State, Utah, Idaho and Wyoming. The company said last week that it was seeking proposals from developers for a major investment in clean energy, with 1.9 gigawatts of new wind power, 1.8 gigawatts of new solar and 595 megawatts of new battery storage, all to be installed by the end of 2023. The projects are part of a commitment to get electricity from sources that are "affordable, reliable and increasingly sustainable," said Rick Link, PacifiCorp’s vice president of resource planning, in a […]

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