In July of 2016, Portland General Electric built the Carty I gas-fired power plant in rural Eastern Oregon to meet Portland’s power needs. This was less than a year after the city banned new fossil fuel infrastructure within its limits. Now, PGE is going through the permitting process for two more gas-fired power plants in the same location. As coal-fired power is retired in Oregon, it is being replaced with natural gas. Fracked gas does just as much or more climate damage as coal, and any new fossil fuel infrastructure commits us to catastrophic emissions.
Oregon’s energy emissions are above climate limits, and no one in power has a plan to reduce them adequately. The state legislature passed a bill in 2016 phasing out coal and requiring utilities to provide 50% of their energy from renewable sources by 2050, but it puts us nowhere near the state’s own weak goals on greenhouse gases. PGE has access to renewable energy that could also meet demand, but their economics favor burning more fossil fuels.
Portland Rising Tide is fighting the construction of the Carty II and III gas plants, for the decommissioning of existing power stations that further climate chaos, and for an energy system that is directly accountable to the needs of the public and the planet. Using direct action, alternate framing, and counter-narrative, we will weaken the credibility of the institutions that are killing the planet, peel back the endless layers of technical jargon and infographics that obscure the violence of the carbon economy, and expand the scope of political possibility.
And should the time come that they try to build, we’ll be there to try to stop them.
Stay tuned to this page for updates, public events, trainings to stop Carty, and actions.
BACKGROUND: Magic and Apathy: PGE’s New Gas-fired Power Plant and Oregon’s Climate Failure
Read the hilarious brochure written on behalf of PGE by Portland Rising Tide