Oregon’s leadership is promising an electric future so bright we apparently won’t need lights to see it. The roadmap is simple: ban natural gas in homes, eliminate gas and diesel vehicles, shut down coal and gas power generation, convert the entire transportation system to electric, and do it all while windmills and solar farms carry the state on their backs like a carbon-neutral Atlas.
There’s only one problem.
Physics doesn’t negotiate. Math doesn’t care about ideology. And the grid doesn’t run on hope.
Oregon Is Already Short On Power — Before Forced Electrification Peaks
Regional adequacy models show the Northwest is likely to miss the traditional <5% loss-of-load standard well before EV adoption peaks. Under cold snaps or dry hydro years, Oregon could see reliability failures in the high single to low double-digit range — not the safe margin Oregon has relied on for decades.
Put plainly: blackouts aren’t a risk — they’re a forecast.
The analysis even warns that Oregon will need “several extra Oregons worth of new electric capacity” just to support electrification demand. That’s not incremental planning. That’s a full rebuild of the energy system from scratch.
Yet while demand is being legislated upward, supply is being legislated out of existence.
Coal — gone.
Natural gas — being strangled.
Nuclear — politically radioactive.
Hydro — constrained.
Wind & solar — inconsistent and already failing under load.
We are adding weight to the roof while tearing out the foundation beneath it.
When Experiments Fail, Oregon Pretends They Didn’t
We don’t have to predict the future — we just need to look at the receipts.
Electric bus transition: $30 million torched
Lane County spent big on electric buses, then quietly started phasing them out after learned-too-late problems: hills, weather impacts, charging failure, battery degradation. Diesel buses are back — taxpayer money is not.
Solar bankruptcies
Pine Gate’s collapse dragged Oregon solar development down with it. Subsidized, propped up, then gone — leaving half-built fields of glass and debt.
Hydropower strain rising
Bonneville Power has already warned renewable-only planning risks destabilization. We shut down firm generation before replacing firm generation, then act shocked when capacity collapses.
Pattern recognition is not extremism — it’s survival.
The Coming Grid Collision
Now add transportation electrification:
• One EV charging at home = one extra home-equivalent peak load
• Replace 500,000 gas vehicles = grid demand of 500,000 new houses
• All-electric housing policy = another 3–7kW per home at winter peak
And that’s before adding electric trucks, buses, heat pumps, induction appliances, and electrified commercial infrastructure.
This isn’t theoretical. It’s arithmetic.
The future Oregon is building is a grid where:
Demand doubles.
Supply shrinks.
Utility bills explode.
Blackouts become normal.
A million EVs won’t matter if you can’t charge them — or if your home goes cold in January.
Kotek’s Double Down
Instead of stabilizing the system first, Oregon leadership is accelerating electrification mandates. Like doubling down on a blackjack table while holding a weak hand — except this time the dealer is physics, and physics always wins.
The vision: all-electric everything.
The reality: not enough electrons to run it.
We cannot legislate power into existence. Wind is not generated by executive order, and transmission lines don’t build themselves just because the State Capitol declares it so.
Reality Is Not Anti-Green — It’s Pro-Reality
Clean energy matters. Innovation matters. But mandates without math are not policy — they’re fantasy.
Oregon is replacing reliable supply with unreliable load.
We are banning energy before building replacement energy.
We are electrifying demand faster than we generate electrons.
A grid built on ideology instead of infrastructure will not power a state — it will fail a state.
If we continue on this trajectory, Oregon’s future won’t be renewable paradise. It will be rolling blackouts, spiking utility bills, industrial flight, and households choosing between heat and transportation.
Environmental stewardship requires planning — not magical thinking.
If Oregon wants an electric future, it must build the power first.
As Oregon households have already felt in their wallets, residential electricity rates rose roughly 30% from 2020 to 2024, jumping from about 10.7¢/kWh to 13.84¢/kWh. (Energy Info) Meanwhile, key energy production projects are crumbling — most recently, Pine Gate Renewables filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy, scrapping dozens of utility-scale solar and storage projects and underscoring the instability of “green-only” power plans. (pv magazine USA) Add to that the shuttering of coal plants and shrinking natural-gas generation, and Oregon’s future capacity to reliably power a fully electrified transportation and housing system is becoming more fiction than fact.
The bottom line: we’re being asked to double down on massive new energy demand — electric cars, all-electric homes, HVAC heat pumps — while the state’s ability to generate reliable power is contracting, and prices are already going up. Should we keep betting the farm on this fantasy?
As voters head to the ballot box, it’s time to ask yourselves: Is electing climate-policy zealotry worth rolling the dice on Oregon’s power grid — and on our wallets?
Further Reading & Sources
• Lane Transit District electric bus failure
https://lookouteugene-springfield.com/story/government-politics/2025/11/20/lane-transit-district-invested-30-million-in-electric-buses-six-years-ago-now-theyre-phasing-them-out/
• Bonneville Power + Northwest reliability concerns
https://www.opb.org/article/2025/05/12/oregon-washington-green-energy-bonneville/
• Pine Gate solar bankruptcy in Oregon
https://www.bizjournals.com/portland/news/2025/11/07/pine-gate-bankruptcy-sunstone-solar-oregon.html
Read More at: https://bensviewpoint.substack.com
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