2024 Year in Review

One of my favorite traditions as we turn to a new year is to look back and reflect on the Oregon Department of Energy team's incredible work over the past year.

2024 brought us many opportunities to continue making progress toward an equitable clean energy future. We started out the year with a new study on cooling needs in Oregon homes with interactive tools to highlight important data and key findings - including that nearly 60 percent of households surveyed had an immediate or long-term need for better cooling equipment. ODOE offers two heat pump incentive programs to support installing this potentially life-saving technology into owner-occupied and rental homes across the state (while ODOE has limited remaining program funds, we expect federal grants will support heat pump programs in the coming years). We rolled out a new federally funded Grid Resilience Grant Program to finance projects that strengthen resilience of the electric grid, and received 13 grant applications from electric utilities that are now in review with the U.S. Department of Energy. We also launched another round of Community Renewable Energy Grant funding and selected 34 new recipients to receive nearly $18 million in grants to support planning and construction of renewable energy or energy resilience projects. We made $1.2 million available for local government projects through the federal Energy Efficiency and Conservation Block Grant Program and announced 13 awards in late summer. Oregon applied for and was awarded significant new federal funding this year, including $86.6 million for the Solar for All program to support renewable energy for low-income Oregonians, a $197 million Climate Pollution Reduction Grant to support programs that reduce greenhouse gas emissions, including funding for ODOE's heat pump programs, and $113 million for home energy rebates. ODOE launched a new grant program to support energy resilience planning in Oregon counties. We published a new Oregon Energy Security Plan that assesses threats and identifies actions to strengthen Oregon's energy security, as well as the fourth edition of our Biennial Energy Report. In November, the Energy Facility Siting Council approved the largest solar project to date - the Sunstone Solar Project - which, if constructed, will add up to 1,200 megawatts of solar generation components and up to 1,200 MW of distributed battery storage in Morrow County. With that approval, nearly 2.8 gigawatts of state jurisdiction solar projects are ready to move toward construction. These are just a few of the highlights from 2024 - check out our monthly newsletters for additional milestones and updates.

We are able to celebrate these successes and milestones thanks to our many partnerships and engaged Oregonians. This year, you weighed in on proposed energy facilities, shared your ideas for a new energy strategy for the state, recommended topics in our Biennial Energy Report, considered changes to administrative rules for ODOE programs, helped us analyze risks to our energy security, and much more. We're so grateful for your thoughtful engagement - you help make our work better.

ODOE is looking forward to continuing our work in 2025, including important ODOE incentive programs, reviewing proposed energy facilities, finalizing an Oregon Energy Strategy, developing a new edition of the Biennial Zero Emission Vehicle Report, and much more.

As we welcome the new year, we're also celebrating the Oregon Department of Energy's birthday! 2025 is ODOE's 50th year serving Oregonians. We have some fun plans in the works to mark the occasion - we hope you'll celebrate with us.

In honor of our 50th anniversary, this year we thought we'd use our Year in Review to look back at ODOE's first 49 years. We've shared some milestones below, and be sure to check out our interactive Energy History Timeline to see more important memories starting in 1975.

It's my honor to serve as Director of the Oregon Department of Energy, to work with you, and to lead the incredible team of professionals here at the agency.

Happy New Year!

ODOE Director Janine Benner