2025 Legislative Recap
2025 Legislative Recap
December 9, 2025 Advocacy, Energy Justice
During the six months of the 2025 legislative session, four of our priority bills passed the legislature. These victories came amidst tight state budgets and a deprioritization of climate legislation at both the federal and local level. CEP is proud to have worked alongside our energy advocacy partners to secure these huge wins for Oregonians!
HB 3179 FAIR Energy Act: This bill protects ratepayers from rate increases in winter. The FAIR Energy Act also grants the utilities’ regulator, the Oregon Public Utility Commission (OPUC), the authority to consider the full picture of Oregon’s ratepayer needs—such as the increased cost of living, income levels and other relevant factors—when setting and approving new utility rates.
HB 3546 POWER Act: This bill creates stronger guardrails and parameters for data centers, cryptocurrency, and other large load users around their use and impact on Oregon’s electric grid. The POWER Act ensures residential ratepayers do not subsidize large load users’ electricity use and will allow utilities to plan for increased energy reliability for all Oregonians in the future. CEP has intervened in PGE’s Large Load contested case and will be part of a coalition to negotiate terms around implementation of the POWER Act to ensure that large load users pay their fair share and that residential rate payers are not left subsidizing the large amount of energy they use.
HB 3792 Oregon Energy Assistance Program (OEAP): OEAP is a small fee that utility customers already pay on their monthly bill (around 69 cents/month). These fees can then be reallocated to help qualifying low-income households that cannot afford to pay their utility bills. The new OEAP bill doubles the funds available for this program from $20 million to ~$40 million. Utility customers will still pay less than $1.50/month with the new funds available.
HB 3336 Grid Enhancing Technologies: This bill allows for long overdue upgrades and repairs of Oregon’s aging electric grid. It directs utilities to develop strategic plans for the deployment of hardware and software technologies that increase efficiency, capacity, and reliability.
SB 688 Performance Based Ratemaking: This bill allows the Public Utility Commission to adopt a framework for carrying out performance-based regulation of electric companies by using incentives and penalties to compel electric companies to align operations with public interest and specific objectives.
Passing bills is only the beginning. CEP will continue representing the voices of our clients and communities as the implementation of these laws begins. Our priority will be ensuring that the benefits of these new laws reach the households most impacted by high energy costs and unreliable housing conditions.
