Provides customers with more opportunities to save energy and reduce their costs through improving their energy efficiency.
Ensure the benefits of the clean energy transition are distributed equitably and sets us on the path to building a more inclusive, carbon-free future.
Moves PSE forward to nearly 60 percent clean electricity by the end of 2025– well on the way to meeting our clean energy goals for 2030 and 2045.
Ramps up our clean electricity resources - like large-scale wind energy and local rooftop and ground solar energy projects that partner with homes and businesses.
Submit your questions comments using our feedback form
or send an email to ceip@pse.com
The Clean Energy Implementation Plan (CEIP) is a four-year roadmap that will guide PSE’s clean electricity investments for the years 2022-2025. It is the first of many plans that will get us to our goal of 100% clean electricity by 2045 and help ensure all customers benefit from the clean electricity transition.
PSE is Washington State’s largest utility and serves electricity to 1.1 million customers in eight counties of the Puget Sound region. We provide safe, reliable, affordable energy to our customers and help make our communities better places to live and work.
PSE is committed to working with customers to act on climate change and has an aspirational goal of becoming a
beyond net zero carbon energy company by 2045.
Coal-free electricity
Carbon-neutral electric system
100% clean electricity
The electricity PSE supplies is generated from a mix of resources. Today, more than 30% of PSE’s electric energy supply comes from clean sources like wind and hydroelectric facilities that don’t emit greenhouse gases.
Published by the Washington Department of Commerce, October 2020, with data reported by PSE in August 2020.
PSE has been an early leader in addressing climate change, making significant investments in renewable resources and energy efficiency for homes and businesses. Now, we are on a path to meet the current and future needs of our customers and to reach Washington’s ambitious clean energy transformation milestones.
PSE’s four-year CEIP maps out an acceleration of clean electricity strategies in PSE’s portfolio, as well as progress toward these milestones based on community input and the needs and strategies identified in other long-range planning documents.
As we work to create a new, clean electricity future and address climate change, we must do so in a way that ensures all our customers, especially vulnerable and highly impacted communities who shoulder an outsized share of the climate burden, have a voice in and benefit from the transition to clean electricity.
In this work, we embrace the principles of energy equity by addressing accessibility, affordability and accountability.
In 2019, Governor Inslee signed into law the Clean Energy Transformation Act (CETA), committing Washington to provide electricity free of greenhouse gas emissions by 2045. CETA includes three key milestones:
CETA includes rules to keep electricity affordable, reliable and ensure all customer benefit from the clean electricity transformation.
The UTC is the regulatory body charged with enforcing the rules of Washington's Clean Energy Transformation Act. The UTC will:
To help plan for the clean electricity transition, PSE plans out the electricity system years in advance to ensure we can always serve our customers’ growing energy needs.
The Integrated Resource Plan (IRP) identifies how PSE provides cost-effective electricity and natural gas to reliably meet our customers’ needs over the next 20+ years, and the Clean Energy Action Plan identifies the lowest reasonable cost strategy for the next 10 years.
The Clean Energy Implementation Plan (CEIP) is a 4-year plan that maps out timely and equitable progress toward these milestones based on community input and the needs and strategies identified in long-range planning documents.
The CEIP is new, and focuses on the actions PSE will take over the next four years towards serving carbon neutral electricity by 2030. It is informed by community input and will be adjusted to integrate learnings during the next four years.
The transition to clean electricity creates opportunities to improve our communities through benefits like cleaner air, better public health, new jobs, or different ways for customers to get their electricity.
As PSE thinks about clean energy, we must accelerate equity in the transition. Part of accelerating equity is identifying specific communities or customers who disproportionately share a more significant burden.
We’re designing our CEIP to address the challenges faced by vulnerable and highly impacted communities, who are most at risk to the effects of climate change. Knowing the geographic locations and factors shaping these communities will help us identify gaps in services provided, design programs that meet the needs of these communities, and help us distribute benefits more equitably.
PSE is committed to a public participation process that strengthens community ties and creates solutions that reflect those values.
People who are at higher risk of experiencing environmental impacts due to social, economic and other conditions. The Equity Advisory Group has advised this definition specifically include economic stress, housing costs, race/ethnicity, historically redlined communities, disability, seniors, language, mental health and home care.
People located in areas that are highly impacted by climate change and fossil fuel pollution. This is defined by the Washington State Department of Health Cumulative Impact Analysis.
PSE customers who use electricity in their home.
PSE customers who use electricity in their business.
A community stakeholder group that advises PSE on equitable delivery of benefits and burden reduction related to the clean electricity transformation and other topics. The EAG:
In addition to the Equity Advisory Group, PSE’s other advisory groups include:
PSE consults these advisory groups on CEIP topics related to their focus areas.
Community-based organizations (CBOs) are important and trusted service providers for the communities they serve. A key component of our outreach activities includes building relationships with CBOs to better reach vulnerable populations and highly impacted communities.
We want to express our gratitude to the CBOs who helped us organize meetings with their communities and add their voice to the draft CEIP.
If you have a community-based organization interested in working with PSE on clean electricity topics, send us a message at ceip@pse.com.
In spring 2021, PSE gathered input from customers and stakeholders on their clean electricity values and the benefits they want to see from the clean electricity transformation. PSE collected input via customer surveys, advisory group meetings, and “go to you” meetings with community-based organizations.
General customer surveys submitted
Business customer surveys submitted
Meetings with community-based organizations
Equity Advisory Group meetings
Meetings with PSE's other advisory groups
Stakeholders called for benefits that result in lower greenhouse gas emissions and reduced fossil fuel extraction. In addition to reducing the impacts of climate change, stakeholders wanted actions to also produce benefits in other categories, such as job creation, cleaner air, improved public health, energy independence, and long-term cost savings.
Stakeholders asked for cleaner air and improved community health. These comments also commonly called for a way to measure public health more broadly, including healthcare expenditures, mental health, and other measures of physical wellness.
Stakeholders want affordable electric bills, especially for low-income populations. These comments asked for opportunities to reduce electricity bills by enabling low-income households to generate their own electricity or reduce the amount of electricity they consume through energy efficiency measures. Stakeholders also suggested using affordability incentives to get more people to participate in clean electricity programs. Business customers asked for cost assistance programs to help them purchase and install new technologies that reduce greenhouse gas emissions.
Stakeholders suggested that the clean electricity transition should create living wage jobs and create local economic benefits. Stakeholders called for educational, training and apprenticeship programs that could make clean energy jobs accessible for low-income and other vulnerable populations, retrain people with jobs connected to the fossil fuel industry, and prepare youth who are starting to think about their career paths.
Stakeholders said cost should not be a barrier for low-income populations to participate in clean electricity programs, particularly for populations that have historically been more impacted by pollution and energy insecurity. Stakeholders also wanted to address education and awareness barriers by increasing outreach about clean electricity programs or making the programs an automatic component of PSE’s electricity service.
Stakeholders proposed offering low-income households and other vulnerable populations the ability to generate their own electricity through solar panels as a way of reducing their electricity bills. Stakeholders called for enhancing programs like community solar and making it easier for people to install rooftop solar panels in tandem with electricity storage devices to increase access to these benefits. Businesses also were interested in the potential for solar power programs to reduce electricity bills through net metering programs.
Stakeholders wanted to make the power grid more reliable and less susceptible to mass power outages. They suggested tools like battery storage devices, microgrids, and rooftop solar could decrease the number of households that experience power outages during disaster events like major storms or earthquakes.
Stakeholders said it was important for them to feel secure about their electricity service. Some said they needed more information about the dependability of variable resources like wind and solar to feel secure. Stakeholders also said they would benefit from knowing the electricity they consumed was not contributing to environmental problems like climate change and air pollution. Business customers said they took satisfaction knowing the electricity that serves their business was reliable. They also asked for ways to demonstrate the environmental values they share with their customers through participation in clean electricity programs.
To ensure our clean electricity actions create the benefits our customers want to see, we have used community input to develop customer benefit indicators (CBIs). CBIs are qualities or outcomes customers want to result from our clean electricity actions.
How we use customer benefit indicators:
How we’ll measure progress: Count and percentage of participation by PSE customers within named communities
How we’ll measure progress: Number of jobs created by PSE programs by residents of named communities
How we’ll measure progress: Dollar per kilowatt-hour in benefits for program calculated using indoor air temp, indoor air quality, and lighting quality
How we’ll measure progress: Percentage of income spent on electricity bills for PSE customers in highly impacted communities and vulnerable populations
How we’ll measure progress: Regulated pollutant emissions (Sox, NOx, PM2.5) from PSE resources; Reduction of particulates from resources in non-attainment areas
How we’ll measure progress: Health factors like mortality, hospital admittance, work loss days
How we’ll measure progress: Metric tons of annual CO2 emissions form PSE resources
How we’ll measure progress: Reduced peak demand
How we’ll measure progress: Percentage of income spent on electricity bills for PSE customers
How we’ll measure progress: Number of outages, total hours of outages and total backup load served during outages
How we’ll measure progress: Number of customers who have access to emergency power (in home/at community center)
How we'll measure progress:
Measurement of participation by PSE customers within vulnerable and highly impacted populations
How we'll measure progress:
Tracking the number of jobs created by PSE programs, including for vulnerable and highly impacted populations
How we'll measure progress:
Calculating the economic benefits of air temperature, indoor air quality, and lighting quality
How we'll measure progress:
Calculating the percentage of income spent on electricity bills for PSE customers in vulnerable and highly impacted populations
How we'll measure progress:
Measurement of regulated pollutant emissions and reduction of pollution from PSE resources.
How we'll measure progress:
Calculating health factors like mortality, hospital admittance, work loss days
How we'll measure progress:
Calculating carbon dioxide (CO2) emissions from PSE resources
How we'll measure progress:
Reducing peak electricity demand
How we'll measure progress:
Calculating the percentage of income spent on electricity bills for PSE customers
How we'll measure progress:
Measuring the number of outages, total hours of outages and total backup electricity served during outages
How we'll measure progress:
Calculating the number of customers who have access to emergency power at home or at community centers
We’re working to move further, faster with the clean electricity transition. PSE’s goal is to serve coal-free electricity by end of 2025, carbon neutral electricity by 2030, and 100 percent clean electricity by 2045. These goals require an incremental approach to ensure we also continue to serve our customers with safe, dependable and affordable electricity.
Programs like rebates for energy efficient appliances, grants for retrofits and upgrades in energy-intensive buildings, income-based weatherization.
Programs that modify the way customers use energy during busy times of day through voluntary actions or smart thermostat devices.
Electricity generated through large-scale wind turbines and other resources, as well as rooftop and ground solar panels spread throughout a community.
Batteries can store excess renewable energy and discharge it later when the energy is needed, as well as provide back-up power.
A new component of our energy resource planning is to use customer benefits to inform our program and investment decisions. PSE will use customer benefits to evaluate the types of electricity investments we’ll make over the next four years.
As part of the CEIP development process, PSE used customer benefits to identify potential program concepts for distributed energy resources – those local rooftop and ground solar and battery programs for homes and businesses. Shown below are local solar and battery storage programs that we’ve initially identified as having the opportunity to benefit our different types of customers. Additional programs will be available for energy efficiency and demand response.
All distributed energy resources concepts will seek inclusive opportunities for vulnerable populations and highly impacted communities.
Battery storage
Rooftop and ground solar
Battery storage
Rooftop and ground solar
Hybrid
Battery storage
Rooftop and ground solar
We know customers want to move further, faster to a clean electricity future. Transitioning to clean electricity and continuing to provide safe, reliable, and efficient energy are priorities for PSE. Growing our portfolio of clean resources so rapidly will increase customer’s bills.
We’re working to balance the transition to clean electricity while maintaining affordability for customers and avoid placing unfair burden on vulnerable populations. We estimate electricity rates will increase by an average of two percent per year (e.g., by about $6/month by 2025 for average residential customers and $37/month by 2025 for average business customers).
Although this aggressive path to a clean electricity will increase the average customer bill over time, the CEIP includes opportunities for customers to reduce their energy bills through energy efficiency, new demand response, and distributed energy resource programs.
As we work to create a new clean energy future and address the urgency of climate change, we must do so in a way that ensures all of our customers, especially those who shoulder an outsized share of the climate burden, have a voice in and benefit from the transition to clean electricity. In listening to and learning from our new Equity Advisory Group (EAG), the following guiding principles arose from these discussions. PSE will use these principles to help guide CEIP implementation and ensure accountability and equity.
Help customers gain a sense of value and ownership in the clean energy transformation.
Programs that work for the most vulnerable of us will work for all of us.
This requires opportunities for renters, multifamily units, small businesses, and low-income households to participate.
This requires tracking participation by demographics and customer benefit indicators.
This requires sharing information in multiple languages, using both digital and non-digital tools, and growing partnerships with community-based organizations.
We must do this to increase equity in clean energy programs and benefits.
These are preliminary principles. PSE and the EAG will continue to develop these principles for the Final CEIP and may adjust these further during implementation. PSE is also committed to an ongoing and iterative energy planning process, which includes incorporation of the results of procurement processes, tracking progress on customer benefit indicators, and learnings from initial implementation of programs.
PSE will finalize the CEIP and file it with the Utilities and Transportation Commission (UTC).
UTC will approve, deny or modify our CEIP.
PSE will begin implementing the CEIP, using customer benefit indicators to inform our program and investment decisions. We will continue to engage with customers and our advisory groups on CEIP implementation and progress updates.
PSE will report our progress toward our targets and customer benefit indicators.
PSE will begin deploying new clean electricity programs.
Planning the clean electricity future is an ongoing process with implementation, annual reporting and plan updates. This CEIP is the first of many. We will continue to engage with our customers and stakeholders at each step of the way on our path to 100% clean electricity.
Thank you for your interest in Puget Sound Energy’s Clean Energy Implementation Plan (CEIP)! The comments we received by Nov. 12 will be processed and addressed in the final CEIP, expected Dec. 17, 2021.
We will continue to accept and review comments on the draft CEIP, but our ability to include your feedback in the final CEIP becomes less likely as we move into December and approach the Dec. 17 filing date.