Washington State's energy resources
Washington State, located in the Pacific Northwest, boasts a diverse array of energy resources, with a significant emphasis on renewable sources. Hydroelectric power is the most prominent, providing approximately 60% of the state's electricity, with facilities like the Grand Coulee Dam leading in generation capacity. Additionally, wind energy has been well-developed, featuring sizeable wind farms such as the Windy Point/Windy Flats and the Stateline Wind Farm, which contribute significantly to both local and Californian energy needs. While renewable resources dominate, the state also relies on natural gas, which is largely imported, and has limited fossil fuel resources of its own. Washington houses one nuclear power plant, the Columbia Generating Station, which accounts for less than 10% of its electricity. The state's energy landscape is further characterized by ongoing goals to achieve 100% renewable energy generation by 2045 and a growing interest in geothermal potential. Overall, Washington is a net energy exporter, supplying electricity to both American and Canadian grids, reflecting its robust energy infrastructure.
Subject Terms
Washington State's energy resources
Summary: Located in the Pacific Northwest, Washington State has abundant energy resources, many of them renewable, including hydroelectric, wind, and biomass.
Washington is a US state in the Pacific Northwest, its population disproportionately concentrated in the Seattle metropolitan area, where about 60 percent of the state’s 7.5 million residents live, while eastern Washington, on the other side of the Cascade mountain range, is much more sparsely settled and includes both rural farming communities and arid deserts in the Cascades’ rain shadow. Energy consumption per capita was 48th in the country in 2022.
Washington is a net energy exporter, providing electricity to both the Canadian power grid and American grids, including California’s. The Western Interconnection runs electricity to British Columbia and Alberta; the Pacific Intertie, the largest electricity transmission program in the country, supplies electricity produced in Washington to many western states and even Baja California in Mexico. It was originally designed to offset California’s summer power shortages, but it is now used year-round, although the flow is sometimes reversed when hydroelectric generation in the Northwest ebbs.
Fossil Fuels and Nuclear Power
The state has few fossil fuel resources and relies heavily on natural gas, much of it imported from Canada. The Sumas Center in British Columbia, along the Washington border, is the natural gas transportation and trade hub for the Northwest, and the Northwest Pipeline supplies western Washington and Oregon, while the Gas Transmission Northwest Pipeline serves the states’ eastern halves. About one-third of Washington households use natural gas for their home heating, and the residential sector consumed the most natural gas until 2013, when electricity generation became the leading consumer of natural gas.
Five oil refineries provide most of the oil to the Pacific Northwest, which traditionally came by tanker from Alaska; with Alaskan production in decline, these refineries have been depending increasingly on crude oil imports, particularly via the Trans Mountain Pipeline from Alberta, Canada, and from North Dakota's Bakken shale formation. The petroleum demand is high because of these refineries, the power plants they serve, and the higher-than-average jet fuel consumption because of the strong presence of the Air Force and Navy.
The state’s last coal mine was closed in 2006, and the Centralia Big Hanaford power plant, its sole coal-fired power plant, uses coal imported from Wyoming and Montana. In 2024, TransAlta Corporation, which operates the plant, announced in 2024 that only one coal boiler was still in operation, and it would be shut down in 2025.
The Columbia Generating Station is Washington’s single nuclear power plant, located near the Columbia River, and it provides less than 10 percent of the state’s electricity.
Renewable Energy
Hydroelectric power provides about 60 percent of Washington’s electricity in 2023; the state was by far the largest hydroelectric generator in the country, roughly doubling the output of the runner-up. The Grand Coulee facility alone, the largest power plant in the country, has a generating capacity of 15.6 million megawatt-hours of electricity. It supplies power to eight western states. The Skagit River Hydroelectric Project, a series of dams along the Skagit River in the northern part of the state, provides about 20 percent of Seattle’s power.
The Grays Harbor biodiesel plant in Grays Harbor is the largest biodiesel production facility in the country, producing as much as 100 million gallons per year. The majority of the oil used comes from canola and soybeans grown in Washington and Canada.
Nonhydroelectric renewable sources account for about 3 percent of Washington’s energy. The potential for renewable energy development in Washington is immense. Like many states, it has adopted a renewable energy target, requiring that all electricity be generated from renewable energy sources by 2045. The US Department of Energy estimates that untapped geothermal energy could produce 300 megawatts of power in the state.
Wind power has been well developed in Washington compared to much of the country, but it is far from reaching its plateau. The Windy Point/Windy Flats wind farm in Goldendale is one of the largest in the country, occupying 90 square miles with a maximum capacity of about 500 megawatts. Although based in Washington, the electricity itself has been purchased by Californian distributors to help the state meet its renewable energy goals; the wind farm is a complement to a Baja California solar farm. The Wild Horse Wind Farm in Kittitas County is a 273-megawatt wind farm built by Puget Sound Energy, with turbines on the open ridges of Whiskey Dick Mountain. Like Wild Horse, the Big Horn Wind Farm is located in a remote part of Washington; it generates 200 megawatts and leaves most of the land available for outdoor activities such as hunting. The Stateline Wind Farm, which began operation in 2001, became the largest wind farm in the American Northwest, with 186 wind turbines straddling the border between Washington and Oregon, and it had expansion plans to become one of the largest such facilities in the world.
Bibliography
Sanders, Jeffrey Craig. Seattle and the Roots of Urban Sustainability: Inventing Ecotopia. Pittsburgh: University of Pittsburgh Press, 2010.
"Washington." US Energy Information Administration, 2022, www.eia.gov/state/?sid=WA. Accessed 12 Aug. 2024.
"Washington State Energy Office." Department of Commerce, State of Washington 2024, www.commerce.wa.gov/growing-the-economy/energy/. Accessed 12 Aug. 2024.
Williams, Daniel E. Sustainable Design: Ecology, Architecture, and Planning. Hoboken, NJ: Wiley, 2007.