Residential electricity rates for customers of Oregeon’s largest electric utility have grown at twice the rate of inflation over the past five years, prompting U.S. Sen. Ron Wyden to press Portland General Electric to rein them in.  The company’s CEO responded, promising beyond 2025 to “do everything possible to keep residential rate hikes below the rate of inflation,” Wyden said in a letter Wednesday. The letter to Maria Pope, PGE’s CEO, recaps discussions the two had in response to concerns from Wyden that the high cost of electricity was becoming a major issue in the lives of Oregonians.  PGE, which serves 900,000 customers in Oregon, has raised rates on residential customers nearly 43% since 2020. That’s about double the rate of inflation during that time — an increase of about 20% in the last five years — as measured in the Consumer Price Index from the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics. PGE spokesperson Drew Hanson told the Capital Chronicle on Wednesday that the company realizes the burden rising energy costs pose to Oregonians.  “We are committed to serving customers with reliable, safe, secure and increasingly renewable energy while working to keep prices as low as possible,” Hanson said in an email. PGE is currently asking the Oregon Public Utilities Commission to raise rates again, by about 7.3% on average in 2025. That’s amore than double the average rate of inflation over the last year, which averaged about 3.6%, according to the latest data from the federal labor statistics bureau. Pacific Power, the state’s second largest electric utility serving about 574,000 customers in Oregon, has raised rates more than 30% since 2022, and is requesting approval for a more than 11% average increase in 2025, including nearly 15% for residential customers.   Oregon’s Public Utilities Commission will vote on whether to approve both rate hikes by the end of December.  Pope also agreed to “take every possible step,” according to Wyden’s letter, to ensure that the costs associated with meeting growing demand from industrial customers — such as semiconductor manufacturers, data centers and AI companies — would not be passed onto residential customers.  Energy demand from PGE’s residential customers has gone up about 5% in the last five years while industrial demand is up more than 34%, requiring PGE to make major investments in industrial energy storage, new transmission lines and more energy generation projects. Those costs have been spread across all customers, and today residential customers pay more per kilowatt hour of electricity than industrial customers, according to an analysis by the Citizens’ Utility Board, a watchdog group established by Oregon voters in 1984 to represent the interests of utility consumers. And yet, Hanson said the utility is trying to spare residential customers from paying for industrial demand. “We are actively working to help ensure that growth in electricity demand does not unduly impact residential customers,” he said in the email.  Wyden said in his letter that Pope also agreed to send documentation of how the company has used clean energy tax credits approved in the 2022 Inflation Reduction Act, including the Clean Electricity Investment Credit, which offers companies like PGE a 6% to 30% tax credit on its clean electricity investments, including energy generation, storage and infrastructure investments.  He said he would meet with officials of the Bonneville Power Administration and energy regulators to “identify further opportunities to ensure Oregon residential ratepayers have access to the most affordable power possible.”  BPA supplies nearly 30% of the electricity sold to utilities in the Northwest, including PGE, which is generated from 31 federal hydroelectric dams in the Columbia River Basin. The cost of electricity from BPA has been on the rise in recent years, and is expected to increase by 10% or more by next October, according to a news release about rate proposals from officials at the administration. The release said inflation and a need to invest in power and transmission infrastructure is driving up costs. Oregon Capital Chronicle is part of States Newsroom, a network of news bureaus supported by grants and a coalition of donors as a 501c(3) public charity. Oregon Capital Chronicle maintains editorial independence. Contact Editor Lynne Terry for questions: [email protected]. Follow Oregon Capital Chronicle on Facebook and Twitter. STORY TIP OR IDEA? Send an email to Salem Reporter’s news team: [email protected]. The post Wyden says PGE will ‘do everything possible’ to keep rates below inflation after 2025 appeared first on Salem Reporter.