By Emily Bowes
Policy Strategist
Sierra Club Oregon
The 2025 Oregon Legislative Session is entering its final stretch, and what happens in these next few weeks will have lasting impacts on our state’s climate, communities, and future. With adjournment scheduled for late June, we’re now in the phase when key bills either move forward or stall out.
Sierra Club Oregon has been hard at work this session, advocating for affordable clean energy, opposing dangerous nuclear development, defending wildlife protections, and pushing for sustainable, equitable transportation funding. Some of our priority bills are gaining momentum while others face uphill battles and negotiations are intensifying behind the scenes. Our lawmakers typically rely on federal funding for a significant portion of the state budget, such as using state dollars to leverage additional federal support especially for education and health care. But with threats of federal budget cuts and economic uncertainty under the Trump administration, there’s growing concern that this key funding might not come through. Come the May 14th revenue forecast (the most recent state budget plan) we’ll have an idea whether the state can maintain essential services or will face deep budget cuts. This will also affect which bills are likely to proceed down the legislative process or be determined to be too expensive to go forward.
In this update, we’ll walk you through where things stand on our top legislative priorities and how you can help make a difference in these critical final weeks. Whether it’s attending an upcoming lobby day, contacting your legislators, or spreading the word now is the time to speak up for Oregon’s environment and communities.
We’ve been working hard to advance strong climate policy and stop rollbacks. The following bills are still moving forward and deserve your continued attention:
Supporting Energy Affordability and Resilience Legislative Package
- ✅ HB 3081, “One Stop Shop 2.0” - Would expand efforts to create a streamlined page or direct assistance program to help Oregonians know what energy efficiency incentives they qualify for.
- ✅ HB 3792, “Oregon Energy Assistance Program” - This proposal would increase funding for the state’s energy assistance program by adjusting the fee on utility bills, adding about 60 cents per month, to better support low-income households and prevent utility shutoffs.
- ✅ HB 3170, “Community Resilience Hub” - Directs $10 million to the Department of Human Services for a grant program aimed at establishing community-based resilience centers that provide safe shelter during extreme weather emergencies.
- ✅ SB 688, “Performances Based Ratemaking” - Modernize the way utility rates are determined by requiring regulators to create new incentives that reward utilities for improving energy efficiency, reliability, and customer outcomes.
- ✅ HB 3546, “POWER Act” - Would create a new customer category for large industrial users like data centers. It would allocate proportional costs for services related to large energy use facilities of 20 megawatts or more. The bill aims to prevent other classes of retail electricity consumers from bearing unwarranted costs due to the services provided to large energy use facilities.
- ✅ SB 88, “Get the Junk Out of Rates” - This bill would ensure utilities can no longer pass certain costs, like advertising or political spending, onto ratepayers. Those expenses would instead come out of company profits, not customers’ bills.
- ✅ HB 3179, “FAIR Energy Act” - Delay utility rate increases until after winter months, require greater transparency about how utilities spend customer money, and mandate that regulators consider ratepayer impacts before approving increases.
Opposition to Nuclear Energy Expansion
At the time of our last legislative update we were fighting 13 pro-nuclear bills. Now we have whittled that number down to only two. That is no doubt a victory, but we must hold off on celebrating until the two remaining pro-nuclear bills still making their way through the legislature have been defeated. Both of the following bills are currently in Ways and Means, and it is our goal that they shall not pass onward from here:
- ❌ HB 2410 “Umatilla Nuclear Exemption” - Would exempt Umatilla County from the statewide moratorium on nuclear development in the state without a federal waste repository or a vote of the people. This bill is primarily being driven by the interest of big tech companies like Amazon and Apple that are looking to fast track data center development in the state despite small modular nuclear reactors being a false solution to meet energy demands.
- ❌ HB 2038 “ODOE Nuclear Study” - This bill would devote time and money toward a study of nuclear development in Oregon by the Department of Energy. The initial draft of this bill was imbalanced and directed only at finding the “benefits” of nuclear power. The current amended draft is much less biased, but still unneeded. There are many studies already available on the impacts of nuclear power and we need not divert much needed funds from the current work of our already-taxed agency.
Transportation Funding
Thanks to public pressure and community advocacy, the "TRIP" framework now reflects some movement toward safer streets, climate responsibility, and expanded transit. But Oregon deserves and urgently needs a package that fully delivers. There has been strong progress made, and we are determined to finish the job. We need to focus on the safety of all Oregonians in their everyday life (30% of Oregonians do not or cannot drive). Traveling to work, school, and throughout their communities is even more difficult for rural Oregonians facing seasonal obstacles such as flooding damage, landslides, snow events. Ensuring the Oregon Department of Transportation has the funding to prepare for these events is crucial. Failure to fund transit leaves far too many Oregonians stranded and isolated, and impacts people's ability to access jobs, school, health care, groceries, and much more.
Protecting Oregon’s Wildlife
- ✅ HB 3932 “Protect Beavers Bill”- This bill proposes closing hunting and trapping of beavers on the waterways existing on public lands that have been deemed impaired to DEQ standards. Evidence shows that beaver dam complexes help address many of these water quality issues, and can do it for FREE! Beavers are ecosystem master engineers that once thrived in our state, giving us our nickname. Their activities, such as canal-digging and dam-building, help slow water flow, restore impacted water tables and underground aquifers, create natural wetlands that help filter toxins, and simultaneously create wildlife and fish habitats. Almost half of Oregon’s streams and rivers currently suffer from poor water quality. That’s more than 100,000 miles of waterways! The Department of Environmental Quality is tasked with restoring these waterways, but unfortunately, lacks the resources to do so at the scale that is needed. This is where beavers can help.
- ✅ HB 3143 - “Living with Beavers Bill” - Aimed at helping Oregonians who encounter beavers on their property to live in better harmony with them, while mitigating some of the more negatively-viewed impacts to property. The bill provides a subaccount for Fish and Wildlife to use for grants to landowners to assist with tree protection tools, flood prevention flow devices, culvert and infrastructure protection system, crop protection strategies, landowner education and outreach, and training related to mitigating the effects of beavers. The bill also aims to provide statewide technical assistance to develop and expand skills and strategies for coexisting with beavers.
- ✅ HB 3580 “Eelgrass Task Force” - Eelgrass (seagrass) meadows play an essential role in maintaining healthy estuarine and ocean ecosystems and provide nursery habitat for a variety of marine species, including juvenile salmon, Dungeness crab, herring, and rockfish. HB 3580 is the first step toward helping us understand the extent of eelgrass and needs for conservation. Specifically, the bill would create a Task Force of scientists, Tribes, stakeholders, and state agencies to collectively assess the status of eelgrass resources, develop conservation and restoration targets for the state, investigate knowledge gaps and policy barriers, and provide recommendations to the legislature to improve the management of these critical habitats along our coast.
- ❌ HB 3103, “State Forest Logging Bill” - By requiring a minimum logging level on state forests and creating a new legal right of action for enforcing that logging level, House Bill 3103-5 would upend Oregon’s Greatest Permanent Value Rule and lead to endless, costly litigation for the State of Oregon. This would lead to increased logging in the state and should be stopped.
With just weeks remaining in the 2025 legislative session, now is the time to speak up. Key decisions are being made and sometimes behind closed doors and your voice can help push lawmakers to choose climate justice, community resilience, and environmental protection over false solutions. Here’s how you can make an impact in these final weeks:
Join us in Salem on May 19 for our Nuclear Day of Action: Keep Oregon Nuclear Free! Stand with us to oppose dangerous nuclear energy proposals and demand a truly clean energy future.
Email or call your legislators! Let your state senator and representative know where you stand. Whether it’s opposing nuclear bills, supporting affordable energy reforms, or demanding climate-smart transportation investments—your voice matters. You can find your legislators and their contact info here: Find Your Legislator. Spread the word to friends, family, and community members. Invite them to take action, too, because together we are stronger.