By: Dr. Kathleen Saul, co-chair of the Sierra Club Washington Energy Committee
“Unless someone like you cares a whole awful lot, nothing is going to get better. It’s not.”—The Lorax by Dr. Seuss
The Ask.
How do you get a lot of people to care an awful lot about something they might not have thought much about? Could members of our chapter Energy Committee get the word out about the Puget Sound Energy (PSE) rate case hearings, in person on September 29 at the Utility and Transportation Commission offices in Lacey, or on-line on October 7? While the rate case had been filed at the start of 2026, many PSE customers had been unaware of the size of the rate increases proposed or the rationale behind them. They needed to be educated, and quickly!
The simple messaging: Northwest Energy Coalition (NWEC) provided a toolkit outlining the key issues with the case. Chief among them: An almost 30% increase in residential electric rates to cover conversion of the TransAlta Centralia plant to burn methane gas and experiments into hydrogen/methane gas blending. The Washington Attorney General’s (AG) office provided us with insight into the increase in profit margin requested (10.8% versus the current 9.9% and the AG’s recommended 8.17%). We adopted that data for posters and PowerPoint slides, adding background information about the state’s Climate Commitment Act (CCA) and Clean Energy Transformation Act (CETA) as well as information about rates charged by other utilities in the region. So armed, we set to work.
The Action.
Meet them where they are. Because the UTC is headquartered in Lacey, Jim and I focused our efforts to increase awareness of the September meeting on the South Sound. We showed up with posters at neighborhood picnics, the South Sound group’s annual picnic and monthly meeting, and gave more formal presentations at the League of Women Voters meeting and a local retirement community. Interested parties received the information via email as well. We asked everyone we met to tell their friends and neighbors. Nick, our committee member from the Bellingham area, spread word about both the in-person event and the on-line meeting and submitted a letter to the editor, published in the Cascade Daily News.
The Washington Chapter of the Sierra Club also hosted a Zoom webinar informing folks about the contents of PSE’s rate case as well as the broader 9th Power Plan now under consideration for the region.
The Result.
Thanks to all the efforts of Sierra Club members and those of other organizations, the UTC gave out 123 numbers for the in-person hearing on September 29. While not all 123 people actually gave testimony, the oral comments filled 4 ½ hours. Another 100 or so spoke out at the on-line hearing on October 7. The UTC heard from young people and old, people on fixed incomes and farmers and small business owners who will be pushed over the financial edge by the rate increases. They heard from people working for the State of Washington whose annual cost-of-living raises can’t match the yearly increases imposed by PSE. They heard about people heating only one room in their homes due to high energy bills. They heard from PSE customers who had done their own analyses of the proposed increases and deemed them to be too high--not aligned with the risk borne by PSE. The UTC heard calls for more renewable energy rather than investments in gas. And the UTC heard calls for an electric utility run by people who are actually part of the communities they serve.
The Lorax would be proud. Based on what we heard from the many people who cared a whole awful lot—enough to speak before the UTC at the PSE rate case hearings—things are going to get better.