BPA’s Energy Market Choice Will Spike Customer Rates, Harm Reliability, and Roll Back Clean Energy Progress

Bonneville Power Administration (BPA) announced late last week that it is “solidifying its path” to join an Arkansas-based energy trading market, the Southwest Power Pool’s Markets+, and will officially start to buy and sell energy in that market in October, 2028. This announcement confirms a decision BPA made in May, 2025, to prioritize joining Markets+. 

BPA’s choice of this trading market will harm customers, salmon, and the Northwest’s efforts to transition to clean energy.  Five groups filed a legal challenge last year over BPA’s market choice, requesting the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals vacate it for violations of the Northwest Power Act and other laws.

“Northwest customers should understand that BPA’s decision to join Markets+ will harm ratepayers, our clean energy future, and our environment, and that it will cause ripple effects that will hamstring our region for years to come,” said Earthjustice Attorney Jaimini Parekh. “BPA continues to follow through on this unwise, illegal decision that ignores its obligations under federal law to deliver least cost electricity to ratepayers while protecting our endangered salmon and steelhead.” 

That lawsuit is continuing, with a court decision expected later this year or early next year. The groups who filed that lawsuit are NW Energy Coalition, Idaho Conservation League, Montana Environmental Information Center, Oregon Citizens’ Utility Board and the Sierra Club.

Simultaneously, while BPA ignores or downplays expected rate hikes from its energy market decision, it is attempting to blame a recent federal court order requiring vital measures for salmon for what it says will be necessary rate increases. 

In a separate matter case earlier this month, a federal court in Oregon ordered federal agencies to change operations of the Columbia Basin hydropower system dams in critical ways to help improve salmon survival. That includes increased spill over eight dams on the lower Columbia and Snake Rivers. BPA claims complying with the court order will cost the agency $140 million annually – despite BPA’s earlier sworn testimony to Congress that similar operations would save ratepayers $1 million annually. BPA apparently believes its customers should pay for increased salmon protections even though it has a range of management options to address changes in power generation from the dams, options it has used in the past to avoid or minimize rate impacts. BPA announced a hearing on March 31, 2026, to discuss this potential rate increase. 

BPA is grossly exaggerating its cost estimate for complying with the court-ordered spill by using misleading data and incorrectly comparing the court-ordered spill to a draft plan for 2026 that provided dramatically reduced spill, turning back the clock on established salmon protection measures and decimating salmon runs. 

The 10 conservation, fishing and energy groups, represented by Earthjustice, that asked the court to order increased spill did so only after the Trump administration unilaterally and abruptly ended the Resilient Columbia Basin Agreement. The RCBA’s comprehensive approach to salmon recovery aimed to restore imperiled native fisheries while investing $1 billion over a decade in the region, including to boost clean energy projects. 

The plaintiff groups involved in both matters note that BPA would save far more money than any potential costs of the court order simply by choosing another day-ahead energy market, the western-wide Extended Day Ahead Market (EDAM), rather than Markest+. 

BPA’s own analysis shows that choosing the smaller Markets+ option could increase costs for its customers by $165-$221 million annually compared to the larger EDAM option. Because BPA controls 75% of the region’s transmission grid that is essential to effective energy trading, its market choice impacts every utility in the region. BPA’s analysis shows its choice to join Markets+ could cause the region to pay more than $400 million in higher power bills each year. And these losses would persist indefinitely into the future. 

Further, an analysis prepared by state agencies in Washington and Oregon using BPA’s data found that over the long-term joining Markets+ would mean foregoing $4.4 billion in accrued savings on power costs over time. 

“If BPA is genuinely concerned about keeping energy rates low, it could increase benefits to the region by choosing EDAM over Markets+ which its own analysis says would save customers hundreds of millions of dollars each year in perpetuity,” said Ben Otto, senior policy associate with NW Energy Coalition. “Complying with a court order is not optional – it’s essential for fish and should certainly not be the basis for raising energy rates as high as BPA claims is necessary.”

In the legal challenge to BPA’s market choice, the groups cite arbitrary decision-making by BPA that would spike rates for customers and reduce access to nearby and abundant sources of clean energy, combined with battery storage, steps that would help increase reliability while also allowing salmon restoration measures to continue and expand.  

“BPA doesn’t get to choose which laws it wants to implement or pin exaggerated rate impacts on the salmon it has failed to recover. We can help the Columbia Basin’s imperiled salmon populations recover and have low-cost, affordable, clean energy,” said Bill Arthur, chair of Sierra Club’s Snake/Columbia River Salmon Campaign. “But unfortunately BPA is pitting these two intertwined goals against each other to the detriment of BPA’s customers who want and deserve to keep energy rates low while we work together to restore salmon.” 

Background

Regional energy markets allow utilities and energy authorities like BPA to buy and sell electricity across a wider area, which can help lower costs for consumers, provide more access to renewable energy sources and ensure a stable and reliable energy supply. Choosing an energy market is a big decision for any utility — and for a large power broker like BPA, the effects of choosing the wrong energy market can cascade through dozens of utilities, across multiple states and last for decades.

Many others in the region, including Oregon and Washington’s four Senators, have repeatedly expressed strong concerns over BPA’s decision to join Markets+.