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My principal message today is that the core of the Regional 

 Act remains sound. Its integrated resource planning system has 

 served as an international model, and its authors quite literally 

 wrote the book for the rest of North America on energy efficiency 

 as a resource opportunity for utilities. BPA has hardly been free 

 of errors in the administration of the Act, but it has emerged as 

 a national leader in energy efficiency investment and it has 

 decisively outperformed the rest of the federal power 

 establishment, including TVA and WAPA. 



On the other hand, I join other witnesses in disclaiming any 

 complacency about BPA's recent performance. The agency can do a 

 great deal better, and this Task Force hearing marks an excellent 

 opportunity to get the reform process moving. The remainder of 

 this testimony is devoted to answering seven specific questions 

 that the Chairman has posed to NRDC. 



1. What are BPA^s strengths and weaknesses in the resource 

 acquisition field? In particular, is the BPA conservation program 

 acquiring all cost-effective efficiency and renewable resources? 

 Is BPA on track to acquire the amount of energy efficiency and 

 renewable resources that the Northwest Power Planning Council has 

 targeted for acguisition by the year 2000? Will near-term budget 

 cuts prevent the region from achieving these goals? 



From the perspective of resource acquisition, BPA's greatest 



institutional strengths lie in its capacity to take a regionwide 



perspective on energy needs and resources, its facilities for 



integrating and transmitting power, and its statutory authority to 



take the lead in executing least-cost solutions to the region's 



long-term energy supply and transmission needs. In the 



conservation arena, BPA is unique in its capacity to create or 



catalyze initiatives large enough in scale to transform entire 



markets; examples include the agency's successful building code 



reform campaigns and its leadership in the national utility 



consortium to promote efficiency improvements in refrigerators and 



