Clean Energy, Clean Water, and Wildfire
2025 Legislative Wins for Sustainable Northwest
On left: Washington state capitol. On right: Oregon state capitol. Credit: Shutterstock.
Despite tight budgets in Oregon and Washington this year, Sustainable Northwest scored key victories on clean energy, wildfire, and forest restoration. Here’s what we accomplished:
✅ Microgrids for Oregon – PASSED!
This is huge. Oregon passed a landmark bill that paves the way for communities to withstand power outages and natural disasters by tapping clean, renewable energy sources. As wildfires and extreme weather grow more common, the new law will empower communities and Tribes to:
Plan, build and operate microgrids
Protect communities from damaging power outages
Develop local renewable energy sources like solar, wind, and geothermal
✅ Accelerating Renewable Energy Project Development – PASSED!
Renewable energy projects are facing political and financial headwinds in Washington. Oregon passed a bill that will help remove roadblocks to getting renewable energy projects connected to the grid and powering communities with clean, renewable energy.
Next step: Oregon’s Public Utility Commission must write the roadmap for microgrids and renewable energy project development. Learn more about both laws here.
✅ Wildfire Response & Resilience in Oregon – PASSED!
Oregon saw record-breaking wildfire in 2024. In response, we helped secure $271 million to:
Protect communities from wildfire
Restore forest health through thinning and prescribed burns
Support landowner recovery and rural fire districts
Fund home hardening in fire-prone areas
Ensure Oregon always has the funds to pay our firefighters
Some of this funding is now permanent—a major step toward long-term wildfire resilience.
✅ Prescribed Fire in Washington – PASSED!
Healthy forests depend on fire—but landowners face steep barriers to using prescribed burns safely. Following our success in Oregon, we helped pass Washington’s HB 1563 to:
Expand insurance access for prescribed fire
Protect responsible burners from liability
Grow the workforce of qualified fire practitioners
Legislators also approved $60 million for wildfire mitigation—about half of what was needed, but still a strong investment in a difficult economy.
✅ Washington Community Forests – FUNDED
Community forests serve drinking water, recreation, habitat, and local economies. And Washington state has a popular program to fund community forests. A bipartisan coalition of lawmakers and stakeholders pushed for $26.4M to fund increasing demand for the program. In a difficult funding environment, lawmakers were able to keep the program from being defunded by allocating $6.2M into the budget, which will fund two of 10 projects. We’ll keep fighting for more funding to continue expanding our network of community forests.
❌ Clean Water Funding – DELAYED
Despite bipartisan support, Oregon lawmakers failed to find funding to extend the Drinking Water Source Protection Grant Program. Sustainable Northwest helped create the program in 2023 that provided funds for six Oregon communities to protect their drinking water sources. HB 3341 would have renewed that funding for the 2025-2027 biennium. We’ll push to bring it back in 2026—our communities and watersheds depend on it.
