Julien Dumoulin-Smith: Hey, good morning team. Thank you guys very much for the time. Hey, Maria, thank you. And just a follow-up — just following up on the latest from the Oregon PC, just on the rejection of the clean energy plan. I just want to understand a little bit, right? Because obviously, this is sort of partial short-term versus long-term. What message are they trying to send here about the 100% target, especially relative to affordability. And I’d love to get in your words, a sense of breaking out of the different pieces that are ongoing? And then I got a follow-up quickly.
Maria Pope: Sure. No, it’s a great question. And first of all, this is our first clean energy plan. And I want to acknowledge and recognize that our integrated resource plan was acknowledged and we are moving forward under that IRP. There are questions really had to do around more granular admissions modeling. We have been doing day-by-day admissions modeling and they like to see hour-by-hour emissions modeling. Overall, as you’ll also remember, our original IRP had — was upsized in July quite significantly for additional energy needs as well as additional capacity needs. And I think there’s more discussion among stakeholders and key constituents around how we’re going to meet the additional needs with additional renewable energy and other infrastructure. So it’s a good time to have healthy discussion around what is a really dynamic and rapidly growing environment here.
Julien Dumoulin-Smith: Yes, it’s certainly. And just to make sure I’m understanding the key takeaway here. I mean it seems like there’s a broader question about like how you meet the 100% in terms of maybe there’s a need for more, again, because I know that at times, there’s been an acute focus on affordability here and perhaps enabling and ensuring that there’s a pathway for affordability. I just want to make sure I’m hearing clearly what direction this rejection on the long-term came from.
Maria Pope: It came from a need most clearly for additional emissions modeling, Julien. But the back story here is that we’re seeing pretty significant changes to the upside of energy usage and wanting to really understand the sources of the economics of all of those procurements. As we bring on renewable resources and Clearwater would be a good example, we’re actually not seeing customer prices, react we’re displacing higher purchase energy in the market. And so the additional renewables procurement is actually not driving customer prices as much as one would think as we model it forward. It’s the overall need for investment and aging infrastructure and supporting significant customer growth that is driving customer prices as we move forward, more than clean energy development.
Joe Trpik: Right. And actually to that point, I mean, you have a dramatic increase here in transmission, and that’s not necessarily surprising given what you’ve been telegraphing in recent periods about the need for transmission. But can you maybe frame out — I mean, how do you think about sort of upside generation given the new level of spend tied to especially transmission here? I mean should we continue to think about this as being incremental? Do you have a shift in how you think about allocating capital to generation here? I mean I know that you’re reaffirming 5% to 7%, but at times, perhaps there’s been sort of a ceiling on how much you want to push your core rate base considering all the various needs. Is there a push out potentially here in terms of some of the investments? Or really, do we — should we consider this as truly incremental upon incremental opportunities?
Maria Pope: Sure. I mean we have to always keep customer prices first and foremost. There’s no question that we have seen customer price pressures, and we are very attuned to the interest of our customers and keep making sure that affordability stays first and foremost. One of the reasons that we have competitive RFPs for renewable generation capacity and energy is to get the very best prices for customers in competitive processes. We have done well in those processes in the past, and we hope to continue to be able to deliver the lowest cost, least risk clean energy resources to customers that is marketdly available. With regards to transmission, there is some flexibility. Some of these transmission spend was in our historic run rate.
Some is new and incremental. We think of this sort of as concentric circles. The first circle being within our service territory really directly being impacted by customer growth. The second is to bring clean energy from our area or just adjacent to our areas to our customers. And then the third is broader investments across the Northwest. One of the big increases as you look further out on the chart in 2028 is the Confederated Tribes of the Warm Springs project on our existing [indiscernible] line where we received a $250 million Department of Energy grant to significantly upsize that existing line, most of which will continue over existing rights of way. So if we look at transmission, we’re focused on relatively easy to execute and my colleagues would probably question that transmission is ever easy to execute, but relatively lower risk projects within our service territory focused on repowering and increasing existing rights of lines.
Julien Dumoulin-Smith: Wonderful. Excellent. And just quick housekeeping on the ITC here, if you don’t mind. Just for the battery, is that going to be reflected like in a single year here or over 5 years? Or how do you think about the accounting for the ITCs here real quickly, again sort of a novel subject in storage and regulated land?
Joe Trpik: So, good morning, Julien. So from a standpoint of recognition, as the battery comes online, we’ll recognize those ITCs, and we would expect since we have 2 batteries that will be coming in over ’24 and ’25, that will recognize those ITCs, what I’ll call it to the balance sheet, the customer is receiving the benefits of those ITCs that we’ll lay out in our next regulatory filing that will be amortized to them. Julien, I think when you get to the real question is once we put them on the balance sheet, the expectation is that we will monetize them somewhat shortly thereafter. So as we recognize them and they have the certainty of the ability to transfer, we will be looking to monetize it.
Julien Dumoulin-Smith: Got it. Pretty concurrently. Got it. Excellent. Thank you. that will flow through the income statement?
Joe Trpik: The monetization will flow through as a cash flow, right, from the purchase and sale of the ITCs income will be income statement neutral to us.
Julien Dumoulin-Smith: Okay. Thanks for that color. I appreciate it.
Operator: Thank you. One moment for our next question. Our next question comes from Gregg Orrill with UBS. Your line is now open.
Gregg Orrill: Yes, thank you.
Maria Pope: Good morning, Gregg.
