The Energy Council helps Hood River County maximize economic benefits and improve community resilience by reducing emissions from the burning of fossil fuels.
About the Hood River County Energy Council
The Hood River Energy Plan was adopted in 2018 by the following governing bodies:
Council members work with partners throughout the County to advance the Energy Plan through subcommittee work, fundraising, and strategic planning.
Council Members & Bios
Alexia Kelly
Council Member
Alexia Kelly has worked for more than 18 years at the intersection of policy and finance to address the climate crisis. Alexia is the Managing Director of the Carbon Policy and Markets Initiative (CPMI) at High Tide
Foundation.
Read more …
Matt King
Energy Council Co-Chair and Council Member
Matt King loves all things related to community energy, with extensive experience at the nexus of forestry, renewable energy, agriculture, and manufacturing. In his current role as the Director of Sales and Innovation at Heartwood Biomass, Matt’s work is focused on facilitating forest restoration, stewardship, and wildfire mitigation by converting woody biomass into a myriad of value-added products.
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Emmanuel Gama
Youth Representative
Bio coming soon.
Jared O’Shaughnessy
At-Large Member
Jared currently serves as the Business Development Manager at The Climate Trust, a Portland-based non-profit carbon project developer. Jared’s work is focused on building relationships with organizations that are interested in taking responsibility for their emissions and helping them to support improved forest management, reforestation, and avoided grassland conversion carbon projects across Oregon and the United States.
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Andrea Johnson
Council Member
Andrea Johnson is the Executive Director at Green Empowerment where she uses her diverse background to bring renewable energy and clean water infrastructure to rural communities across the globe. Andrea completed climate research during her undergraduate studies at Duke University and was a research fellow at NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center before joining the Peace Corps.
Read more …Commissioner Albert Nance
Port of Cascade Locks Representative
Albert Nance is a local resident of Cascade Locks. He serves as a Commissioner on the Port of Cascade Locks and is a local business owner. While he wasn’t born in the Gorge, the first time he saw it he thought it was the most beautiful place on earth and moved here as soon as he could. He’s proud to call the Gorge home, be on the Energy Council, and looks forward to many more years living “that Gorge life” to come.
Jennifer Euwer
Hood River County Representative
Jennifer Euwer is the chair of the Hood River County Board of Commissioners. Jennifer represents the County on the Hood River County Energy Council.
Amanda Goeke
City of Hood River Representative
Bio coming soon
Eric Strid
Energy Council Co-Chair and Council Member
Eric Strid is a cofounder and retired CEO of Cascade Microtech, a global semiconductor equipment company in Beaverton, Oregon (now FormFactor, Inc.). He is named inventor on 67 US patents. Eric is now working only for our children on various climate mitigation research and volunteering efforts
Read more …Jessie von Flotow
Council Member
Jessie is passionate about developing tangible and measurable progress towards the goals of the Hood River County Energy Plan. She has a strong interest in local, community scale action to drive decarbonization, particularly with transportation. She has a background in Mechanical Engineering from the University of British Columbia
Read more …Jean Cypher
Notetaker
Jean Cypher takes down the minutes for the Energy Council meetings. Her background is in veterinary
medicine, and she manages Rowena Wildlife Clinic. She is fascinated by the ways that energy unites the
physical, chemical, and biological sciences. She’s grateful to work with humans that use this knowledge
to benefit other species.
Lindsay McClure
Energy Council Staff / MCEDD Energy and Project Manager
Lindsay joined Mid-Columbia Economic Development District as Energy & Project Manager in the spring of 2022. . Lindsay’s role is focused on assisting the Energy Council in identifying, understanding, and removing barriers that limit access to beneficial energy scenarios within Hood River County communities and throughout the MCEDD five-county region.
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History
Hood River County has a long-standing history of energy efficiency and renewable energy development as a means to reduce energy costs, hedge our bets against future increases in energy costs, and increase our community’s resilience to changing temperatures and both natural and human caused disasters.
The Hood County Energy Plan was developed in 2015-2016 by a group of volunteers and elected officials in Hood River County who saw an opportunity to be more strategic about helping the county meet its future energy needs.
The creators of the Energy Plan believed the community could invest in an energy future that would provide good local jobs, generate clean power, save taxpayers money, and set us up to be a refuge in times of emergency. Once the Energy Plan was adopted, the Hood River County Energy Council was created (replacing the steering committee that developed the Energy Plan) to guide implementation of the Energy Plan.
Development of the Energy Plan was made possible through funding from Hood River County, City of Hood River, Port of Hood River, City of Cascade Locks, Port of Cascade Locks, Energy Trust of Oregon, The Ford Family Foundation, and the RARE Americorps Program.
Examples of early clean energy projects in Hood River County:
- Hood River Middle School‘s Music and Science building is the first public school building in the United States to be net-zero-energy certified.
- The Hood River County Parks and Recreation District solar water system at the pool was the largest grant-funded project of its kind in state history at the time of its construction.
- The Tofurky food manufacturing plant located at the Port of Hood River is one of the few LEED Platinum-certified food manufacturing facilities in the world.
- The Farmers and Middle Fork Irrigation districts’ community-owned and operated hydroelectric facilities generate approximately 17% of Hood River County’s electricity and bring $3 to $4 million dollars to the county each year.
- At the Diamond Fruit Company Co-Op, energy-efficiency upgrades save the company more than $50,000 annually, improve its equipment performance, and make the company more competitive globally. Such projects allow Hood River Electric Co-Op to defer distribution system improvements by slowing load growth while continuing to serve growing customer needs.
- The City of Hood River Public Works building’s rooftop solar project is one of the first community-financed renewable energy projects in Oregon, saving the City an estimated $97,000 over 25 years.