QPO Energy, a lithium battery maker based in Tualitin, announced plans this week to expand its Tualatin operation and relocate an inverter factory from China to Oregon.  

A press release from Greater Portland Inc. does not offer a timeline for the expansion, and Oregon Business was not able to reach either QPO or GPI for comment.

In the release, Greater Portland Inc., QPO CEO Joseph Lu told Monique GPI’s Monique Claiborne the expansion was  made possible by incentives from the Inflation Reduction Act and support from private investment  firms as well as support from Taiwan’s Yulon Group.

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It isn’t clear how many Oregonians the company —which was founded in 2020 — currently employs, nor how many Oregon jobs the expansion will create. but Lu told Claiborne the expansion will allow the company’s workforce to grow to 400 people.

Per QPO’s website, the company’s product line includes semi-truck batteries, battery modules and packs and PCS inverters.

According to data the U.S. Energy Information Administration, Oregon’s renewable energy consumption as a share of the state’s total was 51% in 2022. In the release, Lu said Oregon has “logistical advantages,” with its location, ports and transportation network providing access to key markets in North America, China and Japan.

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Lu also noted that Oregon provides grants of up to $50,000, through the Governor’s Strategic Reserve Fund, to organizations who plan to apply for federal Inflation Reduction Act funds. The Strategic Reserve Fund is dedicated to supporting private sector Oregon climate tech, renewable energy, and advanced manufacturing companies.

“I anticipate more businesses will follow in QPO’s footsteps and explore the remarkable opportunities that Greater Portland, Oregon has to offer,” Lu said in the release. “From its dynamic business landscape to its unmatched quality of life, Oregon stands ready to welcome visionary enterprises and partner in their journey towards success.”

Last week, Senators Ron Wyden and Jeff Merkley announced that 28 renewable energy projects targeting rural parts of the state will receive $2.3 million of grant funding.

Funding for the projects — mostly solar panel installations at rural farms and businesses — comes from  the Inflation Reduction Act, which includes $369 billion in federal funding over 10 years to support renewable energy projects, according to a press release issued jointly by Wyden and Merkley last week.

Nearly half of the procurement — $1 million — will go toward the installation of a ground-mounted solar energy system for Verde Light Community Solar LLC in Ontario. The system is estimated to generate over 8,000,000 kilowatt-hours per year, the equivalent needed to power 750 single family homes annually, and will provide $121,170 per year in energy cost savings to local subscribers.

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Smaller projects included $11,824 to help Lexington-based Tin Willow Sheep Dairy farm purchase and install a solar panel system capable of replacing over half of the business’s energy use with solar power, reducing its utility bill by $782 per year in the process.

Of the 28 projects to receive funding, 26 projects involved the installation of solar panel systems.

The Deschutes Soil and Water Conservation District, Spark Northwest, North Fork John Day River Watershed Council, and the Yamhill Soil and Water Conservation District received a combined total of $100,000 to increase implementation of renewable energy generation by rural small businesses, farms and agricultural producers throughout the state. The University of Oregon’s Resource Assistance for Rural Environments AmeriCorps Program also received $100,000 to work with area partners to increase implementation of renewable energy generation by rural small businesses and farms.

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“We can address high energy prices due to the volatility in the price of oil and natural gas by bolstering our clean, domestic energy supplies in every nook and cranny of our state and across the nation,” said Wyden in the press release. “I was proud to have fought for and secured some of the most consequential pieces of the Inflation Reduction Act to tackle the climate crisis and create new jobs, but one of my main goals was to ensure that rural farmers, ranchers, businesses and organizations could benefit from the cost savings. I’m gratified to see so many Oregonians getting much-deserved benefits.”

“Oregon’s communities—both big and small, urban and rural—make our state successful and vibrant,”  Merkley said in the release. “Investing in Oregon’s small businesses, farmers, and ranchers supports strong local economies, especially in the more rural parts of the state. The benefits of these investments stretch to every corner of Oregon, and I’ll continue to champion critical support like this for Oregon’s rural economic opportunities.”

A full list of the funded projects is available on Wyden’s website.

Correction: A previous version of this article said the Verde Light Community Solar Project would generate 8.066 gigawatt hours per year. Oregon Business regrets these errors.

The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency awarded Portland State University $649,492 to further understanding about the environmental justice impacts of renewable energy storage infrastructure. PSU was one of 11 institutions nationwide receiving a total of $11 million in grant funding to address the drivers and environmental impacts of energy transitions in underserved and tribal communities. 

The funded project,  which includes facilitating researchers from San Jose State University, University of Nevada–Reno and California State Polytechnic University–Pomona will use a qualitative, case-study-based, community-engaged approach in order to “examine critical nodes along the renewable energy life cycle.”

The announcement follows a $10 million grant in April given to Portland State University and a group of regional partners to establish one of two Northwestern Environmental and Energy Justice Thriving Communities Technical Assistance Centers, or TCTAC, (pronounced “TicTac”) to fund environmental justice research among Native American tribes and their neighbors across the Northwest. 

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The expected outputs of the research project include a policy-facing report of recommendations for just and sustainable renewable energy storage, produced through engagement with community members; presentations for academic conferences, public agencies, and non-governmental organizations; peer-reviewed research journal publications; a series of entries for the Environmental Justice Atlas and other community-engaged research products to be developed in collaboration with stakeholders and project advisory board members; and community-engaged workshops to build working relationships that will continue beyond the life of the project.  

“As our energy systems rapidly shift toward renewables, it is critical that we better understand the environmental justice implications of this transition,” EPA Region 10 Administrator Casey Sixkiller said in a press release from the agency. “Portland State University’s community-engaged research will help fill this knowledge gap and ensure that decision making regarding the energy transition is more attentive to environmental justice and community concerns.”  

Eugene-based three-wheel electric vehicle manufacturer Arcimoto’s second-quarter earnings report, which was released Thursday,  shows the company earned $1.7 million while taking $13.2 million in net losses. The numbers do reflect improvement, a 17% increase in revenue and 25% decrease in net losses compared to the second quarter of 2022, when the company lost a net $17.4 million.

Leading up to the earnings call this month, the company announced plans to lease space in its Eugene factory, as well as a fundraising round of $6.7 million, and a partnership with Department of Defense contractor Matbock, which makes hybrid-electric tactical vehicles.

The company also debuted its MUV (Modern Utility Vehicle), a modular utility vehicle in the company’s lineup of small-footprint electric vehicles meant for professional and commercial use.

Shortly after the earnings call Oregon Business spoke with Arcimoto CEO Chris Dawson, who stepped into the role on April 20, replacing interim CEO Jesse Fittpaldi, who took the reins of the company after the departure of founder Mark Frohmayer last summer following a DUI arrest. Dawson is optimistic about the future of the eco-friendly vehicle manufacturer, saying it’s becoming more efficient, eliminating costs, and on track to become profitable.

This interview has been edited for length and clarity.

When you took over Arcimoto the company experienced a lot of a lot of financial difficulties, a lot of revenue loss compared to profit. What has been your general strategy for reducing costs?

You did a good job of lightly talking about the fact that Rome was burning. Like in sports, it’s focused on the fundamentals. We sat down and went through all 3,500 unique parts, quite literally part by part, and asked “Why are we spending $9 on this bolt? Why are we spending $800 on this battery?” Now we’ve made all our make-versus-buy decisions.

We’re very vertically integrated. We have a ton of capital equipment and capability that we’re not utilizing. Originally, we were planning on scaling to 50,000 units a year very quickly, so they spent a lot of money on a 250,000-square-foot building on 10 acres with tons of very nice CNC equipment, which I’m very familiar with. We’ve been leveraging that for contract manufacturing any time that we don’t need it as another revenue arm. And we’re not real estate investors, we’re a vehicle manufacturer.

We’re also scaling up to 24/7 operations. We’ve derived enough business to be able to warrant that. We have all this manufacturing potential just hanging on the vine, so we’re leveraging that. Not only will we be able to leverage and only lease the areas that we need, which is a drastic cost savings, it also pulls a fairly large amount of equity that’s going to catapult us through next year as far as runway and driving us closer to that breakeven point and then getting into operational income.

You recently partnered with defense contractor Matbock. You also have a background in defense contracting yourself. How will defense and military contracts figure into Arcimoto’s overall strategy?

I’m ex-military myself. Before I got out I was actively upgrading and fixing repairing submarines, nose to tail and get them back out to the deployment. That means integrating new technologies and new prototypes. A few years ago, I started my own engineering firm that concentrated on the development of these green technologies for military application.

As you know, as geopolitics continues to shift and our supply chains are looking less and less reliable, the military right now is very worried about where we’re sourcing a lot of our technology from, and our company is well-positioned as we have our own battery factory and build our own batteries. All the action currently in Ukraine and potentials in Asia are absolutely getting the military folks excited. They see the vulnerabilities in the supply chain and how that’s going to affect our ability to continue to operate in foreign theaters.

I see this being a very large market. Right now, we are in the prototyping phase and there are tens of thousands of [military] vehicles that could benefit from technology we’re injecting into these current prototypes. There’s an opportunity to float and grow almost solely on defense. That’s not the goal, but when we look at the potential of what our Arcimoto could supply there I have every confidence that I could shut everything down for the retail commercial side, concentrate solely on military, and build business on it.

Is the military interested in green technology right now?

If you go to the Army or Navy, Marines, Air Force, and you say, “here’s something to reduce your carbon footprint,” that’s actually not a core problem that they’re trying to solve. But if I go, “What if I gave you 300 miles of range at silent operation and another 600 miles of range with a highly efficient generator on board, so now you have an insane level of operational efficiency on the battlefield?” It doesn’t matter that it’s electric, it doesn’t matter that it’s green, it’s just a better product.

It’s very valuable to the military and they’re willing to pay for that in the fact that we’re able to move very quickly. We can simply add a shift and crank out a bunch of batteries for whatever they might need.

You also introduced your modern utility vehicle (MUV) light industrial vehicles able to be fitted for different commercial purposes. What was the impulse behind that vehicle?

That really was birthed out of our deliverator, which is basically an SUV with enclosed rear cabin in the back seat, only instead of a back seat it has shelving. When we started putting out the deliverators on various pilot projects, customers thought it was neat and sleek and looks cool, but it’s weird to work with, and if you’re loading square boxes into a non-square space, you actually don’t get to utilize the full capacity. So, in listening to customers we said “Okay, how about how about a box in the back?”  

Now it’s perfect for typical last-mile delivery, and parts leveling, and all the things that business might utilize. And then we heard “how about a flatbed on the rails, right?” So that was when said “this whole thing needs to be modular, this is just like a tractor on the farm to build an interface on that allows somebody else, and outfitter, entrepreneur farmer, whoever needs whatever kind of function, to build an implement just like tractors have multiple implements that you can integrate.

Now we’ll work designing very specific implements for specific customer requests to facilitate whatever kind of work applications that they want. The MUV is a blank canvas by which anybody can paint whatever commercial solution that they want.

What has been the reaction to them so far? Haven’t you sold any of the units yet?

Yeah, we certainly have and there’s a ton of interest. There’s a few there’s a few folks that are individually interested, in retail tech sales, which we’re certainly open to, but what we really built this for as large-scale fleet application. We’re in various conversations and various levels of deal execution on large fleet purchases of these vehicles. It’s clear we knocked it out of the park.

This is something that I would expect to see big waves from even within this quarter, if not this year, right within this year, if not this next quarter.

Its clear businesses didn’t know they had problems that could be solved by this. From some outfits that you’ve heard of, but everything from smaller mom and pop solutions to density is a big box and delivery applications for companies you’ve definitely heard of. There’s no other product that does this and it does it efficiently and doesn’t have acquisition costs without any need for upgraded infrastructure.

Is it safe to say Arcimoto’s new strategy is to diversify and look at areas where this technology like military and industrial can be used where there’s more demand?

It’s safe to say that.

Previously, Arcimoto was predominantly concentrated on direct consumer retail sales, so that’s a very niche lane which Tesla has done a great job cultivating, having spent many years there. We took a lot of arrows in the back to try to make that work. Arcimoto is not in the same position that Elon is with the relative pocket depth that he has. He was able to weather that storm long enough to make it work. We’ve got to build a lot more pragmatic business where we’ve got to leverage relationships, such as dealers and third-party service groups in order to support the product.

We’ve made 1000 vehicles, and that is great, but it’s still a small quantity of what we will build in the future. I’m not Elon and so [my perspective is] let’s build a business that makes sense.

You raised $6.7 million in capital this year.  Where’s that money going?

We’re we’re scaling up our manufacturing equipment, I should say, the availability of that manufacturing equipment, I don’t need any more of it, I just need to utilize it more often. One of use case for some of that money is to add the heads and the chefs that I need to scale my manufacturing facilities 24/7.

Another use of those funds will go into recommissioning our San Diego location, dressing it up turning it into a true-blue real dealer and with sales, service, financing, where someone actually come in and buy a vehicle like we’re all used to buying a vehicle, and then control C control V that Florida do the very same thing.

Most of our sales this year are in Florida and Southern California, and there’s enough meat on the bone in any one of those areas to take us past our break-even point. One of the most proven methods for selling vehicles is butts and seats.

Even with the progress, Arcimoto still has a sizeable revenue gap. When do you expect Arcimoto to become profitable?

Late 2024, or early 2025 we expect to hit that break-even point, which for us is 7,500 units a year. We won’t have made that by that time, but we’ll be at that run rate table, that stable foundation.

What you see with the current loss of $13 million versus the $17 million is a massive improvement.  We went through all the listed unit parts and the build-versus-buy material and said “okay, here’s the path on how we get the build material to profitability, now how much potential revenue is sitting on the shelf we’ve already lost that money?” On its face, that sounds silly to say, “Okay, let’s start manufacturing, even though we know we’re losing money on every single vehicle.” But the truth is, we’ve already lost that money. So we’re pulling the money off the shelf, we’re putting it out. That’s the reason you see that trend going from 17 to 13, and then even lower next year when we’re swapping those parts out, whether we can make them internally cheaper, or we’re finding cheaper suppliers.

Clark College in Vancouver, Wash., received $1 million in federal funding to purchase clean energy technology and equipment to develop a Center for Clean Energy, the college announced this week. The new center will train students clean energy technician jobs in the Portland-Vancouver metropolitan area.

The funding will come from the 2023 Community Project Fund. Clark College will use the money to purchase a new solar array, hydro trainer, small-scale wind tower, four electric vehicles and other training equipment. That equipment will be used by the college’s mechatronics technology program which trains students for careers in power utilities, its technology program which trains students on the repair and maintenance of various electric vehicles, and its Boschma Farms advanced manufacturing program – scheduled to begin in the winter of 2025, according to a press release from Clark.

The Boschma Farms program will train students on the manufacturing of solar and wind energy products at the new Boschma Farms campus, currently under construction in Ridgefield, WA. 

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In addition to training, the Center will engage Clark College students with local growth industries in solar and wind energy production, advanced manufacturing, and electric vehicles.

“One of the biggest challenges is finding skilled employees to fill the high-wage jobs in these industries,“ Greater Vancouver Chamber of Commerce president, John McDonagh said in a press release. “We are excited to learn that Clark College students who are pursuing clean energy, manufacturing, and sustainable sciences will soon be able to train in these emerging and expanding markets.” 

These clean energy programs will be led by Clark’s dean of workforce, professional and technical education Theo Koupelis.

“We are thankful for receiving federal support to strengthen our current programs at Clark College and to expand our offerings in clean energy-related programs,” Koupelis said in the release. “This support will provide our students with excellent educational experiences and additional job opportunities in areas that will directly impact our community and state.” 

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The Oregon Department of Environmental Quality  issued 18 penalties amounting to $632,056 for environmental violations in the month of June, per a press release issued by the agency Thursday.

The fines issued ranged between $600 and $205,800. The biggest violation came from BP Products North America which, the DEQ alleges, inaccurately reported renewable fuel volumes and generated illegitimate credits.

Other violations included alleged illegal storage and treatment of hazardous waste disposal by Medford-based Anodex Finishing, and Cascade Steel Rolling Mills allegedly failing to install air pollution control equipment and submitting inaccurate information.

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The DEQ issued civil penalties to the following organizations and individuals for the alleged infractions:

• Anodex Finishing Inc., $122,961, Medford, hazardous waste
• BP Products North America Inc., $205,800, statewide, clean fuels program
• Burnside Auto Wrecking, $9,792, Portland, solid waste
• Cascade Steel Rolling Mills, $181,604, McMinnville, air quality
• City of Albany, $3,900, Albany, wastewater
• City of Coquille, $8,044, Coquille, wastewater
• City of Dufur, $300, Dufur, wastewater
• City of Estacada, $4,825, Estacada, wastewater
• City of Hood River, $8,800, Hood River, wastewater
• Coastal Housing Solutions LLC, $3,000, Garibaldi, stormwater
• Duckwall-Pooley Fruit Co., $6,800, Hood River, wastewater
• Fujimi Corporation, $7,600, Wilsonville, wastewater
• Home Depot U.S.A. Inc $6,218, Bend and Portland, stormwater
• Justin Willett, $13,558, Hillsboro, stormwater
• Oregon Harvest LLC, $28,752, Portland, wastewater
• Charles Health System Inc., dba St. Charles Medical Center – Bend, $8,993, Bend, underground storage tank
• S. Forest Service, $600, Estacada, wastewater
• Warren Scott Hunter and Judith DeBrey, $10,509, Cloverdale, solid waste

Organizations or individuals cited by the DEQ must either pay the fines to the state treasury or file an appeal within 20 days after being notified of the penalty. Those issued citations may be able to offset a portion of a penalty by funding a supplemental environmental project that improves the state’s environment.

Penalties can also include orders requiring specific tasks to prevent ongoing violations or additional environmental harm.

According to a press release from the U.S. Attorney – District of Oregon, Noble Marital Trust, doing business as Noble Family Dairy, pleaded guilty to one count of negligently discharging a pollutant on Monday in federal court.

Noble Family Dairy is situated about 13 miles east of Grants Pass and is certified as organic, according to Oregon Department of Agriculture records. According to a 2021 profile of the dairy that ran on a blog for the Coastal Farm & Ranch retail chain, operators farm just over 1,000 organic acres and graze an additional 500. The article says it produces 8,750 gallons of organic milk per day, and says 100% of the milk Umpqua Dairy ships to stores after processing is from the Noble Dairy farm.

In April of this year, the business was charged with one count of discharging a pollutant in violation of a National Pollution Discharge Elimination System permit, a misdemeanor under the Clean Water Act.

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The case, which was investigated by the Environmental Protection Agency Criminal Investigation Division with assistance from the Oregon Department of Environmental Quality and ODA, stems from a series of events in 2019.

Prosecutors say that at that time, the dairy had 1,760 cows but was only allowed 1,630 under its waste-management permit. That created a level of waste operators couldn’t contain. The dairy’s manure lagoons began to overflow; in response, operators dug a trench to capture runoff. But in February 2019 the trench failed, causing manure to flow into Caris Creek and into the Applegate River.

An inspector from the Oregon Department of Agriculture visited the dairy in March 2019 and found that while the trench had been fixed, manure was still collecting, sometimes in piles as high as 18 inches. The inspector also saw “what appeared to be islands of solid manure in Caris Creek and manure visibly discharging from the creek into the Applegate River,” according to the release.

“By disregarding the maximum number of cattle allowed by its waste-management permit, the Noble Family Dairy caused significant environmental harm to two waterways shared and enjoyed by countless Rogue Valley residents and visitors,” Nathan J. Lichvarcik, chief of the U.S. Attorney’s Office Eugene and Medford branch offices, said in the release. “Our nation’s environmental laws exist to protect human health and the environment, and we will continue working closely with our partners at EPA to hold accountable anyone who violates them.”

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“This defendant’s actions caused the discharge of manure into the Applegate River and Caris Creek, causing significantly elevated levels of E. coli in the water,” Benjamin Carr, acting special agent in charge of EPA’s Criminal Investigation Division in Oregon, said in the release. “EPA and its partners will continue to protect the waters of the United States from illegal pollution discharges that contribute to serious health problems and put our communities at risk.”

In June 2020, ODA issued Noble Dairy a civil penalty of $38,584 and entered a consent order requiring payment of $25,465 and installation of significant manure system infrastructure as well as additional sampling and inspections, according to an ODA spokesperson, who adds that the dairy is currently on schedule with compliance requirements with its confined animal-feeding operations permits, as well as the additional requirements.

Noble Dairy did not respond to a request for comment from Oregon Business, but the Oregon Capital Chronicle quoted attorney Kristen Tranetzki as saying the dairy has been in compliance with its permits since its 2019 violations and “is fully committed to compliance with state and federal regulations.”

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On June 22, the Oregon Health Authority (OHA) released its 2021-2022 Climate and Health in Oregon Report, which examined the impact extreme weather events and climate-related disasters on homes and families throughout the state, as well as assessing the state’s policy response.

The report concluded that due to consistent rising temperatures, these extreme weather patterns such as wildfires, heat waves, and ice storms will be a new fact of life for Oregonians to moving forward, but praised the state’s investments in climate change adaptation programs and legislation. The report called efforts to protect Oregonians from the fallout of climate change, “groundbreaking” though it did not provide any outcomes or assessments of the ongoing efforts.  

The OHA developed the report in response to Gov. Brown’s Executive Order (EO) 20-04 directing OHA to provide annual reports on the public health impacts of climate change in Oregon. Due to OHA’s pandemic response and staffing, researchers at the organization were unable to complete a report for 2021 and issued a combined 2021–2022 report instead.

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In 2021, 13 public Oregon water systems experienced low water supply. This trend continued in the heat dome-less 2022, when 14 public water systems experienced low water supply. Compare that to five-year period from 2016 to 2020, when only eight Oregon water systems ran low.

During the 2021 wildfire season, smoke especially affected Central and Southern Oregon, with several counties experiencing 20% higher asthma-like illness visits compared to 2020. People in Central Southern Oregon experienced the highest amount of dangerous smoke exposure. The cities of Bend, Klamath Falls and Medford experienced 83 days with air at or above an unhealthy level for sensitive groups (USG) compared to 41 days in 2020 and 11 in 2022.

2021 was an outlier year, even by global warming standards. The 2021 ‘heat dome,’ hot air trapped between low elevations, only happens every ten millennia, broke temperate records by double digits. But when charted alongside temperature data from 1938, heat levels show a slow, steady upswing – as have the problems they create.

While wildfire seasons vary from year to year, the report showed a continued rising trajectory.

The second half of the OHA report painted a hopeful picture of the OHA and legislature’s ongoing efforts to adapt to the new, harsher climate. The report detailed the organization’s investments into local public health authorities, Nine Federally Recognized Tribes of Oregon, and 157 community organizations to increase public health access, as well as its Healthy Homes Grant, established in 2021, to support houses making health-related upgrades, and its special protections for workers laboring in extreme heat.

The report noted in 2024, Oregon will become the first state in the nation to cover climate change-related expense though its Medicaid program.

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The report also detailed the state’s $530 million in water infrastructure over the 2021–23 biennium.

This legislative session, lawmakers continued efforts to head off climate change. On June 23, the Oregon Senate passed HB 2010, a bipartisan bill which provides technical assistance to farmers, enhancement and restoration of drinking water sources, and invests $23 million into drought and water programming to improve water management, though the initial ask was $250 million.

 “The last few years have been a sobering preview of hard times for Oregon communities, farmers and all of us who depend on them,” said Senator Jeff Golden(D-Ashland), Chair of the Senate Committee on Natural Resources, in a statement following the bill’s passage, which is now on the governor’s desk for signature.

“We are taking steps to preserve our water sources for our communities and future generations.”

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The Inflation Reduction Act invests billions into reducing energy use in both homes and businesses. According to the Environmental Protection Agency, nearly a third of energy created for commercial buildings is wasted. Considering energy can be one of the largest costs for businesses, the right energy upgrades can make a significant difference for the bottom line.  

In Oregon and Southwest Washington, there’s even more support available. Those tax credits and deductions can be combined with support and incentives offered by area utilities and from organizations like Energy Trust of Oregon to help businesses and organizations reduce their energy use and switch to renewable energy sources. Energy advisors can also offer businesses strategic support.  

Higher Deductions for Energy-Efficient Commercial Buildings

The Inflation Reduction Act expands and extends the 179D Energy Efficient Commercial Property tax deduction.  

To be eligible for the deduction, owners or lessees of new and existing commercial buildings must show that the building exceeds energy-efficiency guidelines established by the American Society of Heating, Refrigerating and Air-Conditioning Engineers (ASHRAE).  

As in years past, the deduction amount will still depend on how far the building’s efficiency exceeds the ASHRAE Reference Standard 90.1, but lowers the threshold —from exceeding ASHRAE’s standard by 50% to exceeding by 25%.   

The deduction amount then varies, starting at $2.50 per square foot at 25% and then increasing by 10 cents per percentage point up to 50% at $5 per square foot.  

Some of the biggest ways to increase a building’s energy efficiency and exceed the ASHRAE standards include upgrades to heating and cooling, water heating, and lighting. Upgrades to all three would also significantly reduce a business’s energy costs. 

Energy Trust of Oregon offers cash incentives and support for these projects for organizations of all sizes. So commercial customers of PGE, Pacific Power, NW Natural, Cascade Natural Gas and Avista can save additional money on these upgrades in addition to the higher tax deduction.  

More Help With Solar  

The Inflation Reduction Act also increases a tax credit that can help businesses create their own renewable energy, which would also significantly reduce their energy costs.  

Along with homeowners, businesses can now claim up to 30% of the cost of installing commercial solar and commercial energy storage systems, up from 26% previously.  

And for businesses in Oregon, additional cash incentives from Energy Trust and potentially the state of Oregon combined with these tax credits could cover as much as 40% of installing commercial solar.  

Where to Start  

Check with local utilities for current support programs. Also, visit EnergyTrust.org/
Commercial for more information on current cash incentives and support that may be available for your business.

Energy Trust recommends consulting a tax professional to ensure available credits and deductions. 

Susan Jowaiszas is the marketing coordinator at the Energy Trust of Oregon.

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Oregon Business talked to three women who are staking claim in this sustainable-development industry to help bring “yes and” creative thinking to the question of how to make money off lumber — but also to widen the benefit to community, while acknowledging a commitment to the quality of life for future generations. 

Each of the women are members of a relatively new group called Women in Sustainable Endeavors (W.I.S.E.), which meets quarterly to connect, share ideas, develop collaborations and provide emotional support. 

The group was founded by Lynn Morgan, who started working at Sustainable Northwest Wood five years ago, a Southeast Portland-based lumber yard that was the first in Oregon to exclusively offer for sale sustainably harvested and reclaimed wood from local mills to construction firms and to members of the public. The business, founded in 2008 by Ryan Temple, also is committed to widening the economic, community and environmental contributions of farms, ranches and forests to clean energy, clean water and green markets in the greater Northwest. Because of Morgan’s efforts, Sustainable Northwest Wood has become a hub of emotional and collaborative support for women-owned businesses that are navigating pathways that have historically had so few women in decision-making roles. WISE started with 10 women but has grown to 35 members within the last year.

 “There’s a need and a hunger for women to gather together because it is such a male-dominated society,” Morgan tells OB. “There’s something really special about the collaboration and the connection and the support that you can get women-to-women that we have found within the group.” 

Morgan also supports the annual Sustainable Building Week conference, held during the second Monday of every October to cross-pollinate practices between engineers, architects, builders, design professionals and others who work in the realm of sustainability. The next monthly, in-person Sustainable Building networking event is June 13, 5 p.m., at the five-story PAE Living Building.

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Lynn Morgan

Sustainable Northwest Wood

Growing up in a wooded area in Eastern Kentucky, Lynn Morgan was taught to embrace sustainability as a way to avoid compromising the livelihoods of future generations. Her father was a carpenter; her schools pushed agriculture education. 

“We were raised to not waste anything, to reuse things,” Morgan says. “Even back in the ’90s, I was an avid recycler, much to my mother’s dismay seeing a big pile of recycling in the kitchen corner.” 

But Morgan says she really embraced sustainability as an ethos when she attended her first Earth Day event in college. “That inspired me in my whole career path, really, just to think about doing things in a different way,” she says. 

Now, in her job as marketing manager for Sustainable Northwest Wood, she uses storytelling to educate individuals and builders about different species of Oregon-based wood that are used for products from flooring to conference-room tables. Whether it’s an oak tree that came down in an ice storm, the blue-tinted slabs from pine trees that were killed by beetles or a sweet-smelling but invasive juniper tree — these trees can now be celebrated and remade as flooring, siding, doors and butcher blocks. 

“It’s really satisfying, the storytelling piece of it,” Morgan says. “It makes for a more meaningful piece of furniture….I don’t know of any other company that is solely dedicated to local and sustainable wood products.”

Sustainable Northwest Wood is also connected to the renovations happening at the main terminal in the Portland International Airport, which sustainably sourced at least 98% of its wood from well-managed forests in Oregon and Washington. Staff at Sustainable Northwest Wood helped connect The Port of Portland to landowners, including Indigenous tribes and small family-owned forests who had access to responsibly sourced Douglas fir lumber. The collaboration merited the Port, Sustainable Northwest Wood and Portland-based Timberlab a 2022 Leadership Award from the Forest Stewardship Council, a nonprofit that operates in 80 countries and has certified more than 4,000 companies and 160 million acres of forestland in the United States and Canada.

Christy Covington

Tree to Table PDX

Christy Covington, a Portland native who had a 41-year career in the U.S. Forest Service, started getting interested in sustainable wood products as a passion project. Her first job at age 15 was to use axes to chop down juniper trees in Central Oregon.

“I’m truly such a tree lover that I remember thinking ‘Why do we have to cut these down?’ ” Covington says. “That’s when I first started learning about ecosystems, about the land. I was a city girl, so at a very young age, I got to be hands-on working in that field. And it changed my life. That’s when I fell in love with the outdoors, with the trees.” 

Meanwhile, her husband, Curtis Falbo, was building his arborist company, Wind Thin Tree Service, over 23 years. He eventually started salvaging the wood of the maples, black walnut, red oak, dogwood and cherry trees he was hired to cut down so that they wouldn’t be slashed into wood chips. But he didn’t have a plan for what he would do with the stockpile of wood in his Northeast Portland backyard. According to Covington, it takes each log two to three years to dry enough to be ready for sanding, shaping and texturing the slabs.

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“He was hoarding logs in our backyard,” Covington says, laughing. “I started seeing more and more of the waste that goes on with tree companies and there was no real avenue to collect, save, store, do things.” 

So she started learning more about the different species of hardwood trees, and practiced sanding and using finishing techniques on scrap wood in a corner of her husband’s backyard garage, built from wood from a church he had salvaged.

“He had a lot of tools and things, so I just started learning on my own,” she said. “I would go to my husband when I would get stuck, and he was just this great resource.”

Eventually, in early 2020, her hobby evolved into a business, Tree to Table, which designs and sells dining room tables, coffee tables, shelving, charcuterie boards and even one-of-a-kind wall art at three different consignment shops — two in Southeast Portland and one in Bend, where she first fell in love with trees as a teenager. Covington also creates and packages an organic beeswax wood conditioner from her backyard bees. And she has now hired several young people to work for her. She has a passion for encouraging people to have more wood inside their homes is to keep them connected, in some way, to the outdoors.

“Lynn [Morgan] has truly been an inspiration for me because I got myself into something very male-dominated, and it’s really great to connect with other women and that synergy and that support,” says Covington, one of the first members of WISE. “We’re pretty small-scale, but we’re learning what people love. It’s a labor of love.”

Valerie Carey

Sankofa Lumber

Valerie Carey’s parents both ran their own businesses, and she too sought ways to create her own lane. After she obtained her master’s degree in international management, she worked for a series of nonprofits and eventually landed, in 2014, at the ReBuilding Center in Northeast Portland, which repurposes building materials from deconstructed houses. 

After seven months, Carey became a manager for City of Roses Disposal & Recycling, where she did market research and cost analysis of its recycled-waste streams, such as lumber, cardboard, metals and concrete from construction sites.

“When I saw the amount of viable, usable lumber that was just being ground up and sold way up north as boiler fuel for paper mills, I lost it,” says Carey, a former construction worker and carpenter. “Very few jobs are created from that, and very little economic value captured, let alone the environment value that should have been captured.”

So she did the market studies and launched into a few years of business planning and research. She said she was shocked to discover an untapped market that could eventually lessen the need to clearcut forests in order to harvest wood that would eventually be wasted. 

“In Oregon we’re generating about a half-million ton’s worth of wood waste, primarily from construction,” Carey says. “That pencils out to — depending on the year — about 20% of what Oregon actually produces as a timber state. So when people talk about closing the loop and circular economy, we are essentially throwing away the equivalent of 15% to 20%of what we actually harvest from our forest to bring to market.”

So in 2017, Carey started her own company, Sankofa Lumber, to start to reclaim some of the 35 million tons of wood waste generated around the country by the construction industry. The Ghanaian word “sankofa” means “it is not taboo to retrieve what has been forgotten.”

Carey’s business model seemed so common sense to her that she was surprised that she couldn’t find anyone else in Oregon who thought of it first. It took her expertise and analysis of business practices to see this opportunity staring her in the face. 

“It’s such a system-level intervention point, in my mind,” Carey says. “To both deal with waste as well as keep things as local as possible, create those social benefits, create those environmental benefits, create those local economic benefits — and keep all that within our region as much as possible.” 

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In order to consistently produce the amount of lumber that builders need, Sustainable Northwest Wood agreed to invite Carey into its already established ecosystem by providing any amount or type of new wood that is not in Carey’s inventory of salvaged wood.

“This is a game-changing thing that she is trying to do,” Morgan says. “So we are distributing her products and working really closely with her to introduce her products to the design community and builders, and really helping to create a circular economy by bringing that wood waste back into the built environment.”

“That’s one of the edges that we as women have, broadly speaking,” Carey says. “We tend to be more collaborative and we tend to be big picture and find the ways that people can lean into their strengths, and still have healthy partnerships that get everyone to where they want to go.”

Editor’s Note: This story has been corrected from an earlier draft to accurately describe Valerie Carey’s degree. The translation of the word “sankofa” has also been updated to a more detailed definition.

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