The Goldendale Energy Storage Project is critical infrastructure for fighting climate change and maintaining grid reliability. Representing the vast majority of America's storage capacity, pumped storage hydropower is the greenest energy storage technology, and it:

• • Has the lowest carbon footprint of storage solutions.
• • Reuses water over and over.
• • Reduces the need for lithium-ion batteries, which rely on heavy mining.
• • Is low-maintenance, lasting more than 100 years.

The Goldendale Energy Storage Project allows us to store and use more renewable energy while providing many environmental benefits. A “closed-loop” system, it does not involve the construction of a new dam on a river. The facility will include two artificial reservoirs—a lower one and an elevated one—that recirculate water.

The system would be filled with water once, and replenished annually to make up for minimal evaporation. That’s about 360 acre-feet of water per year. For comparison, the former aluminum smelter used 8,000 acre-feet of water annually, and an average farm in Washington state uses four times as much water annually, according to U.S. census data.

The system:

• • Reduces pollution and carbon emissions^*.
• • Uses minimal water annually.
• • Has no adverse effects on local fish or wildlife.
• • Avoids tribal fishing, hunting and gathering sites.
• • Includes $10 million dedicated to cleaning up contamination at the former aluminum smelter.

^*According to the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, carbon-based power sources such as coal and natural gas add about 1,000 pounds of carbon to the atmosphere for every megawatt-hour produced. Once operational, the Goldendale project will eliminate more than 1.7 tons of CO₂ emissions each year.