< back		 Rachel Shimshak, Renewable Northwest Project

Shimshak is the director of the Renewable Northwest Project, a project launched in 1994 by a coalition of environmental groups, energy developers and public interest organizations to focus on the implementation of cost-effective, workable, renewable technologies. Before her move to the Northwest, Shimshak was the policy director for the Massachusetts Division of Energy Resources. Prior to that, she served as legislative director for the Massachusetts Public Interest Research Group. She began her advocacy career in 1979 working for Public Citizen’s Congress Watch, Ralph Nader’s watchdog group on Capitol Hill. She graduated from the University of Oregon.
1. What is the best thing about the recommendations? As a package, the draft recommendations from the Regional Review recognize the long-term value of identifying an approach to restructuring in the region that addresses most of the critical questions. Working together on a regional solution will help us define our own destiny instead of having others define it for us.
2. What is the most challenging thing about the recommendations? The lack of a secure, non-bypassable, competitively neutral funding mechanism for implementation of the conservation, renewable resources, and low income recommendations of the Review is most troubling. At a time when utilities, large customers, and others have secured their goals with specific, binding arrangements, there must be equal consideration of measures that ensure efficiency, sustainability and long-term environmental cost reduction.
3. Why should people care about the recommendations? The energy system in our region has a tremendous impact on our air quality, our natural resource heritage, our economy, and our quality of life. The recommendations being made in the Regional Review will have a dramatic effect on a basic necessity, our environment, our pocketbooks, and the very fabric of life in the Northwest. Without robust participation from the public in this process, the decisions will be left to the vested interests, and the result could be economic inequities and environmental damage.