This report assesses the efficiency and renewable resources that could be tapped to meet Pacific Northwest electricity needs over the next two decades. The last regional assessment of this type was compiled for the Northwest Power Planning Council's 4th Power Plan in 1994-96. Since then, the landscape of technologies, markets, and policy options has shifted, while growing concerns about electricity price volatility, energy security, and global climate change have increased the value of investments in efficiency and renewable resources.

This guide is for resource planners at national and sectoral levels; for businesses or agencies providing electricity services through generation, transmission, or distribution; regulators of electricity markets; and others interested in the structuring of policies, markets, and regulations affecting electricity. It provides the analytical framework and assessment methodologies needed to promote integrated resource planning in different economic, political, and geographic settings.

This study provides spatially disaggregated estimates of greenhouse gas emissions from the major anthropogenic sources for 145 countries. The data compilation includes emissions from CO, CH4, N2O, and ten halocarbons, in addition to CO2. The sources include emissions from fossil fuel production and use, cement production, halocarbons, landfills, land use changes, biomass burning, rice and livestock production, and fertilizer consumption. The approach used to derive these estimates corresponds closely with the simple methodologies proposed by the Greenhouse Gas Emissions Task Force of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change.