Our Energy Sources

Idaho Power has a diverse energy mix, with clean, affordable hydropower as our largest resource. Our overall nameplate generation is 3,506 megawatts.

Learn more about each energy source

See how we compare nationally

This chart shows Idaho Power’s sources of energy, which do not reflect energy delivered to customers for two reasons. First, we participate in the wholesale energy market and sell energy both to other utilities and retail customers. Second, power from some renewable sources comes with a Renewable Energy Credit, or REC. We sell the majority of our RECs to help keep customer prices low, and reserve only enough RECs to cover 5-10% of Oregon customers’ electricity consumption for compliance purposes.

What is a REC? A REC represents the environmental benefits of 1 megawatt-hour of renewable electricity generation. When this renewable energy is purchased, the RECs can be kept or sold. The REC purchaser gets to claim the environmental benefits of that renewable energy.

Idaho Power sells RECs to keep customer prices low. We sell RECs for the benefit of our customers and as required by our public utilities commission. Money received from REC sales goes directly into offsetting customer prices.

Clean Today. Cleaner Tomorrow.^®

In 2019, Idaho Power adopted a goal to achieve 100% clean* energy by 2045 from our generation resources.

In setting this aspirational target, we recognized that achieving the goal would require technological advances in clean generation resources and renewable energy integration, as well as a continued focus on energy efficiency and demand response programs. Those technological advancements include items like small modular nuclear reactors, hydrogen-fueled generation, fuel cells, and carbon capture and sequestration, at scale, at reasonable prices, and on commercial timelines.

We look forward to the increasing viability of such technologies over the next nineteen years. While we continue to invest in clean energy sources today, our Preferred Portfolio and forecasted energy demand show that we need to invest in natural gas resources in the interim to ensure safe, reliable, and affordable service for our growing customer base. We remain focused on reducing emissions and will be actively monitoring advances in technologies that we can deploy to help move us toward a cleaner energy system. As part of our IRP process, we will continue to model 100% clean energy generation as one of the proposed scenarios and submit it to the Idaho Public Utilities Commission (IPUC). Visit our webpage for more information on our clean energy portfolio as presented in the 2025 IRP.

*We define clean as non-carbon emitting at the point of electricity generation.

Learn about our path away from coal