Maria Pope on economic growth
From 2025 Leadership Summit: Welcome & Introductions - Maria Pope · · Oregon Business Plan
“Our era of easy automatic growth has ended. Systems built for the needs of yesterday are misaligned with today's challenges.”
On , Maria Pope, President, Chief Executive Officer & Director at PORTLAND GENERAL ELECTRIC CO, spoke about economic growth during 2025 Leadership Summit: Welcome & Introductions - Maria Pope on Oregon Business Plan.
About Maria Pope
Maria Pope, president and CEO of Portland General Electric and chair of the Oregon Business Council, has been active in public discussions about Oregon's economic challenges and the clean energy transition. At the 2025 Oregon Leadership Summit, Pope stated that "our era of easy automatic growth has ended" and that "systems built for the needs of yesterday are misaligned with today's challenges." She said that Oregon's economic performance is "soft" and that "demographic shifts and rising national and global competition pose very real risks of long-term decline if we fail to act." At the 2024 summit, she noted that Oregon's population is declining and that stabilizing conditions in downtown Portland "could take a decade or longer to fully restore." Pope has also emphasized the Oregon Business Plan's three key imperatives: creating good jobs and a strong economy, ensuring access to education aligned with modern opportunities, and providing critical support so that one's future is not determined by their zip code. In her role as chair of the Edison Electric Institute (EEI), Pope has focused on the utility industry's response to rising electricity demand driven by AI, manufacturing, and electrification. She stated that "affordable reliable energy is essential for America's economic competitiveness and sustainability" and that the Inflation Reduction Act's clean energy tax credits "lower the cost of deploying clean energy with significant savings passed directly through to customers." Pope has also addressed wildfire risk, calling it "one of the biggest threats to those utilities in the West" and noting that electric companies are using technologies such as AI-powered cameras and undergrounding high-risk lines to reduce risk. She has advocated for collaboration with regulators, legislators, and the financial community to maintain affordability and reliability while advancing clean energy.