Regulatory Assets and Liabilities

12 Months Ended

Dec. 31, 2020

Regulatory Assets and Liabilities Disclosure [Abstract]

Schedule of Regulatory Assets and Liabilities [Text Block]

REGULATORY ASSETS AND LIABILITIES

The majority of PGE’s regulatory assets and liabilities are reflected in customer prices and are amortized over the period in which they are reflected in customer prices. Items not currently reflected in prices are pending before the regulatory body as discussed below.

Regulatory assets and liabilities consist of the following (dollars in millions):

	Remaining Amortization Period	As of December 31,
		2020						2019
		Earning a Return (1)		Not Earning a Return		Total		Total
Regulatory assets:
Price risk management	2035	$	—	$	124	$	124	$	95
Pension plan	(2)	—		240		240		213
Debt issuance costs	2050	—		25		25		26
Trojan decommissioning activities	2059	—		95		95		94
Other	Various	87		22		109		72
Total regulatory assets		$	87	$	506	$	593	$	500
Regulatory liabilities:
Asset retirement removal costs	(3)	$	1,016	$	—	$	1,016	$	1,021
Deferred income taxes	(4)	239		—		239		260
Asset retirement obligations	(3)	37		—		37		54
Tax reform deferral (5)	2020	—		—		—		23
Price risk management	2021	—		18		18		2
Other	Various	46		36		82		61
Total regulatory liabilities		$	1,338	$	54	$	1,392	$	1,421

(1)Earning a return includes either interest on the regulatory asset or liability, or inclusion of the regulatory asset or liability as an increase or decrease to rate base at the allowed rate of return.

(2)Recovery expected over the average service life of employees.

(3)Recovery or refund expected over the estimated lives of the underlying assets and treated as a reduction to rate base.

(4)Refund expected primarily through amortization using the average rate assumption method over the average life of the underlying assets and treated as a reduction to rate base.

(5)Refund related to the deferral of the 2018 net tax benefits due to the change in corporate tax rate under TCJA, including interest, over a two-year period that began in 2019.

Price risk management represents the difference between the net unrealized losses recognized on derivative instruments related to price risk management activities and their realization and subsequent recovery in customer prices. For further information regarding assets and liabilities from price risk management activities, see Note 6, Risk Management.

Pension and other postretirement plans represents unrecognized components of the benefit plans’ funded status, which are recoverable in customer prices when recognized in net periodic pension and postretirement benefit costs. For further information, see Note 11, Employee Benefits.

Debt issuance costs represents unrecognized debt issuance costs related to debt instruments retired prior to the stipulated maturity date.

Trojan decommissioning activities represents the deferral of ongoing costs associated with monitoring spent nuclear fuel at Trojan, net of amortization of customer collections. In addition, proceeds received from the United States Department of Energy (USDOE) for the reimbursement of costs to monitor the ISFSI is deferred and offsets customer collections.

Asset retirement removal costs represents the costs that do not qualify as AROs and are a component of depreciation expense allowed in customer prices. Such costs are recorded as a regulatory liability as they are collected in prices, and are reduced by actual removal costs incurred.

Deferred income taxes represents income tax benefits primarily from property-related timing differences that will be refunded to customers when the temporary differences reverse. Substantially all of the amounts deferred are subject to tax normalization rules that require that the impact to the results of operations of amortizing the excess deferred income tax balance cannot occur more rapidly than over the book life of the related assets. The Company uses the average rate assumption method to account for the refund to customers. For further information, see Note 12, Income Taxes.

Asset retirement obligations represents the difference in the timing of recognition of: i) the amounts recognized for depreciation expense of the asset retirement costs and accretion of the ARO; and ii) the amount recovered in customer prices.