Walla Walla farmer Felipe Jimenez on Friday, Sept. 16, 2022.

MILTON-FREEWATER — For more than a decade, Felipe Jimenez has worked a small farm off Stateline Road near Milton-Freewater, growing asparagus, onions and other crops.

Now, as Oregon experiences an unprecedented, years-long drought, many farmers are looking into ways to save the water needed to grow their crops — and save money at the same time.

Not long after starting to farm the land where he works now, Jimenez received his first incentive from the Energy Trust of Oregon to install drip lines in a few acres of asparagus in the far corner of his farm, he said.

Unlike the sprinkler systems that Jimenez had used elsewhere on his land, the drip lines bring water directly to roots and waste far less through evaporation.

“It will save me money even if I have to pay some money out of my pocket,” Jimenez said. “But again, you know, (Energy Trust of Oregon) saved me some of that money to put the water under the ground.

In recent years, Jimenez, with the help of incentives from the Energy Trust, has expanded his drip line throughout his asparagus fields, installed variable frequency drives — which automatically turn irrigation pumps on or off depending on demand, saving water and energy — and received other rebates to replace irrigation hardware that was leaking or inefficient.

The drip lines aren’t fail-proof — Jimenez is in the midst of a war of attrition with a number of gophers that have chewed through some drip lines near a neighbor’s property — and Jimenez keeps some of the older, less efficient 3-inch hand lines nearby as backup. He’s a farmer, after all, and always needs a contingency plan.

But when the system is working as intended, the drip lines can irrigate his fields with around half as much water as needed with hand lines, he said.

The drip lines are also typically a lot easier to work with. Jimenez points to the rows of asparagus crops that have gone to seed, harvest being long-since over, and are now so dense as to be nearly impassable. In the past, when the hand lines had finished watering some rows, they would be lifted overhead and walked over several rows to try to get them where they needed to go.

“I did that for so many years,” Jimenez said, laughing. “You think you are OK, free to walk through, and then you fall down because you get tangled in the asparagus.”

Altogether, the Energy Trust upgrades on Jimenez’s farm have shown a 33% energy savings, 13% water savings, roughly $3.7K in saved labor costs, and an estimated 10% crop yield increase, according to a statement from the organization.

Jimenez said it has been gratifying to work with the Energy Trust, and he has been pleasantly surprised that their efforts can benefit a small farm like his.

“It’s been great, my experience with them,” Jimenez said. “I mean, I’m a small farm — look at all these big guys around me, so many with a thousand acres, and then look at me.”

Energy TrustFor 20 years, nonprofit Energy Trust of Oregon has worked to support energy efficiency and renewable energy for customers in Oregon and southwest Washington, whether residential, commercial, industrial or agricultural.

Created two decades ago by Oregon legislators to encourage consistent investment in renewable resources, the Energy Trust’s work is funded by fees paid by customers of five utilities operating in Oregon and Washington, and it’s overseen by the Oregon Public Utility Commission.

“These programs help all rate payers, because we’re using less energy as a system, and less demand slows down the need to develop new energy resources,” said Susan Jowaiszas, spokesperson for Energy Trust. “Basically, it’s typically less expensive to save energy than to create new energy.”

It’s a wide-reaching mandate, and the Energy Trust has a budget to match, with revenues in 2021 of $194.3 million, according to their 2021 annual report. In that same year, it provided incentives of nearly $104 million, with an additional $80 million in expenditures to delivery customer services. Administrative and program support in 2021 totaled around 6.5%.

During its 20-year history, the Energy Trust has facilitated the installation of 20,000 solar systems for homes and businesses, and calculates it has saved utility customers $5.3 billion.

The particular programs offered by Energy Trust vary greatly by customer, from residential solar programs, to helping the city of Talent, Oregon to rebuild after devastating wildfires in 2020 with more energy-efficient and fire-resistant buildings.

But it’s some of the incentives provided by Energy Trust, especially with agriculture, save more than just energy. Many programs that could save farmers on their energy bills can also help to reduce the amount of water they use on their crops.

“Our mission is to save energy, but the interesting thing, when you save energy you can often save other things as well,” Jowaiszas said. “Given how important agriculture and farming is to the northwest, we provide incentives and programs to serve farming.”

Those incentives can range from rebates on sprinkler equipment that can reduce the amount of water flowing through the system, such as a variable frequency drive, to full-system upgrades to more efficient methods of delivery such as drip irrigation. These upgrades can be prohibitively expensive on the front-end, but typically result in major savings down the road, and the Energy Trust helps producers get over that initial hurdle.

Farmers interested in more information about working with the Energy Trust can talk with their irrigation vendor, who will be able to provide application paperwork, check the nonprofit’s website, or call 503-928-3154.