The baseline conditions for the 2021 Power Plan are a set of assumptions designed to be a basis for comparison. While these assumptions inform the Council’s forecasts, like our electricity price forecast or demand forecast, they are not intended to represent a likely forecast of an expected future. Most of the supporting materials describe the common assumptions we used in the scenario analyses, for example, the page on Global Assumption in the Plan. To the extent that we deviate from those assumptions to test a scenario, they are documented in the scenario. An example of this is the scenario exploring different markets for energy and capacity.
In general, the forecasts documented in the supporting material are part of the baseline conditions (e.g. the demand for electricity and the natural gas price). For baseline conditions, the Council also assumes that the existing policies throughout the West will be complied with which can be seen in the baseline conditions resource build.