Washington State Hints At New York Climate Act Future

Paul Fundingsland has been sending me his thoughts on the implementation of Washington State’s experiences with their cap-and-invest scheme.  His latest correspondence points to a local news article that confirms our suspicions that companies will simply pass additional costs on to their consumers. Furthermore, the companies will not be allowed to clearly explain why the costs are going up.

Paul describes himself as “An Obsessive Climate Change Generalist”.   Although he is a retired professor, he say he has no scientific or other degrees specific to these kinds of issues that can be cited as offering personal official expertise or credibility. What he does have is a two decades old avid, enthusiastic, obsession with all things Climate Change related. 

New York Climate Leadership and Community Protection Act  

The Climate Leadership & Community Protection Act (Climate Act) established a New York “Net Zero” target (85% reduction and 15% offset of emissions) by 2050.  It includes an interim 2030 reduction target of a 40% reduction by 2030 and a requirement that all electricity generated be “zero-emissions” by 2040. The Climate Action Council is responsible for preparing the Scoping Plan that outlines how to “achieve the State’s bold clean energy and climate agenda.”  In brief, that plan is to electrify everything possible using zero-emissions electricity. The Integration Analysis prepared by the New York State Energy Research and Development Authority (NYSERDA) and its consultants quantifies the impact of the electrification strategies.  That material was used to develop the Draft Scoping Plan.  After a year-long review, the Scoping Plan recommendations were finalized at the end of 2022.  In 2023 the Scoping Plan recommendations are supposed to be implemented through regulation and legislation.  New York’s cap-and-invest program is supposed to address one of those recommendations.

The New York State Department of Environmental Conservation (DEC) has developed an official website for cap and invest.  It states:

An economywide Cap-and-Invest Program will establish a declining cap on greenhouse gas emissions, limit potential costs to New Yorkers, invest proceeds in programs that drive emission reductions in an equitable manner, and maintain the competitiveness of New York businesses and industries. Cap-and-Invest will ensure the state meets the greenhouse gas emission reduction requirements set forth in the Climate Leadership and Community Protection Act (Climate Act).

Washington Climate Commitment Act

Washington’s Climate Commitment Act appears to be even more aspirational than California or New York.  The Washington Department of Ecology (“Ecology”) web page explains:

The Climate Commitment Act (CCA) caps and reduces greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions from Washington’s largest emitting sources and industries, allowing businesses to find the most efficient path to lower carbon emissions. This powerful program works alongside other critical climate policies to help Washington achieve its commitment to reducing GHG emissions by 95% by 2050.

The state plans in Washington, California, and New York all aim for net-zero emissions where greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions are equal to the amount of GHG that are removed.  Washington’s emission reduction target is 95% by 2050.  California is shooting for 85% by 2045 while New York’s target is 85% by 2050 but covers the whole economy.  In addition to the target levels and dates there are differences in what GHG emissions are included, how the mass quantities are calculated, and which sectors of the economy must comply.  Nonetheless, I am sure a case can be made that Washington is the most aspirational.

According to the Washington State Department of Ecology description of their cap-and-invest program:

In 2021, the Washington Legislature passed the Climate Commitment Act (or CCA) which establishes a comprehensive, market-based program to reduce carbon pollution and achieve the greenhouse gas limits set in state law. The program started on Jan. 1, 2023, and the first emissions allowance auction was held on Feb. 28.

Businesses covered by the program must obtain allowances equal to their emissions and submit them to Ecology according to a staggered four-year compliance schedule. The first compliance deadline is Nov. 1, 2024, at which time businesses need to have allowances to cover just 30% of their 2023 emissions.

Washington State Implementation

I published several articles (Washington State Gasoline Prices Are a Precursor to New York’s Future, Do Washington State Residents Know Why Their Gasoline Prices Are So High Now?, and Washington State Gasoline Prices and Public Perceptions) about the experiences of Washington State as they implement their cap-and-invest program because I think it is likely that New York’s experiences will be similar.   I posted material by Paul based on his  “bit of research with some comments, thoughts and a more or less rough idea of what seems to be going on in the Washington State cap-and-invest scheme” that addressed the impact of their cap-and-invest scheme on gasoline prices.  Subsequently he wrote up more research results in a second article.  He concluded:

At the end of the day, the goal of any meaningful, measurable reduction of CO2 emissions or theoretical effective pathway to stop “climate change” looks to become a glazed over afterthought in this quagmire of a Washington State bureaucratic money-making machine. 

With this scheme, Washington State Government now joins the lucrative profit side of the climate industrial complex at the expense of its constituents while giving a completely different connotation to the term “Net Zero”.

In this post Fundingsland provides another update. I provide his thoughts with my commentary below.

Cap and Hidden Tax

Earlier this year I described the book Making Climate Policy Work that shows how the politics of creating and maintaining market-based policies render them ineffective nearly everywhere they have been applied.  Despite these warning signs these programs are much in favor.  Washington’s program began this year and the cost signals are showing up.  Fundingsland writes:

Here is a local news update example on how Washington’s “Cap & Invest” (Tax & Reallocate) scheme is currently functioning. Natural Gas company Puget Sound Energy (PSE) just announced a 3% rate price hike due to their mandated “Cap & Invest” auction allowance costs. 

Just as surmised, the companies required to participate in the auction allowances are simply passing these costs to their bottom line along to their customers. In essence, the State taxes the company and the company taxes its customers. 

I believe that New York utilities asked the Public Service Commission to include cost details for state mandated programs.  Not surprisingly that request was denied.  The same thing is playing out in Washington.  Fundingsland explains what is happening and the ramifications:

What makes this particular example more disgusting than usual is the fact that PSE wanted to simply include a line item on the customer’s bill identifying this cost but the Washington Utilities and Transportation Commission (UTC) actually made it illegal to do so claiming that would make for a “lengthy confusing” bill. 

I just looked at my latest PSE bill. It has only three line items for charges: Electric Charges, Natural Gas Charges and Total Charges. There is plenty of room for one more line item called “Cap & Invest” charges. 

There are rightful allegations that preventing PSE from including this one line item is deceptive, dishonest, lacks transparency, and smacks of censorship while giving the perception that PSE is just raising the prices to gouge their customers to make more money. 

Contradictorily UTC requires PSE to include in their bills extra line item charges and credits beneficial to some of their customers such as “carbon reduction credits”, whatever those are.

In other words, UTC would have us believe adding one factual consumer financially detrimental line item to the bill would make it lengthy and confusing but adding beneficial line items for some consumers to the same bill would not. This reeks of deliberately deceptive, opaque practices.

Paragraph 19 under “Discussion and Decision” from DOCKET UG-230470 Order 01

“Second, we agree with Public Counsel that PSE should not include the proposed “carbon reduction charge” as a line item on customer bills. Public Counsel correctly observes that including all program charges on customer bills would quickly result in lengthy and confusing bills. Additionally, only those charges or credits that inure to the benefit of customers should be included as line items on customer bills. For that reason, we require the Company to include the “carbon reduction credit on customer bills, which will also signal an economic incentive for consumers to reduce their own carbon emissions.”

There is plenty of room on the PSE bill for all the line items deemed necessary to give customers a fair, comprehensive, transparent understanding of what all the charges and credits are. I’m sure any number of PSE employees or their junior high school aged kids possess the necessary skills to successfully modify the look of their one page bill in less than an hour including all the pertinent line items making it factual, legible, understandable and transparent.

New York State has prevented transparent pricing for previous government mandates.  They are unlikely to start clearly admitting the costs for the New York Cap-and-Invest boondoggle now.  The similarities to Washington are clear.  Paul writes:

It’s fairly obvious that UTC is aggressively censoring the fact that the “Cap & Invest” scheme is costing Washington State PSE customers money. 

This fits right in with our Governor’s claim that the recent jump in Washington State gasoline prices has nothing to do with the “Cap & Invest” scheme. Rather it is just big oil gouging the public. In fact these companies are just pragmatically passing along the business costs of their state mandated financial participation in “auction allowance purchases” to their customers just like PSE is doing. 

PSE is only one company among the multitude in Washington State that has been forced to purchase “emission allowances”. There are most many more stories involving these companies simply making the most logically, sensible, efficient business adjustment when they are confronted with additional mandated costs to their bottom line: just pass their added costs on to their consumers. 

Fundingsland concludes:

It just got more expensive to live in Washington State. And based on how this “Cap & Invest” scheme is actually playing out in the real world, it looks like this scheme will continue to make it more expensive with each passing year.

The original idea that this scheme would significantly reduce CO2 emissions is turning out to be just another way for the State Government to extract considerable monies from the general public, sweeping those monies into their coffers by washing it through companies who have been forced to buy emission allowances and are merely passing along their state mandated costs while rendering an imperceptible if any reduction of emissions.

Discussion

The Climate Act requires the Public Service Commission (PSC) to provide a summary of the implementation status.  In July the first annual informational report was published but there hasn’t been a lot of coverage.  This report notes that Climate Act costs that have been authorized and were in the 2022 residential bills total $1.2 billion.  The Report notes that in 2022 the costs already associated with the Climate Act increased the Upstate residential monthly electric bills 7.6% or $7.15 per month for NYSE&G customers; 7.7% or $7.54 for RG&E customers; and 9.8% or $9.38 for Niagara Mohawk customers.   The report does not attempt to project future ratepayer costs of the authorized Climate Act funding to date that total another $43.8 billion so this is just the start of expected costs.    There is no comparison between the transparency that putting this specific information on ratepayer bills relative to burying it in an obscure PSC proceeding.  This approach also reeks of deliberately deceptive, opaque practice.

I have not been able to keep up with all the cost increase news associated with the net zero transition.  The New York Post notes that “In a fresh sign that New York’s state climate agenda is pure fantasy, contractors key to making good on a major piece of the so-called plan just filed to charge 54% more to build their offshore wind farms. “  I have heard that other projects are also saying that inflation and supply chain issues means that they too need more money.  These are all costs that show up in ratepayer bills as part of the delivery component.  The cap-and-invest costs will show up in the supply component and we have no idea how much that will be.  The only thing that I am sure of is that the Hochul Administration will go to great lengths to hide the cause of the inevitable increased costs and blame the innocent just like Washington State regulators are doing.

Conclusion

I am grateful to Fundingsland for his research and commentary on the rollout of the Washington State cap-and-invest program.  Everything that is happening there will very likely happen here.  He notes that “It just got more expensive to live in Washington State”.  That is the inevitable outcome in New York too.