Washington State Net-Zero Transition Update

Washington state resident Paul Fundingsland has provided information for posts describing local experience with the implementation of Washington’s version of New York’s  Climate Leadership & Community Protection Act (Climate Act).  In this update, he describes his thoughts related to a petition to repeal the Washington Climate Commitment Act.

Paul describes himself as “An Obsessive Climate Change Generalist”.   Although he is a retired professor, he says 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. 

I have followed the Climate Act since it was first proposed, submitted comments on the Climate Act implementation plan, and have written over 380 articles about New York’s net-zero transition.  The opinions expressed in this post do not reflect the position of any of my previous employers or any other organization I have been associated with, these opinions are mine alone.

Overview

The 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 (CAC) 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, PSC orders, and legislation. 

Washington’s Climate Commitment Act appears to be even more aspirational than 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 and New York 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.  New York’s target is 85% by 2050.  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 more aspirational than New York. 

Both New York and Washington plan to use a cap-and-invest program as part of the net-zero transition.  These programs set an annual cap on the amount of greenhouse gas pollution that is permitted to be emitted and offer allowances to emit in an auction.  The declining cap ensures annual emissions are reduced and the proceeds of the auction are supposed to be invested in funding emission reduction programs and reducing adverse impacts of the regressive energy tax.  The Washington State Department of Ecology cap-and-invest program held their first auction in February 2023 and there was an immediate jump in energy prices.  The New York cap-and-invest program is still in the development phase.  It is supposed to be implemented in 2025 but progress has been slow.

Repeal Petition

I contacted Fundingsland for his thoughts about the petition to repeal the state’s cap-and-dividend program.  Not surprisingly the increase in costs has sparked a response.  According to the Columbian:

Advocacy organization Let’s Go Washington is gathering signatures on a petition to ask the Washington Legislature to repeal the state’s new carbon pricing system.

Conservatives are saying the new program is causing Washington to have the highest gasoline prices in the nation. Oil companies with refineries in Washington must buy carbon allowances to keep emitting carbon dioxide. They appear to be passing those costs onto customers at the gas pump.

The new carbon pricing program went into effect on Jan. 1, 2023. Washington posted the highest gas prices in the nation in June and July.

“It’s such a scam. It’s a hidden tax,” said Brian Heywood, head of Let’s Go Washington, at a Republican candidates festival in Redmond on July 29.

Heywood says Gov. Jay Inslee and Democratic lawmakers downplayed the potential impact on Washington’s carbon auctions on gas prices. Inslee and his administration predicted in 2021, when the Legislature passed the program, that gasoline prices would rise only a few pennies. “He lied to begin with,” Heywood said.

It amuses me when writers act surprised that the companies who have to pay for the allowances pass those costs on to consumers.  In my decades-long experience affected companies just treat these programs as a tax and, in order to stay in business, pass those costs along.

The Seattle Times explains that backers of the petition had to get signatures:

They submitted more than 400,000 signatures for Initiative 2117, which would repeal the climate law, they said. The initiative will require 324,516 valid signatures to make it to the ballot and the signatures must be verified by the Secretary of State’s Office.

Thoughts on the Petition

I asked Fundingsland what was going on and for his thoughts. He responded:

As far as I can tell, if there are enough (324,516) valid registered voter signatures on the repeal petition, the legislature has to either adopt it as law or put it on the ballot. The legislature isn’t about to adopt it and most probably the last thing they want to see, given what has happened to our gas prices, is to have it before the general public on the ballot. They also don’t want their proposed changes to include Quebec and California in the Climate Commitment Act to be voted on by the general public either. 

From my point of view, there is just way too much money (1.5 billion and counting) coming into the state through the CCA-Cap & Invest scheme and this repeal petition creates way too many unwanted adverse circumstances to let it get before the legislature or allowing the general public to make a determination.

The simple key to making this sticky problem go away is to find or manufacture a way to invalidate or somehow sidetrack the repeal petition keeping it from getting before the legislature.

So I’m betting on the Secretary of State’s Office creatively finding ways to prove there are not enough valid signatures or finding some other magical legal or semi-legal way of derailing the repeal petition. This makes the issue disappear, at least for the meantime. It keeps the Climate Commitment Act intact while continuing the flow of monies into the state coffers and allows for the Legislature to make changes to include Quebec and California into the scheme without a public vote.

Maybe this issue will play out somewhat like this, maybe not. I will be very surprised to see the petition end up on the 2024 ballot. If it does, that will make for a very interesting vote.

As for amending our CCA to include Quebec and California in the “Cap & Invest” (Tax & Reallocate) scheme, it looks to be our version of your RGGI.

I find the claim that making the changes to Washington’s CCA to include a foreign province and a dysfunctional US state of 30 million people that is currently facing a 68 billion dollar deficit and who lost 800,000 residents since 2020 is going to reduce prices for Washington consumers and businesses, as highly suspect.  

Not surprisingly it is all about the money.  When politicians and money mix, citizens suffer.

Other Thoughts

Paul included some other thoughts about what is going on.  He said he thought that Richard Ellenbogen’s presentation detailing his concerns with the Climate Act was “illuminating”.  Based on his work he concluded that the Climate Act was a “convoluted dysfunctional quagmire.”  The rest of his description is too good not to share. 

A few overall issues stood out to me. One is the universal extreme disconnect between politicians making decisions and creating mandates in a vacuum without regard to researching any practical expertise or input from the entities that will ultimately be tasked with implementing them nor paying attention to the kinds of problems other states or countries who are further down the line have or are running into.

The most glaring example of disconnect on the international scale would be the current defective, hypocritical neo-colonialist climate clown show of 80,000 attendees at COP 28 making it the largest emissions conference in their history. This includes our own Climate Envoy (John Kerry) making the emphatic statement at this venue that “no coal plants should be permitted anywhere in the world”. 

He’s completely disregarding what is occurring with the massive build out of coal plants on the international scene in the developing countries being led by China and India. And because these plants have a life span of 40-60 years, he seems to be totally clueless, dismissive or just plain oblivious as to how that will play out for CO2 emissions going forward.

I find Kerry’s and other’s strident and condescending efforts immoral in attempting to prevent developing countries, especially in Africa, from obtaining the necessary financing they need for their grid and other infrastructure developments, forcing them instead to use expensive, unreliable intermittent sources they are told they must use. These countries have every right to develop and use their own same affordable, reliable, secure energy sources the developed countries have been using since the 1850s.

Other disconnect issues would be the complete lack of any kind of cost/benefit research or the building of a demonstration renewable only energy project of any size to verify concept, effectiveness and cost.

And then there’s “the settled science” issue. Never mind that is not how science works. Examples are the work of AMO physicists Will Happer and William van Wijngaarden proving both mathematically and with a replicable experiment that there is no “climate crisis” or “emergency” because the atmosphere is already saturated with CO2 and a doubling will add at most 0.7 degrees C. Or Nobel laureate physicist John Clauser pointing out the IPCC’s disregarding of the primary role clouds play in affecting the temperature of the planet.

In a realistic energy world the findings of these physicists and others (Koonin, Lindzen, Hayden, Giaever to name a few) would be big, important scientific news to consider. But sadly, in the developed countries we are not living in a scientifically realistic energy news world. 

Except maybe for Norway whose premier governmental agency (Statistisk Sentralbyrå) published their own incredibly thorough research finding “the effect of man-made emissions does not appear to be strong enough to cause systematic changes in the temperature fluctuations during the last 200 years”. 

As a goodly number of astute people like yourself, Ellenbogen and numerous others have pointed out, itis becoming starkly apparent that politicians and bureaucrats pushing the sorts of rushed dysfunctional plans like Climate Act here and abroad did not and are not seeking, possessing, obtaining or understanding the technical knowledge needed for functional energy policies. Instead, they blindly push these sorts of disorderly rushed unworkable plans containing a high probability for failure which can ultimately result in some sort of major blackout catastrophe precipitating a significant loss of life. 

In the US it looks like it’s a race between CA, NY, (and maybe TX) or one of the other East Coast cities/states to set this horrid example. Abroad it looks like it’s either Germany or the UK. 

Given the current politically fanatical push to eliminate all fossil fuels from our grid despite the serious warnings from NERC and FERC that such a pathway has a very serious chance of causing a major catastrophic grid failure, I’m guessing such an event has a good chance of occurring sooner rather than later.

I’m not hoping for a significant loss of life energy grid failure but perhaps this is what it will take to snap the US out of its hysterical myopic “climate crisis” stampede towards Net Zero. Such an event could affect a reassessment towards a more measured, rational, practical, user friendly reliable energy strategy. 

Perhaps such an event could even precipitate an enlightened reappraisal of the role of atmospheric CO2 and humanity’s additions to it. 

Naw, that’s probably not going to happen (except in Norway). It’s just my overly optimistic wishful thinking side revealing itself.

Maybe a national political administrative change in the US would elicit a reassessment and create a more rational, sensible energy policy pathway going forward. 

Naw, that’s probably just more overly optimistic wishful thinking on my part.

Conclusion

I concur with everything that Paul said.  It is not a question if these aspirational virtue-signaling plans will end disastrously but when.