Author Archives: Thad Curtz

HB1332

HB1332 – Updates Energy Facility Site Evaluation Council operations.
Prime Sponsor – Representative Wylie (D, 49th District, Vancouver) (By request of the Site Evaluation Council.)
Current status – Did not pass out of opposite house by fiscal cutoff; sent to the “X” file March 9th.
In the House (Passed)
Returned by Senate Rules to the House Rules Committee for third reading. Reintroduced and retained in present status for 2020 session; on third reading. Returned to 2nd reading, replaced with a striker which (unless I missed something) was simply the text of the 2nd Engrossed version returned by the Senate, advanced to 3rd reading, and passed by the House.

In the Senate –
Referred to the Committee on Environment, Energy & Technology in the Senate. Had a hearing February 20th; passed out of committee February 25th. Referred to Rules.
Next step would be – Dead bill…
Legislative tracking page for the bill.
SB5329 is an identical companion bill in the Senate.

2019 History
In the House (Passed)
Had a hearing before the House Committee on Environment & Energy January 28th. Substitute bill with minor changes passed out of committee February 14th. Referred to Rules for 2nd reading. Passed by the House with a floor amendment March 8th.

In the Senate
Referred to the Committee on Environment, Energy, & Technology. Had a hearing March 14th; a striker with some minor adjustments passed out of committee March 26th. Referred to the Rules Committee.

2019 Comments – The 2019 substitute bill removed the representative from the Association of Washington Cities, restored the temporary representative from an area in which a project is being considered, added a second tribal representative, and made some other minor changes. (The changes are summarized on pp. 5-6 of the Senate Bill Report.)
The floor amendment requires completing consultation with tribes before determining whether there are still unsettled questions about material facts.

The changes in the Senate striker are summarized on its last page.

Summary –
The bill adds some language about the State’s need to reduce its dependence on fossil fuels and increase its reliance on clean energy to the section of the code about its intentions, and says that the bill intends “to streamline application review for energy facilities that use alternative energy resources to meet the state’s energy goals.”

The Council would have its own staff, rather than relying on the UTC’s. The bill reduces its size, and would no longer add a member from an area where a project has been proposed during the time it’s reaching a decision about its recommendation to the Governor on that project. (Instead, there’s a member representing the Association of Washington Cities and one from the Washington State Association of Counties.) It adds a tribal representative.

After the environmental review of the project, the Council can hold a public hearing about whether or not genuine issues of fact on matters the council deems material to its recommendation exist. If it then decides there aren’t, and that the project is consistent and compliant with local land use requirements then it can skip the requirement for holding a formal adjudicative hearing under the Administrative Procedures Act, and proceed to make a recommendation.

Details –
The bill eliminates a member from DNR, and a number of optional memberships for various agencies, and it makes a number of small procedural changes expanding the Council’s discretion and powers.

HB1232

HB1232 – Lets utilities count old hydro as meeting I-937’s requirements for adding new renewables
Prime Sponsor – Representative Griffey (R, 35th District, Mason County)
Current status – Referred to Environment & Energy. Reintroduced and retained in present status for 2020 session.
Next step would be – Scheduling a hearing.
Legislative tracking page for the bill.

Summary –

The Energy Independence Act, approved by State voters in 2006 I-937, requires utilities with 25,000 or more customers to increase the percentage of renewable energy in their power supplies in three stages, reaching 20% by 2020. Power from existing hydroelectric facilities was excluded from the requirement, except for new additions to the supply of renewable power created by some improvements to the generating efficiency of existing dams.

The bill would allow utilities to count any hydroelectric power they sell, no matter how long it has been around, as meeting this requirement for adding new renewable energy.

SB5336

SB5336 – Advancing electric transportation.
Prime Sponsor – Senator Palumbo (D, 1st District, Snohomish County) (Requested by the Governor.)
Current status – Had a hearing in the Senate Committee on Environment, Energy & Technology, February 12th. Significantly changed substitute bill passed out of committee February 20th. Referred to the Committee on Transportation, which passed a 2nd substitute with some further changes March 6th. Referred to Ways and Means. Had a hearing March 19th 2019. Reintroduced and retained in present status for 2020 session.
Next step would be – Action by the committee.
Legislative tracking page for the bill.
HB1664 is an identical companion bill in the House.

Comments –
First substitute:
The changes in the first substitute bill are summarized on p. 5 of the Senate Bill Report. (However, the bill only expands existing commercial vehicle tax breaks; it doesn’t “add” them. The original didn’t “require” Ecology to adopt the ZEV standard; it removed the prohibition on doing that.)

The substitute leaves the prohibition on adopting the Zero Emission Vehicle Standard in place. The Department of Commerce is to create a program to provide, subject to funding, rebates between $1,250 and $5,000 for low and moderate income households in areas with high levels of air pollution that scrap a vehicle that’s more than ten years old and replace it with a new or used zero-emission vehicle. [My economist friends predict that this will raise the price of used ZEVs.]

It specifies that local sales and use taxes are included in the exemptions. It roughly doubles the B&O and public utility tax credits for clean alternative fuel commercial vehicles, raises the annual cap on these exemptions from six million to forty, and extends the exemption from 2021 to 2050. Rather than raising registration fees on EVs, it funds the first thirty-three million in repayments to the general fund for the commercial vehicle tax exemptions from the multi-modal transportation account and anything above that as well as the reimbursements for the sales and use tax exemptions from the forward flexible account (which seems to be some part of the motor vehicle fund).

It makes all utilities’ authorizations for investments in EV infrastructure dependent on their creation of approved electrification of transportation plans, and sets 2030 as the limit to how long private utilities can earn incentive rates of return on investments in electric vehicle infrastructure. (The original bill only seemed to provide specific provisions for private utilities and municipal utilities, not the PUDs.)

Second substitute:
The second substitute has the tax exemptions expire at a $100 million cap, rather than when they’ve been received by 10% of the registered vehicles, and simply caps the commercial vehicle exemptions at $33 million. It eliminates the rebate program for scrapping vehicles.

Summary of the original bill –

Washington would join the other nine states that have adopted California’s zero emission vehicle standards. (Those currently require manufacturers to have about 2.5% of the cars they sell in a given state be free of tailpipe emissions, and establish a market for trading credits that manufacturers who sell more battery and fuel-cell cars than required can sell to those who don’t sell enough or decide it would be cheaper to buy credits than produce and sell the cars.)

The bill requires all utilities to engage in electrifying transportation, and specifically authorizes them to build and promote charging infrastructure (as well as to invest in making energy infrastructure in general more efficient). It removes the requirement that their chargers must be in places where cars will plug in for at least four hours if they want to earn a rate of return on the investment.

It authorizes cities with municipal utilities serving more than 400,000 customers to do as much as the Washington Constitution allows to provide financing to help customers electrify transportation, and to offer programs, services, and make investments to provide that, if that will benefit ratepayers and the city has adopted a plan for electrifying transportation.

Utilities regulated by the UTC can submit a plan for investing in chargers or providing other programs, services, or incentives to support electrifying transportation. (In fact, they now have to have a plan if they want earn an increased rate of return on EV infrastructure.) The plan may not “increase costs to customers in excess of one-quarter of one percent above the benefits of electric transportation to all customers” over the twenty years of its current integrated resource plan. The UTC can allow an addition to the rate of return of up to 2% for capital investments in chargers behind the customer’s meter, provided that won’t increase costs to ratepayers more than 0.25%.

The bill provides a sales tax exemption of up to $1,000 and a use tax exemption of up to $1,000 on the sale or lease of new or used fully electric cars, light trucks, and medium-duty passenger vehicles with a manufacturer’s suggested retail price of less than $45,000 for the base model. (If you buy the car at the end of the lease you can get the tax exemptions on that purchase as well as on the lease payments.) The exemption expires when the number of vehicles that have received the exemption reaches 10% of the number of cars, light trucks and medium-duty passenger vehicles in the state.

It funds the program with the vehicle registration fee for plug-in cars that go at least 30 miles on the battery and raises it from $100/year to $150. (That fee currently goes to the motor vehicle fund to be spent on highways.)

Details –
In reviewing a private utility’s electrification plan, the UTC has to consider multiple options for the electrification of transportation for all customer classes; its impact on loads, and whether demand response or opportunities for managing load are appropriate; system reliability and distribution system efficiencies; interoperability concerns, including the interaction of hardware and software systems in proposals; benefits and costs; and the overall customer experience.

The bill removes the current prohibition against adopting California’s zero emissions vehicle requirements, and no longer requires Ecology to have any changes in emissions rules reviewed by an advisory group of stakeholders.

SB5280

HB5280 – Authorizes community solar gardens.
Prime Sponsor – Senator McCoy (D, 38th District, Snohomish County)
Current status – Had a hearing on a substitute bill in the Committee on Environment, Energy & Technology February 12th. Still in committee by 2019 cutoff; reintroduced and retained in present status for 2020 session.
Next step would be – Action by the committee.
Legislative tracking page for the bill.

Comments –
The substitute specifies that any project has to meet the current requirements for community solar projects in RCW 80.28.375. These cover registration with the WSU Energy program and bonding (if required). It now requires at least ten subscribers or one per ten kilowatts, rather than at least five subscribers none of whom could own more than 40% of the project.

Olympia Community Solar has a flyer about the original bill.

Summary –
Community solar gardens are utility scale projects, in which subscribers buy a share of the project and get credits for their share of the output on their utility bills. The bill says they’re intended to exist “outside of tax-related subsidy programs”, and that they “include community solar projects” as those are defined in the current law about tax incentives for renewable energy. (That program has reached its cap, and is not allowing new projects.) For twenty-five years, subscribers would get credits on their bills at the retail rate for their share of the project’s output.

The bill requires each private utility to submit a plan for operating them to the UTC by January 1, 2020, and requires public utilities to submit plans to the Department of Commerce.

Comments –
The bill doesn’t say much of anything about the requirements for creating one of the profit or non-profit corporation that can own these projects in addition to utilities. It doesn’t say anything about provisions for transferring a subscriber’s contract if they leave the service area, or about what happens to a contract if one of these subscriber organizations goes out of business.

Details –
Utility Plans
The UTC can approve, disapprove or modify a private utility’s plan, and the bill talks about “a plan approved by Commerce” (though it doesn’t seem to specify Commerce’s powers over public utilities’ plans in the same way.)

Plans must:

Reasonably allow for the creation, financing, and accessibility of community solar gardens;
Provide guidelines for including low-income customers as subscribers, and may allow a preference for community solar gardens that have low-income subscribers;
Establish uniform standards, fees, and processes for the interconnection of projects that allow the utility to recover reasonable interconnection costs for each one;
Be consistent with the public interest;
Identify the information that must be provided to customers to ensure fair disclosure of future costs and benefits of subscriptions;
Include a program implementation schedule;
Identify all proposed rules, fees, and charges;
Describe how the program will be promoted;
Describe the system for crediting each subscriber’s monthly bill; and,
Identify the preferred locations for solar gardens within a utility’s distribution system, if the utility has analyzed it and designated some that don’t unreasonably restrict solar gardens’ development.

Each utility has to maintain a public website with this information and information about each project in its service area.

Limits on projects
A project must have subscribers for all the electricity it generates, and they have to be in the utility’s service area. It has to have more than five subscribers, and none of them can subscribe for more than 40% of the project. At least 40% of the capacity has to be allocated to residential and small business customers with loads under 40kWs, and at least 10% of it has to be for customers who are eligible for the State’s low-income energy assistance plan.

Subscriptions have to be for at least one kilowatt, and (including any other distributed energy generation at the location) one can’t be for more than 120% of your annual yearly consumption “at the premises to which the subscription is attached.” (Apparently, you could have more than one subscription if you were a customer with more than one location.)

The project must be located on the utility’s distribution system, and within a preferred location on the system, if the utility’s plan identifies any.

Subscriber organizations
These are for-profit or non-profit organizations that own or operate one or more solar gardens. They own the renewable energy credits generated by their projects, and can sell them. They contract with subscribers who want to own a share of a project, but that doesn’t make them regulated as utilities. They’re responsible for making a monthly electronic report of each subscriber’s share of the output to the subscriber’s utility, so the utility can credit their bills.

They have to have a system for resolving any disputes with subscribers.

Regulations
The UTC and Commerce can coordinate in developing rules for these projects, and should have those for private and pubic utilities be the same, to the extent that that’s practical.

HB1167

HB1167 – Protects established composting sites from being sued for creating a public nuisance.
Prime Sponsor – Representative Walen (D, 48th District, Kirkland)
Current status – Had a hearing before the Committee on Rural Development, Agriculture & Natural Resources January 23rd. Reported out of committee February 6th; referred to Rules. Placed on 2nd reading February 28th. Referred to Rules 2 consideration March 21st. Reintroduced and retained in present status for 2020 session. Now in the House Rules “X” file.
Next step would be – Action by the Rules Committee.
Legislative tracking page for the bill.
The House Bill Analysis is available here.

Summary –
Currently, agriculture and forestry activities that are consistent with good practices in those fields, and were established before other surrounding activities (like neighboring housing developments), are protected from lawsuits claiming that they are creating a public nuisance because of things like smells or noise, unless they’re having a substantial negative effect on public health or safety.

The bill extends this protection to composting activities. (Composting must also be meeting city and county regulations to qualify for this protection.)

SB5128

SB5128 – Reduces the registration fee for electric motorcycles.
Prime Sponsor – Senator Rolfes (D, 23rd District, Kitsap County)
Current status – Had hearing before the Senate Transportation Committee January 28th. Passed out of committee February 5th. Referred to Rules. Reintroduced and retained in present status for 2020 session. Sent to the “X” file.
Next step would be – Action by the Rules Committee.
Legislative tracking page for the bill.
Senate Bill Report is available here.

Comments –
The substitute bill merely changed the date at which the reduction would become effective by a few months.

Summary –
Currently, owners of electric motorcycles pay the same annual registration fee as the owners of electric cars that can travel over 30 miles on the battery. The bill reduces the fee for motorcycles to $30/yr.

Comments – Gasoline motorcycles and scooters actually produce more air pollution and smog than cars; in fact, the California Air Resources Board estimates an average motorbike is about 10 times more polluting per mile than a passenger car, light truck or SUV. They are about twice as fuel efficient as an average cars, though, and they take less energy to produce, so riding one does reduce greenhouse gas emissions.

An electric bike doesn’t produce any smog, and riding one instead of a gas powered bike produces roughly half the reduction in CO2 emissions that switching from a gas car to an electric one does. (If the gas car is going 10,000 miles a year at 25 mpg it’s using 400 gallons; the gas bike would be using 200 gallons.)

HB1128

HB1128 – Authorizes alternative forms of regulation for utilities.
Prime Sponsor – Representative Morris (D, 40th District, Mount Vernon)
Current status – Referred to the Committee on Environment & Energy. Reintroduced and retained in present status for 2020 session.
Next step would be – Scheduling a hearing.

Comments –
This bill’s provisions for a greenhouse gas planning adder and for alternative systems of utility regulation have been incorporated in the new substitute version of HB1211, though that sets the initial value of the adder higher and doesn’t make it depend on the imposition of carbon pricing.

Summary –
Authorizes the Utility and Transportation Commission to develop new systems for regulating electric and gas utilities to better achieve state policy goals, and allows a utility to submit a proposal for changing how it’s regulated to the Commission.

If the Legislature imposed “a tax, fee, or other monetary price on the carbon content of the sale or use of fossil fuels and electricity in the state,” the bill would require the use of an adder for the cost of carbon emissions by the UTC and utilities in conservation planning and in intermediate and long-term resource planning, under the current regulatory system or any alternative one. The adder would be the dollars per metric ton of greenhouse gases implied by the legislated price on carbon, or $40/tonne for 2018 (increasing by one and a quarter percent a year, apparently without an inflation adjustment) – whichever was larger.

Details –
The bill gives the UTC the authority to adopt any new forms of utility regulation that it determines are in the public interest, providing it considers, to the degree that it’s relevant, the extent to which each new system is expected to:

Align a utility’s regulatory incentives with the public interest;
Maintain and enhance its ability to provide safe, adequate, and efficient service;
Support prudent and efficient use of the electrical or natural gas system and utility operations;
Maintain and enhance overall electrical system reliability, security, and resilience;
Allow a company to support and participate in market transformation, enabling technologies without harming competition;
Allow a company to be financially indifferent about the ownership of the property providing service to its customers or the quantity of electricity or gas sold to them;
Reasonably protect customers, including low-income ones, from short and long-term risks;
Ensure an appropriate level of consumer protection;
Help achieve state emissions reduction goals;
Reduce or avoid adverse environmental impacts;
Provide the company with the opportunity to earn a reasonable rate of return on investment; and,
Provide for broad customer engagement to promote participation by a diversity of customers, particularly underserved communities or segments thereof, in programs to help achieve these goals.

The UTC may begin consideration of alternative forms of regulation on its own initiative. A utility may also petition the UTC to change the way it’s regulated, submitting a plan for an alternative form of regulation. That must be developed with customer and stakeholder input, and include a proposal for appropriate performance metrics (and enforcement or remedial steps in the event those are not met), a plan transitioning to the proposed system, and its proposed duration. It may include provisions for ensuring a reasonable rate of return on investment.

After notice and hearing, the UTC must accept, modify, or reject a utility proposal within eleven months, although it may extend the period for good cause. If the Commission authorizes some new form of regulation for a utility which has proposed a plan, the utility must accept or decline to adopt it within sixty days.

The Commission may waive other current regulatory requirements for a utility operating under a new form of regulation if it concludes that will facilitate its implementation, though it may not waive any legal rights established by the State’s laws about utilities (80.28 RCW) or regulations (80.04 RCW). It may waive different requirements for different companies or services, if it determines that’s in the public interest.

The Commission or any person can file a complaint claiming that a utility has not complied with the terms and conditions of its new form of regulation, but bears the burden of proving the allegations.

HB1129

HB1129 – Requires utilities to provide net metering for more small systems, and allows them to offer it to as many large systems as they choose to.
Prime Sponsor – Representative Morris (D, 40th District, Mount Vernon)
Current status – Referred to the Committee on Environment & Energy. Reintroduced and retained in present status for 2020 session.
Next step would be – Scheduling a hearing.
Legislative tracking page for the bill.

Comments –
Net metering credits customers with fuel cells, combined heat and power systems, or renewable energy systems at the retail rate for power that goes onto the grid from their systems when they aren’t using it, so they pay for the power they used from the grid net, or minus, the surplus power they provided to it.

Summary –

The bill requires utilities to offer net metering to customers with small systems, no larger than 199kW, until their cumulative generative capacity equals 4% of the utility’s peak demand during 1996, reserving at least half of this allotment for residential customers producing renewable energy. (The current cap is 0.5% of 1996 peak demand.) They may offer an alternative to customers with small systems who are not enrolled in the current program when the cumulative generating capacity in that program reaches 2% of 1996 peak demand or after January 1, 2022, whichever comes first. (An alternative is not available to customers who are interconnected with net metering when the law takes effect, but is available if the property is sold or a new customer takes over the meter.)

The bill allows a utility to offer net metering to as many customers with larger systems as it chooses to, and to offer an alternative to those customers as soon as it has completed the distributed resources planning specified in the bill.

Details –
To offer an alternative, a utility must have gone through distributed energy resources planning of the sort specified by HB1126, or, if a process for that is not enacted by June 30th 2019, must accomplish the goals for such planning recommended in the report published on December 31, 2017, by the “commission on current practices in distributed
energy resources planning.” (This means the Utility and Transportation Commission’s recent Report on Current Practices in Distributed Energy Resource Planning.)

Beginning in 2020, each utility must send the Department of Commerce a semi-annual report on their current net metering, including their peak demand in 1996 and how much more net metering they will be able to add before they reach the cap for small systems. If a utility has “exceeded the requirement” of subsection 2 (1) (a) of the bill, which says they shall offer net metering to customers with small systems until they reach the cap, then it must also report on whether it’s continuing to offer the net metering which isn’t capped to other customers and whether it has established a new cumulative capacity allocation for them.

Large utilities would have to include the total number of kilowatt hours consumed during the most recent twelve months on all customers’ bills.

HB1127

HB1127 – Allows utilities to electrify transportation infrastructure.
Prime Sponsor – Representative Morris (D, 40th District, Mount Vernon)
Current status – Referred to the Committee on Environment & Energy. Reintroduced and retained in present status for 2020 session.
Next step would be – Scheduling a hearing.
Legislative tracking page for the bill.

Summary –
Allows utilities to adopt transportation electrification plans if they determine that outreach and investment in electrification infrastructure is cost-effective in the context of acquiring new resources, considering system benefits and costs to ratepayers. (The bill says that system benefits for a utility exist “where financial, reliability, and quality benefits of the electrification of transportation are conferred equally among all ratepayers on the distribution system or among the utility’s resource generation portfolio.”) If they aren’t acquiring resources, they may determine it’s cost-effective considering those factors and “long-term contracted wholesale electricity supply that will result in a greater ratepayer benefit than the individual benefit from the program cost.” [I’m not sure what either section in quotes is supposed to mean…]

These plans may consider multiple options for transportation electrification across all customer classes; its anticipated impact on loads and whether load management opportunities including demand response, direct load control and dynamic pricing, are appropriate; system reliability and distribution system efficiencies; interoperability concerns, including those between hardware and software systems; and their customers’ overall experience.

Utilities that determine outreach and investment in such infrastructure is cost-effective may offer programs to electrify transportation infrastructure to their customers, including advertising to promote services, rebates and incentives they or others provide.

If specific funding for it is appropriated by June 30th, 2019, the Department of Commerce shall arrange for a study of the capital expenditures projected to be required by growth in distributed resources, including photovoltaic systems, electric vehicles, and any other customer-owned technologies likely to affect capital expenditures, including a low and high adoption scenario for each resource.

HB1113

HB1113 – Increases the State’s targets for emissions reductions to match the Paris Accords’.
Prime Sponsor – Representative Slatter (D, 48th District, Bellevue)
Current status – Had a hearing before the House Committee on Environment & Energy January 15th. Passed out of committee with several amendments January 31st. Had a hearing in the House Appropriations Committee, February 21st. Reintroduced and retained in present status for 2020 session.
Next step would be – Action by the committee.
Legislative tracking page for the bill.
House Bill Analysis

Comments –
The amended bill adds a statement about the importance of supporting working forests to meeting the State’s climate goals, and adds reporting on the carbon sequestration from urban forest practices and on the emission reductions and sequestration increases from forest management practices including prescribed burning and mechanized thinning to the bill’s requirements.

Representative Slatter’s new 2020 bill, HB2311, would increase the State’s targets more.

Summary –
It adds a 19% reduction of greenhouse gas emissions from 1990 levels by 2025 (and best efforts to reach a 21% reduction by then) to the State’s targets. It increases the target for 2035 from a 25% reduction to a 40% reduction, and the target for 2050 from a 50% reduction to an 80% reduction.

Requires the State to encourage proactive forest management, “including, but not limited to, prescribed burning and mechanized thinning as a means of reducing emissions”.

Details –
Adds a comparison with other states’ emissions, and reporting on the emissions from wildfires to the current requirements for a report by Ecology and Commerce to the Governor and appropriate committees of the Legislature every two years. Requires a report to the Legislature by the Joint Legislative Audit Committee and Review Committee every five years about the effects of these reductions on the economy and jobs.

HB1110

HB1110 – Creates a low carbon fuel standard.
Prime Sponsor – Representative Fitzgibbon (D, 34th District, Vashon Island & West Seattle)
Current status – Returned to House Rules, 3rd Reading by Senate at end of 2019 Session; reintroduced and retained in present status for 2020 session. Passed the House January 30th. Referred to the Senate Committee on Environment, Energy and Technology. Replaced with a striker and passed out of committee February 25th. Referred to the Transportation Committee and had a hearing there March 2nd.
Next step would be – Action by the committee.
Legislative tracking page for the bill.
SB5412 is the identical companion bill in the Senate.
House Bill Analysis

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2019 history –
In the House (Passed)-
2019 Session History – Amended in minor ways and reported out of the House Environment and Energy Committee as SHB1110, January 24th. Passed out of the Transportation Committee February 14th. Had a hearing in the House Committee on Appropriations February 21st; a 2nd substitute version with further changes passed out of Appropriations February 25th. Referred to Rules February 28th. Passed the House with a number of amendments March 12th.
In the Senate-
Referred to the Senate Committee on Environment, Energy & Technology. Had hearing March 19th; amended by a striker and passed out of committee March 21st. Referred to Transportation Committee. Had a hearing on a proposed striker by Senator Hobbs Wednesday, April 4th. Striker was not adopted. Bill was still in committee by 2019 cutoff. Returned to House Rules, 3rd Reading by Senate at end of 2019 Session

Proposed striker in the Senate…
Senator Hobbs’s striker would have put a fee of $6/tonne of carbon on transportation fuels for 2021-2028 (with no inflation adjustment), then reset the fee by the Legislature for 2029-2035. 50% of the revenue would have gone to motor vehicles and 50% to multi-modal. There were various exemptions, a null and void clause if rule making wasn’t funded in this session’s omnibus transportation package, and a 5¢/gallon tax on the biofuel included in blended fuels.

Changes in the Senate
The changes in the Senate striker are summarized on its last page. Though the summary doesn’t mention it, the striker dropped the prohibition on giving credits to palm oil fuels, which may have been beside the point, since the bill requires the rules on emissions standards to be based on a full life-cycle analysis. including land use changes. (The striker also provided more options for how utilities can spend the half of their credits from providing electricity for transportation that aren’t required to go to transportation electrification projects. Under it, they could have used the money from these to offset increases in their own fuel costs or to invest in a wide variety of other carbon reduction projects, and could have chosen to use up to 10% of it on rate reductions for low-income households.

Changes in the House
The minor technical changes made to the original HB1110 by amendments in the House Environment & Energy Committee are summarized on pp. 7-8 of the House Bill Report. The second substitute added an exemption for some military fuel as well as provisions about renewable hydrogen, and made the entire bill null and void if it didn’t receive specific funding in the omnibus appropriations act by June 30th, 2019.

The floor amendments:

Exempt fuels in off-road logging, mining, construction, and the dyed special fuel in agricultural operations from greenhouse gas intensity requirements until 2028, but allow them to earn credits;
Prohibit awarding credits for fuels from palm oil;
Require consideration of land-use changes in calculating the carbon intensity of fuels from sugar cane;
Allow awarding of credits for a wide variety of activities that “support the reduction of greenhouse gas emissions associated with transportation” including oil carbon capture and sequestration projects, direct air capture, charging vehicles with zero emission electricity; zero emission refueling infrastructure, and smart charging technology. (Apparently, some of these credits are directly tied to how much you invest, not to demonstrating actual reductions as a result of the investments.);
Require estimating and announcing annually the costs or cost savings per gallon of gasoline attributable to the clean fuels program; and,
Specify that hydroelectricity, including power from incremental efficiency improvements, counts as a zero emissions fuel under the bill.

2020 History –
According to the staff summary, the striker in the Senate committee makes the program contingent on the passage of a transportation act with at least $2 billion in new funding and a plan and funding to replace the I-5 bridge over the Columbia and the US-2 trestle (which happens to be in the district of Senator Hobbs, the chair of the Senate Transportation Committee.) It delays the start of the program for a year, or until the required transportation funding is obtained. It adds a renewable fuels facility capable of producing more than 100 million gallons of renewable energy products a year to the list of projects of statewide significance that are eligible for expedited approval. It shifts the required reinvestment of 30% of utilities’ credits revenue from areas with poor air quality to “highly impacted communities”, and allows (but doesn’t explicitly require) Ecology to evaluate transportation fuels using a third-party screening protocol that assesses its associated social, environmental, or labor impacts. (It doesn’t say what the impact or consequences of the assessment are supposed to be, so the point of this provision isn’t clear…)

Summary –
Requires the Department of Ecology to create rules to reduce the greenhouse gas emissions from transportation fuels used in Washington to 10% below 2017 levels by 2028 and to 20% below 2017 levels by 2035. (Fuels for aviation, shipping, and locomotives are exempted.)

Comments –

The Puget Sound Clean Air Agency is considering adopting a Regional Clean Fuel Standard for King, Pierce, Kitsap, and Snohomish Counties. (People say it announced it would do this, but their website doesn’t say that yet.) (Presumably, this motivated Senator Hobbs to add “local agencies” to the poison pill provisions in his new transportation proposal – SB5971. (One of these altered sections starts on p. 54, line 5, if you’re interested.)

Governor Inslee’s budget proposal provides $959,000 for the Department of Ecology to implement the program (though his policy brief provided $1.4 million for it.)

Rep. Fitzgibbon’s LCFS bill, HB 2338, which passed out of the House Environment and House Transportation committees last session, would have created a standard at the same level. Carbon Wa’s testimony in support of that bill included quite a bit of useful analysis.

There’s a comparison of the bill and the California and Oregon programs here.

Climate Solutions has produced a flyer supporting the bill, and an FAQ responding to the main attacks on the bill.

Details :

Standards –

Must be based on a full lifecycle analysis of the emissions associated with each fuel, including its production, storage, transportation, and combustion, as well as associated changes in land use.
Must measure the emissions from electricity for each electric utility based on its mix of power sources.
Ecology can require additional reporting from fuel distributors and utilities if it’s needed.
The department may create additional exemptions to avoid mismatched incentives among programs, fuel shifting among markets, or other unintended consequences.
It must decide whether or not emissions reductions under the clean fuels program will count toward meeting the requirements of the clean air rule, and vice versa.

– Credits and trading

Ecology must create a system for generating, banking, trading, and verifying credits for emissions reductions. Participation in this system is voluntary, and it’s also open to suppliers and users of aviation, shipping, and locomotive fuels who make reductions in their associated emissions. Credits may be awarded for producing, importing, or dispensing fuels for use in the state, and for other activities that reduce the emissions associated with transportation fuels. They may not be awarded for any fuels with emissions above 80% of the standard.

The bill extends the penalties for violations of the Clean Air Act to violations of this act. Ecology may charge a fee to cover the costs of the program; these and any penalties collected under the program go into a new clean fuels fund account, which can only be spent through appropriations.

– Cost containment mechanisms

These may include creating a credit clearance market to put a ceiling on prices by making credits available at a level Ecology sets, and/or some similar method to provide credits to participants who have not been able to attain them. (These mechanisms must be designed to financially discourage people from relying on them instead of reducing emissions.)

Ecology can create an entity to aggregate and use credits for emissions reductions made by parties that choose not to participate in the credit market.

– Relations with other states

Ecology should seek to adopt rules that work well with the systems in other jurisdictions that have adopted clean fuels standards (such as Oregon, California, and British Columbia), and in ones we import fuels from or export fuels to.

– Electric utility reinvestments

Half the revenue from credits earned by an electric utility must be reinvested it transportation electrification projects, and 60% of that (30% of the total) must be spent on projects in places where air pollution is bad enough so they’ve been identified as non-attainment or maintenance areas under the National Air Quality Act. Ecology may adopt requirements for the reinvestment of the other half of this revenue, in consultation with the utilities.

– Reporting

Requires an annual report about the program on Ecology’s website, and an annual report to appropriate committees of the Legislature, starting in 2022, with draft legislation for any recommended changes to achieve the program’s goals more efficiently.

Requires a fuel supply forecast by Commerce, in consultation with Ecology and the Department of Agriculture, at least 90 days in advance of each compliance period; this must include a prediction about whether sufficient credits from low carbon fuels (and banked will be available to meet the program’s requirements.

The Joint Legislative Audit Committee must report to the Legislature on the impacts, costs and benefits of the first five years of the program before the end of 2027.

– Removes “poison pill” provisions

In 2015, Republicans inserted provisions into the transportation package to transfer the state’s funds for bicycling and transit to highway projects if a clean fuel standard was created; the bill removes those.

SB5077

SB5077 – Prohibiting single-use plastic straws
Prime Sponsor – Senator Kuderer (D, 48th District, Bellevue)
Current status – Returned to the Senate Rules Committee at the end of the 2019 session. Reintroduced and retained in present status for 2020 session. Placed in the Senate “X” file February 24th.
Next step would be – Dead bill.
Legislative tracking page for the bill.

2019 Legislative History –
In the Senate (Passed) –
Had a hearing in the Senate Committee on Environment, Energy & Technology January 24th. Substitute bill passed out of committee February 14th. Referred to Rules for 2nd Reading. Passed by the Senate with minor amendment by prime sponsor March 4th.
In the House –
Referred to the House Committee on Environment and Energy. Had a hearing March 14th. Replaced by a striker, further amended, and passed out of committee April 1st. Referred to the Rules Committee. Returned to the Senate Rules Committee at the end of the 2019 session.

Comments: – It isn’t obvious that banning plastic straws will reduce greenhouse emissions, though it might, and that’s not the main point of the proposal in any case. (To decide whether or not it would you’d need a full life-cycle analysis of their use compared to that of paper straws, glass straws, bamboo straws, the new plastic covers Starbucks is introducing with lids that make it easier to drink from them, and so on…) This is equally true of the bills about banning plastic carryout bags (HB1205) and reducing the use of plastic packaging (HB1204).

The substitute bill dropped the prohibition on the sales and distribution of plastic straws, would keep restaurants from using them unless a customer asked for one, and made some other changes which are summarized on pp. 2-3 of the Senate Bill Report.

The changes in the House striker are summarized on its last page. It and the amendments made a number of minor adjustments to the rules, and increased the potential fines to $250/day for the third and subsequent violations and a maximum of $3,000 a year.

Details – Bans sale and distribution of all plastic straws as of July 30, 2020, including ones that are compostable, biodegradeable, and/or made from plant-based plastics. Creates a process for recommendations to Legislature about addressing the needs of health care facilities and disabled individuals and about avoiding unintended consequences. Imposes a fine of $25/day for violations after two warnings, with a maximum fine of $300.

HB1029

HB1029 – Adds requirements for Ecology’s assessments of Federal water quality permit applications.
Prime Sponsor – Senator Walsh (R, 19th District, Aberdeen)
Current status – Referred to the Committee on Environment & Energy. (Reintroduced and retained in present status for 2020 session.)
Next step would be – Action by the committee.
Legislative tracking page for the bill.

Summary –
Getting a permit for activities that may result in discharging a pollutant into waters of the United States, requires applying for a water quality certificate from Ecology stating that your releases meet the standards of the Federal Clean Water Act. The bill adds requirements about how Ecology manages these applications, and limits the discharges and environmental effects that Ecology can take into account.

Comments –
At first glance it doesn’t seem as if water quality has much to do with greenhouse gases. However, these permits also cover the management of manure at feed lots and the operation of wastewater treatment plants, which are sources of methane emissions. The bill prohibits Ecology from considering any environmental damages that might result from impacts based on the end use of a product outside the state’s borders, or from other “impacts of the activities that are not within the jurisdiction of the state to regulate.” (Presumably, this is related to recent decisions by Ecology and the Shorelines Management Board denying permits to new fossil fuel export terminals that did include the eventual greenhouse gas emissions from burning those exports into account.)

SB5044

SB5043 – Authorizes putting measures that would cancel any of the Sound Transit taxes in a county on its ballot by petition.
Prime Sponsor – Senator O’Ban (R, 24th District, Southern Pierce County)
Current status – Referred to Transportation Committee. Still in committee by 2019 cutoff; reintroduced and retained in present status for 2020 session.
Next step would be – Scheduling a hearing.
Legislative tracking page for the bill.

– Authorizes a county’s voters to opt out of all the funding sources in the Sound Transit expansion package approved by regional voters in 2016, and apparently also to opt out of any other previous Sound Transit funding measures.

My Comments:
Here’s the results of the 2016 vote, compared with the boundaries of Senator O’Ban’s district. (The green areas at the bottom of the voting results map are the military bases in the southwest area of the district.)

Whatever its other virtues, the expansion is a very expensive way to reduce greenhouse gas emissions. (Sound Transit estimates that most of the riders will be people who would have been riding buses otherwise, rather than people shifting to light rail from cars.) The Washington Policy Center pointed out that Sound Transit’s estimates for the planned extension from Northgate to Lynwood imply a cost of $612/metric ton of anticipated reductions, without considering emissions from construction or operating costs. (They did not take account of the value of the other benefits that the expansion will produce, like savings in commuter time; those might be what the money’s paying for, and the CO2 reductions might just be icing on the cake.) KUOW reported the additional emissions from construction steel and concrete.

Details:
Would require the signatures of 8% of the voters in the last election for Governor to put a measure on the ballot.

SB5043

SB5043 – Authorizes putting measures that would cancel future Sound Transit taxes in a county, and/or the current car tab, car rental, and property taxes, on its ballot by petition.
Prime Sponsor – Senator O’Ban (R, 24th District, Southern Pierce County)
Current status – Referred to Transportation Committee. Still in committee by 2019 cutoff; reintroduced and retained in present status for 2020 session.
Next step would be – Scheduling a hearing.
Legislative tracking page for the bill.

– Authorizes a county’s voters to opt out of the car tab tax, taxes on car rentals, and the property tax approved as part of the regional Sound Transit expansion package in 2016, and to vote to opt out of other future Sound Transit funding measures.

Details:
Would require the signatures of 8% of the voters in the last election for Governor to put a measure on the ballot.

SB5042

SB5042 – Base car tab fees for Sound Transit expansion funding on Kelley Blue Book or national automobile dealers’ association values.
Prime Sponsor – Senator O’Ban (R, 24th District, Southern Pierce County)
Current status – Scheduled for a hearing in the Senate Committee on Transportation, February 26th at 1:30. Still in committee by 2019 cutoff; reintroduced and retained in present status for 2020 session.
Next step would be – Action by the committee.
Legislative tracking page for the bill.

My Comments:
The $54 Billion Sound Transit expansion package voters passed in 2016 included about $8 Billion in funding from an increase in car tab fees. The measure based the fees on the older of the existing valuation systems, which produced large increases from the previous year, and a lot of complaints. Last year, bills to reduce the fees in two different ways passed the Senate (SB5955) and the House (HB2201) with large majorities, but nothing reached the Governor.

Whatever its other virtues, the expansion is an expensive way to reduce greenhouse gas emissions. (Sound Transit estimates that most of the riders will be people who would have been riding buses otherwise, rather than people shifting to light rail from cars.) The Washington Policy Center pointed out that Sound Transit’s estimates for the planned extension from Northgate to Lynwood imply a cost of $612/metric ton of anticipated reductions, without considering emissions from construction or operating costs. (They did not take account of the value of the other benefits that the expansion will produce, like savings in commuter time; those might be what the money’s paying for, and the CO2 reductions might just be icing on the cake.) KUOW reported the additional emissions from construction steel and concrete.

SB5037

SB5037 – Would require Sound Transit to get additional voter approval if the cost to complete the expansion plan approved in 2016 increases beyond $54 Billion; if any projects are added or subtracted; or if there are any significant changes in the scope of the project from the approved plan.
Prime Sponsor – Senator O’Ban (R, 24th District, Southern Pierce County)
Current status – Referred to Transportation Committee. Still in committee by 2019 cutoff; reintroduced and retained in present status for 2020 session.
Next step would be – Scheduling a hearing.
Legislative tracking page for the bill.

Comments:
This would make additional votes very likely. Here’s the results of the 2016 vote, compared with the boundaries of Senator O’Ban’s district. (The green areas at the bottom of the voting results map are the military bases in the southwest area of the district.)

Details:
Requires an independent audit when 80% of the voted funding has been used, and another vote if the audit concludes the original plan cannot be completed with the remaining original funding, as well as a vote for additions or deletions of projects, or for “significant” changes in scope.