Author Archives: Thad Curtz

SB5431

SB5431 – Requiring and funding purchases of zero-emission school buses after September 2035.
Prime Sponsor – Senator Shewmake (D; 42nd District; Bellingham)
Current status – Had a hearing in the Senate Committee on Early Learning & K-12 Education February 1st.
Next step would be – Action by the committee.
Legislative tracking page for the bill.
HB1368 is a companion bill in the House.

Summary –
The bill would require purchasing zero-emission school buses after September 1, 2035. It would create a grant program using any specifically appropriated funding to support school districts, charter schools, and state-tribal education compact schools purchasing them, and to support purchasing and installing charging stations and associated infrastructure and equipment. To be eligible for grants, buses powered by fossil fuels would have be at the end of their depreciation schedule and eligible for replacement under the current state law about reimbursing districts for the cost of student transportation vehicles. Grants for buses would not be allowed to exceed the purchase price minus any salvage value of the bus being replaced.

There would be a competitive application process, prioritizing grants that provided the greatest reduction in greenhouse gas emissions for the amount of state support, and considering expected improvements in health equity for communities of color and low-income communities; and the age of applicants’ fleets. OSPI would also be allowed to consider other factors such as air quality improvements in areas with high traffic congestion. (At the time of an award, a grantee would have to have enough charging infrastructure in place to operate the replacement bus; or have secured enough funding in addition to the grant to purchase and install that.) OSPI would also publish an annual list of Federal grant opportunities pertinent to replacing nonzero emission school buses.

HB1390

HB1390 – Decarbonization planning for state-owned district energy systems.
Prime Sponsor – Representative Ramel (D; 40th District; Anacortes and San Juans) (Co-Sponsors Berry, Duerr, Doglio, and Pollet – Ds)
Current status – Had a hearing in the Senate Committee on Environment, Energy and Technology March 22nd and 24th. Amended to direct the owner of a covered district heating system to consult with the gas utility as well as the electric utility while developing a decarbonization plan, and passed out of committee March 28th. Had a hearing in Ways and Means March 30th. Passed out of committee April 4th and referred to Rules. Passed by the Senate April 12th. House concurred in Senate’s amendments.
Next step would be – To the Governor.
Legislative tracking page for the bill.

In the House – Passed
Had a hearing in the House Committee on Environment and Energy January 24th. Replaced with a substitute by the prime sponsor and passed out of committee February 9th. Referred to the Committee on the Capital Budget and had a hearing there February 20th. Amended to have more State systems and purely private systems comply with CETA by developing these plans. Passed out of committee February 22nd, referred to Rules, and passed by the House March 2nd.

Substitute –
The changes made by the substitute are summarized by staff at the beginning of it.

Summary –
The bill would require collections of five or more buildings with more than 100,000 square feet of conditioned space that are owned by the state and served by district heating or cooling systems to develop a decarbonization plan. These would have to include ways to replace fossil fuels in heating plants; evaluating options for partnering with nearby sources and uses of waste heat and cooling; examining opportunities to add buildings or other facilities to the system once it is decarbonized, a strategy to incentivize growth of a decarbonized system, and requirements for facilities joining the system; and evaluating the potential for reducing energy use through conservation. The bill would encourage including consideration of distribution network upgrades; on-site energy storage; space cooling for residential facilities; labor and workforce issues, including utilization of state registered apprentices; options for public-private partnerships; and the incorporation of industrial symbiosis projects or networks. The local utility would have to be consulted in the development of the plan; they’d be due to Commerce by June 30th, 2025.

The bill would exempt the buildings served by one of these systems from making any capital investments that might be required to meet the State’s Clean Buildings Act’s energy performance requirements if the owner was implementing or had fully implemented a decarbonization plan, and met the Act’s benchmarking, energy management, and operations and maintenance planning requirements. (The bill also says owners may not be required to make capital investments if they submit a request to Commerce once during every five-year compliance cycle as part of documentation required by the Act, and Commerce approves the request; it doesn’t seem to specify any criteria for granting or denying these requests.) Commerce would also guarantee that these systems would be considered to qualify with any requirements for implementing energy efficiency measures identified by an energy audit if an audit had demonstrated that the energy savings from measures to increase the efficiency of the district heating system would be greater than the savings from measures to increase the buildings’ efficiency, and the owner implemented the measures for the system.

HB1372

HB1372 – Creates a study of cost and emissions tradeoffs in electrifying state vehicles. (Dead.)
Prime Sponsor – Representative Dye (R; 9th District; SE Washington) (Co-Sponsor Ybarra – R)
Current status – Referred to the House Committee on State Government & Tribal Relations. Still in committee by cutoff.
Next step would be – Dead bill.
Legislative tracking page for the bill.

Summary –
The bill would require the Department of Enterprise Services to publish an analysis of the cost asnd life-cycle greenhouse gas emission tradeoffs associated with state vehicle fleet purchases of electric vehicles every two years, beginning in 2024. It would include the purchase price of each type of electric vehicle added to fleet during the preceding two years, as compared to comparably sized internal combustion vehicles in the fleet; the average maintenance and fueling costs per mile for each type of vehicle; the purchase date and total number of miles driven for each type of vehicle and each vehicle during the period; an estimate of “the direct and indirect” greenhouse gas emissions associated with the use of each type of vehicle during the periods, considering at least the number of miles they were driven during the period, the direct emissions from fuel use, the life cycle emissions of the embodied carbon in the vehicle’s components, and reasonable estimates of the vehicle’s useful life.

To help track whether the total cost to operate the fleet is declining or increasing as a result of electrification, the study’s to include a best estimate of the State’s cost for owning and operating the fleet for each of the preceding two years, including the total cost for the ownership and operation of all the vehicles, and specific ownership and operation totals for vehicles in the fleet that are fully electric, have internal combustion engines, or use another fuel.

HB1368

HB1368 – Requiring and funding purchases of zero-emission school buses after September 2035.
Prime Sponsor – Representative Senn (D; 41st District; Mercer Island) (Co-Sponsors Fey, Berry, Doglio, Peterson, Chapman, Fosse, Slatter, Gregerson, Callan, Lekanoff, Ramel, Stonier, Street, Santos, Fitzgibbon, and Berg – Ds)
Current status – Referred to the House Committee on Education. Redirected to the House Committee on Environment & Energy; had a hearing there February 7th. Replaced by a substitute and passed out of committee February 14th. Referred to Appropriations, and died there. Reintroduced in 2024, and had another hearing in House Appropriations on January 11th. Replaced by another substitute and passed out of committee January 29th. Referred to Rules.
Next step would be – Action by the Rules Committee.
Legislative tracking page for the bill.
SB5431 is a companion bill in the Senate.

Substitutes –
The 2023 substitute changed the requirement to purchasing 70% zero-emission buses by 2030 and all zero-emission buses by 2033, as well as specifying environmental justice priorities and making some other minor changes which are summarized by staff at the beginning of it. The folder with materials for the 2024 executive session has the next substitute and there’s a staff summary of the next changes at the beginning of that.

Summary –
The bill would require purchasing zero-emission school buses after September 1, 2035. It would create a grant program using any specifically appropriated funding to support school districts, charter schools, and state-tribal education compact schools purchasing them, and to support purchasing and installing charging stations and associated infrastructure and equipment. To be eligible for grants, buses powered by fossil fuels would have be at the end of their depreciation schedule and eligible for replacement under the current state law about reimbursing districts for the cost of student transportation vehicles. Grants for buses would not be allowed to exceed the purchase price minus any salvage value of the bus being replaced.

There would be a competitive application process, prioritizing grants that provided the greatest reduction in greenhouse gas emissions for the amount of state support, and considering expected improvements in health equity for communities of color and low-income communities; and the age of applicants’ fleets. OSPI would also be allowed to consider other factors such as air quality improvements in areas with high traffic congestion. (At the time of an award, a grantee would have to have enough charging infrastructure in place to operate the replacement bus; or have secured enough funding in addition to the grant to purchase and install that.) OSPI would also publish an annual list of Federal grant opportunities pertinent to replacing nonzero emission school buses.

SJM8001

SJM8001 – Resolution supporting a national infrastructure bank.
Prime Sponsor – Senator Hasegawa (D; 11th District; Renton & Tukwila) (Co-Sponsors Kuderer, Wellman, Nguyen, Keiser, and Conway – Ds)
Current status – Had a hearing in the House Committee on Consumer Protection & Business March 17th, and passed out of committee March 22nd. Referred to Rules and passed by the House April 12th.
Next step would be – To the Governor.
Legislative tracking page for the bill.

In the Senate –
Had a hearing in the Senate Committee on Business, Financial Services, Gaming & Trade January 24th; passed out of committee January 26th. Referred to Rules, and passed by the Senate February 8th.

Summary –
The bill would send a resolution urging the passage of a bill creating a national infrastructure bank to the President, the leaders of the House and the Senate, and each member of Congress.

HB1216

HB1216 – Consolidating and streamlining the siting of clean energy projects.
Prime Sponsor – Representative Fitzgibbon (D; 34th District; NW Seattle & Vashon Island)(Co-Sponsors Doglio, Berry, Reed, Simmons, Macri, Fosse, & Pollet – Ds) (By request of the Governor.)
Current status – Had a hearing in the Senate Committee on Environment, Energy & Technology March 15th. Replaced by a striker and passed out of committee March 24th. Had a hearing in Ways and Means March 31st; amended twice and passed out of committee April 3rd. Referred to Rules. Amended on the floor to add not degrading local air quality to the requirements for qualifying an EITE project as a clean energy project, to change the emissions reductions requirement to “aligning with” the cap and invest program’s cap trajectory, and to remove the change in Ways and Means that allowed some projects to get expedited review by the Site Evaluation Council. Passed by the Senate April 8th. House concurred in Senate’s amendments.
Next step would be – To the Governor.
Legislative tracking page for the bill.
SB5380 is a companion bill in the Senate.

Changes in the Senate –
The striker makes some projects and facilities upgrades by energy-intensive trader exposed industries eligible and ineligible for treatment as clean energy projects under the bill, and makes some other changes summarized by staff at the end of it. The changes made by the first amendment in Ways and Means are summarized by staff at the end of it. The second amendment limits EITE’s clean energy projects to those that reduce emissions faster than the rate of decline of the free allowances EITEs are receiving under CETA, and specifies that various land use and permitting decisions for clean energy projects will be handled through the expedited judicial review process for energy facility site evaluation council certifications rather than going to the Pollution Control Hearings Board.

In the House – Passed
Had a hearing in the House Committee on Environment and Energy  January 19th. Replaced by a substitute, amended, and passed out of committee February 9th. Referred to Appropriations and had a hearing there on February 21st. Replaced by a second substitute, amended, and passed out of committee February 23rd. Referred to Rules. Replaced by a striker on the floor, amended, and passed by the House March 3rd.

Changes in the Senate –
The striker makes certain projects and upgrades by energy-intensive trade exposed facilities eligible and ineligible for treatment as clean energy projects under the bill’s provisions, and makes some other changes summarized by staff at the end of it.

Changes in the House –
There’s a staff summary of the changes made by the substitute on the first couple of pages of it; the amendment would require consultation with rural stakeholders and two reports on a variety of potential impacts and benefits of anticipated changes in the state’s energy system, including the siting of facilities through the Energy Facility Site Evaluation Council and recommendations on ways to “more equitably distribute costs and benefits to rural communities.” The striker merely directs counties to not prohibit the installation of evaluation equipment needed in planning wind and solar projects rather than specifying various limits on county’s requirements for permitting those, and makes other minor changes which are summarized by staff at the end of it. The floor amendment allows the projects and upgrades by energy intensive trade exposed industries included as clean energy manufacturing projects in the striker to count if they “assist” in meeting cap and invest obligations, rather then meeting them.

2nd Substitute –
The changes made by this are summarized by staff at the beginning of it, and the changes made by the amendment are summarized at the beginning of that.

Summary –
The bill would create an Interagency Clean Energy Siting Coordinating Council, co-chaired by the Departments of Commerce and Ecology, with participation by a long list of agencies. The chairs would assign staff in each agency to lead the Council’s work and provide ongoing updates to the Governor and appropriate committees of the Legislature. The Council would identify actions to improve siting and permitting of projects for wind and solar energy, transmission, green electrolytic and renewable hydrogen, alternative jet fuels, battery and pumped storage of clean energy, and the manufacturing of clean energy products. Its work would include a through review of the recommendations of the 2022 Low Carbon Energy Facility Siting Improvement Study, creating implementation plans and timelines, and making recommendations for needed funding or policy changes. The Council would also track Federal efforts to improve clean energy project siting and permitting, including potential Federal funding; identify agency actions to improve coordination across state, local, and federal processes or to pursue supportive funding; conduct outreach to parties with interests in clean energy siting and permitting for ongoing input on how to improve agency processes and actions; and establish work groups as needed to focus on specific energy types or specific geographies for project siting. It might create advisory committees to inform this work; it would support the creation and annual updating by the Governor’s Office of Indian Affairs of a list of contacts at tribes and tribal preferences regarding outreach about clean energy project siting and permitting. It would provide an annual report to the Governor and appropriate committees of the Legislature summarizing progress on efficient, effective, and responsible siting and permitting of clean energy projects; areas of additional work; resource needs; and any needed policy changes.

The Council would also advise Commerce on contracting with an independent third party to evaluate state agency siting and permitting processes and related Federal and state requirements; identify successful models for siting and permitting projects in other states; develop recommendations for improving these processes, including potential policy changes and funding; and report on the evaluation and recommendations by July 1, 2024. The Council would develop a consolidated clean energy application similar to the joint aquatic resources permit application for at least the state permits for clean energy projects, and would explore developing a consolidated permit for them. Ecology would lead these efforts, with updates on them to the Governor and Legislature due by July 1, 2024. It would engage with Federal agencies and local governments to explore including various applications or permits in consolidated versions. It would be authorized to design a single application for multiple clean energy project types, separate applications for individual clean energy technologies, or an application for related resources. A consolidated permit process would have to identify criteria or conditions that had to be met for projects to use it, and Ecology would be authorized to analyze those conditions as part of a nonproject review.

The bill would create a way for applicants to apply to Commerce for designation as a clean energy project of statewide significance, and would have Ecology implement and assist with a fully coordinated permitting process for those as an alternative to applying for expedited permitting through the State Energy Facility Site Evaluation Council. Applications for the designation would have to include an explanation of how the project is expected to contribute to the state’s achievement of its greenhouse gas emission limits, and is consistent with the State Energy Strategy. They’d also need an explanation of any contribution it’s expected to make to other state requirements for clean energy and greenhouse gas emissions; an explanation of how it’s expected to contribute to the state’s economic development goals; a plan for meaningful engagement with tribes having interests on or near the site; a description of potential community benefits and impacts from the project, a plan for meaningful community engagement in its development, and an explanation of how the applicant might use a legal document specifying the benefits the developer agrees to fund or furnish in exchange for community support of a project. Commerce would approve or deny a one-time application for a project, assessing whether it provided the explanations above, had sufficient need for coordinated state assistance, had been reviewed through a nonproject environmental review process, or a least-conflict siting process for pumped solar that the bill establishes, and was consistent with the recommendations of those; and considering its anticipated positive or adverse impacts on environmental and public health. The department would have to consider information in an application demonstrating meaningful tribal outreach and engagement “favorably” in deciding whether to approve it.

Designated clean energy project of statewide significance would be assigned a Commerce staff navigator to assist with the initial project assessment and with the coordinated permitting process, if the project proponent chose to use that. The navigator would also convene appropriate partners from state and local government, private entities, nongovernmental organizations, and others to support successful completion of the project; and work with each of those to expedite their actions in moving the project forward.

Ecology would manage the coordinated permitting process. (The proponent of a designated project who chose to use this would have to reimburse the department for the costs of supporting its permitting.) It would conduct an initial assessment of the amount of coordination each project needed, considering its complexity, size, and the experience of those involved. It would address the expected type of environmental review; the anticipated state and local permits, approvals, forms and requirements; information needs and issues of concern of each participating agency; time required for the SEPA review and permit decisions by each participating agency given the greatest possible efficiencies achievable through any concurrent studies and with any consolidated applications, hearings, and comment periods. This would have to be provided to the proponent and the public within sixty days. Ecology would also ensure the proponent had been informed of all information needed to apply for permits; facilitate communication between proponents and staff to promote timely permit decisions and adherence to agreed schedules; verify completion of administrative review and permit procedures among agencies; assist in resolving any conflict or inconsistency among permit requirements and conditions; consult with potentially affected tribes and potentially affected overburdened communities according to the bill’s requirements; and coordinate with jurisdictions to assist with fulfilling their local permitting requirements. The Department would convene a work plan meeting for the project with the other parties relevant to its permitting, reviewing permitting processes and estimating timelines, with full attention to achieving the maximum efficiencies possible. It would create and maintain a shared coordinated permitting process schedule; parties would have to notify Ecology of the reasons for any delays and offer potential solutions or an amended timeline.

The bill requires early, meaningful, and individual consultation by Ecology with any affected tribe on a variety of potential project impacts on rights or resources, independent of and in addition to, any public participation process required by state law or a state agency. The department would also be required to identify overburdened communities that might be affected by a designated project participating in the process, and to verify that they’d been meaningfully engaged in a timely manner by participating agencies, and that their comments had been considered in determining potential impacts.

Counties and cities with designated clean energy projects of statewide significance in their jurisdictions would be required to enter into an agreement with Ecology and the project proponents for expediting the completion of projects. They’d have to expedite processing of permits for the project’s design and construction; environmental review; and requests for needed street, right-of-way, or easement vacations. They’d have to make local officials or planning staff available to serve on the navigator’s team to move the project forward; develop and follow a plan for consultation with potentially affected tribes; and carry out any other actions Ecology identified as needed for the coordinated permitting process. Local governments would not be allowed to require these applicants for these electrical energy projects to demonstrate their necessity or utility, other than as part of the public information required by Federal agencies as part of some applications.

The bill would have the WSU Energy Program conduct a least-conflict pumped storage siting process for the state, including ample opportunities for self-identified stakeholders to participate, to identify areas where there’s the least amount of conflict about sites. (It might include considering the colocation of pumped storage with wind or solar energy generation.) The project would develop a public map and associated GIS data layers by June 30th, 2025, highlighting those areas; it would not include any information tribes identified as sensitive, though that would be used to inform the project.

Ecology would be required to develop nonproject environmental impact statements, in consultation with various stakeholders, on the probable significant adverse environmental impacts of green electrolytic or renewable hydrogen projects, and of solar projects in the Columbia Basin. These would include related mitigation measures. Proponents of such projects would have to incorporate these impact analyses in a coordinated project-level review process, and the lead agency conducting a project-level environmental review of one of those would have to adopt that nonproject impact statement to identify and mitigate project-level probable significant impacts, “where appropriate.” However, the agency would also have to review and update that analysis, if that were needed, and would have to address any probable significant impacts that were not analyzed in the nonproject statement and identify any avoidance, minimization, and mitigation measures specific to the project for those impacts.

SB5380

SB5380 – Consolidating and streamlining the siting of clean energy projects.
Prime Sponsor – Senator Nguyen (D; 34th District; White Center)
Current status – Had a hearing in the Senate Committee on Environment, Energy & Technology  January 24th. Replaced by a substitute and passed out of committee February 10th. Referred to Ways and Means.
Next step would be – Scheduling a hearing.
Legislative tracking page for the bill.
HB1216 is a companion bill in the House.

Substitute –
There’s a three page staff summary of the substitute’s changes at the beginning of it.

Summary –
The bill would create an Interagency Clean Energy Siting Coordinating Council, co-chaired by the Departments of Commerce and Ecology, with participation by a long list of agencies. The chairs would assign staff in each agency to lead the Council’s work and provide ongoing updates to the Governor and appropriate committees of the Legislature. The Council would identify actions to improve siting and permitting of projects for wind and solar energy, transmission, green electrolytic and renewable hydrogen, alternative jet fuels, battery and pumped storage of clean energy, and the manufacturing of clean energy products. Its work would include a through review of the recommendations of the 2022 Low Carbon Energy Facility Siting Improvement Study, creating implementation plans and timelines, and making recommendations for needed funding or policy changes. The Council would also track Federal efforts to improve clean energy project siting and permitting, including potential Federal funding; identify agency actions to improve coordination across state, local, and federal processes or to pursue supportive funding; conduct outreach to parties with interests in clean energy siting and permitting for ongoing input on how to improve agency processes and actions; and establish work groups as needed to focus on specific energy types or specific geographies for project siting. It might create advisory committees to inform this work; it would support the creation and annual updating by the Governor’s Office of Indian Affairs of a list of contacts at tribes and tribal preferences regarding outreach about clean energy project siting and permitting. It would provide an annual report to the Governor and appropriate committees of the Legislature summarizing progress on efficient, effective, and responsible siting and permitting of clean energy projects; areas of additional work; resource needs; and any needed policy changes.

The Council would also advise Commerce on contracting with an independent third party to evaluate state agency siting and permitting processes and related Federal and state requirements; identify successful models for siting and permitting projects in other states; develop recommendations for improving these processes, including potential policy changes and funding; and report on the evaluation and recommendations by July 1, 2024. The Council would develop a consolidated clean energy application similar to the joint aquatic resources permit application for at least the state permits for clean energy projects, and would explore developing a consolidated permit for them. Ecology would lead these efforts, with updates on them to the Governor and Legislature due by July 1, 2024. It would engage with Federal agencies and local governments to explore including various applications or permits in consolidated versions. It would be authorized to design a single application for multiple clean energy project types, separate applications for individual clean energy technologies, or an application for related resources. A consolidated permit process would have to identify criteria or conditions that had to be met for projects to use it, and Ecology would be authorized to analyze those conditions as part of a nonproject review.

The bill would create a way for applicants to apply to Commerce for designation as a clean energy project of statewide significance, and would have Ecology implement and assist with a fully coordinated permitting process for those as an alternative to applying for expedited permitting through the State Energy Facility Site Evaluation Council. Applications for the designation would have to include an explanation of how the project is expected to contribute to the state’s achievement of its greenhouse gas emission limits, and is consistent with the State Energy Strategy. They’d also need an explanation of any contribution it’s expected to make to other state requirements for clean energy and greenhouse gas emissions; an explanation of how it’s expected to contribute to the state’s economic development goals; a plan for meaningful engagement with tribes having interests on or near the site; a description of potential community benefits and impacts from the project, a plan for meaningful community engagement in its development, and an explanation of how the applicant might use a legal document specifying the benefits the developer agrees to fund or furnish in exchange for community support of a project. Commerce would approve or deny a one-time application for a project, assessing whether it provided the explanations above, had sufficient need for coordinated state assistance, had been reviewed through a nonproject environmental review process, or a least-conflict siting process for pumped solar that the bill establishes, and was consistent with the recommendations of those; and considering its anticipated positive or adverse impacts on environmental and public health. The department would have to consider information in an application demonstrating meaningful tribal outreach and engagement “favorably” in deciding whether to approve it.

Designated clean energy project of statewide significance would be assigned a Commerce staff navigator to assist with the initial project assessment and with the coordinated permitting process, if the project proponent chose to use that. The navigator would also convene appropriate partners from state and local government, private entities, nongovernmental organizations, and others to support successful completion of the project; and work with each of those to expedite their actions in moving the project forward.

Ecology would manage the coordinated permitting process. (The proponent of a designated project who chose to use this would have to reimburse the department for the costs of supporting its permitting.) It would conduct an initial assessment of the amount of coordination each project needed, considering its complexity, size, and the experience of those involved. It would address the expected type of environmental review; the anticipated state and local permits, approvals, forms and requirements; information needs and issues of concern of each participating agency; time required for the SEPA review and permit decisions by each participating agency given the greatest possible efficiencies achievable through any concurrent studies and with any consolidated applications, hearings, and comment periods. This would have to be provided to the proponent and the public within sixty days. Ecology would also ensure the proponent had been informed of all information needed to apply for permits; facilitate communication between proponents and staff to promote timely permit decisions and adherence to agreed schedules; verify completion of administrative review and permit procedures among agencies; assist in resolving any conflict or inconsistency among permit requirements and conditions; consult with potentially affected tribes and potentially affected overburdened communities according to the bill’s requirements; and coordinate with jurisdictions to assist with fulfilling their local permitting requirements. The Department would convene a work plan meeting for the project with the other parties relevant to its permitting, reviewing permitting processes and estimating timelines, with full attention to achieving the maximum efficiencies possible. It would create and maintain a shared coordinated permitting process schedule; parties would have to notify Ecology of the reasons for any delays and offer potential solutions or an amended timeline.

The bill requires early, meaningful, and individual consultation by Ecology with any affected tribe on a variety of potential project impacts on rights or resources, independent of and in addition to, any public participation process required by state law or a state agency. The department would also be required to identify overburdened communities that might be affected by a designated project participating in the process, and to verify that they’d been meaningfully engaged in a timely manner by participating agencies, and that their comments had been considered in determining potential impacts.

Counties and cities with designated clean energy projects of statewide significance in their jurisdictions would be required to enter into an agreement with Ecology and the project proponents for expediting the completion of projects. They’d have to expedite processing of permits for the project’s design and construction; environmental review; and requests for needed street, right-of-way, or easement vacations. They’d have to make local officials or planning staff available to serve on the navigator’s team to move the project forward; develop and follow a plan for consultation with potentially affected tribes; and carry out any other actions Ecology identified as needed for the coordinated permitting process. Local governments would not be allowed to require these applicants for these electrical energy projects to demonstrate their necessity or utility, other than as part of the public information required by Federal agencies as part of some applications.

The bill would have the WSU Energy Program conduct a least-conflict pumped storage siting process for the state, including ample opportunities for self-identified stakeholders to participate, to identify areas where there’s the least amount of conflict about sites. (It might include considering the colocation of pumped storage with wind or solar energy generation.) The project would develop a public map and associated GIS data layers by June 30th, 2025, highlighting those areas; it would not include any information tribes identified as sensitive, though that would be used to inform the project.

Ecology would be required to develop nonproject environmental impact statements, in consultation with various stakeholders, on the probable significant adverse environmental impacts of green electrolytic or renewable hydrogen projects, and of solar projects in the Columbia Basin. These would include related mitigation measures. Proponents of such projects would have to incorporate these impact analyses in a coordinated project-level review process, and the lead agency conducting a project-level environmental review of one of those would have to adopt that nonproject impact statement to identify and mitigate project-level probable significant impacts, “where appropriate.” However, the agency would also have to review and update that analysis, if that were needed, and would have to address any probable significant impacts that were not analyzed in the nonproject statement and identify any avoidance, minimization, and mitigation measures specific to the project for those impacts.

SB5391

SB5391 – Requiring environmental reporting on materials for public construction. (Dead.)
Prime Sponsor – Senator Van De Wege (D; 24th District; Sequim) (Co-Sponsors Schoesler – R, Mullet- D)
Current status – Had a hearing in the Senate Committee on Environment, Energy & Technology January 27th. Still in committee by cutoff.
Next step would be – Dead bill.
Legislative tracking page for the bill.
HB1342 is a companion bill in the House.

Comments –
Compare HB1282 and its companion bill…

Summary –
The bill would create requirements for the modeling, measurement, and reporting of embodied carbon emission reductions from structural concrete, reinforcing and structural steel, and engineered wood in state-funded projects, including municipal projects and Department of Transportation contracts. (Buildings under 50,000 sq. ft. wouldn’t be included. )

Designers would have to do life-cycle assessments over 60 years of the embodied carbon in materials they decided were eligible for a project, after considering its requirements, including “project program, financial budget, construction schedule, product availability, and overall constructability.”

Beginning in 2025, the successful bidder for a project would have to submit environmental project declarations for at least 90% of the covered structural materials by weight or volume to the contractor at least a month before the substantial completion of the project. The contractor would be required to forward those to the authority that had awarded the contract and the Department of Commerce. After January 1st, 2027 the process would include submitting these to the contractor when the bid was submitted, and updating the information about the declarations and the actual quantities used before substantial completion.

The project designer or its life-cycle assessment consultant would be required to calculate a baseline estimate of the industry average for embodied carbon emissions in the project’s eligible products, using the emissions intensity factors in the most recently published environmental product declarations, and to include those in the construction specifications used for bidding those eligible products. (If there weren’t published regional or national industry-average environmental declarations for a product, they’d need to use verifiable data from a life-cycle analysis practitioner to estimate the baseline.) When the project was completed, they’d do an estimate of the embodied carbon in the actual products and quantities used in it, and then calculate and report an embodied carbon reduction percentage comparing the actual embodied carbon to what it would have been if industry average materials had been used. They’d also estimate and report the carbon intensity of the project, as a ratio of the kilograms of CO2 equivalents in the covered structural materials to the area of the project in square meters.

Commerce would have to create a new public database to inform project stakeholders of the achievable reductions in embodied carbon for specific markets, products and structural systems, and to inform future reduction targets and stretch goals. The database would include names and types of project, the awarding authority; project dates and zip codes, the type of eligible products in the project; the primary eligible products and primary types of structural systems actually used; a summary of the life-cycle assessment of the structural systems with the range of possible outcomes disclosed; the gross project area, excluding the site outside a building’s footprint; the project’s embodied carbon emissions as calculated with estimated quantities prior to bidding, and the estimate of those with with actual quantities at substantial completion; its estimated embodied carbon intensity prior to bidding; its as-built embodied carbon emissions, embodied carbon reduction percentage; and embodied carbon intensity; and a few other details.

The bill would also require the Department of Commerce to reimburse Washington manufacturers for half the costs of producing environmental product declarations, with limits of $15,000 per manufacturing location or batch plant and $45,000 for each manufacturer and associated companies. (They’d have to be product-specific, third-party reviewed, and completed by the end of 2025 to qualify.)

SB5390

SB5390 – Authorizing safe harbor agreements about northern spotted owl habitat with forest owners.
Prime Sponsor – Senator Shewmake (D; 42nd District; Bellingham) (Co-Sponsors Warnick – R; Rolfes and Stanford – Ds)
Current status – Had a hearing in the House Committee on Agriculture and Natural Resources March 21st and passed out of committee March 22nd. Had a hearing in Appropriations March 31st, and passed out of committee March 3rd. Referred to Rules, and passed by the Senate April 6th.
Next step would be – To the Governor.
Legislative tracking page for the bill.

In the Senate –
Had a hearing in the Senate Committee on Agriculture, Water, Natural Resources & Parks  January 26th. Passed out of committee February 2nd, referred to Ways and Means, and had a hearing there on February 14th. Passed out of committee February 24th and referred to Rules; passed by the Senate unanimously March 6th.

Summary –
The Endangered Species Act allows property owners to voluntarily enter into a safe harbor agreement, in which they undertake activities to enhance, restore, or maintain habitat benefiting listed species and regulators agree not to impose any additional restrictions based on the Act on their land without their consent. (I’m not sure whether landowners are safe from any further ESA restrictions on the use of the land, or only from those that might otherwise result from changes in it because of the steps they’ve chosen to take..)

The bill would authorize the Department of Ecology to utilize the delegated Federal authority that’s available to enter into and administer these agreements about northern spotted owls. Ecology would get technical assistance from Fish and Wildlife in habitat assessments of candidate parcels and implementation of a programmatic safe harbor agreement. It would be able to provide landowners with technical assistance about the program. (Its decisions administering  the program would be subject to review through the process in the Forest Practices Act.)

HB1342

HB1342 – Requiring environmental reporting on materials for public construction. (Dead.)
Prime Sponsor – Representative Steele (R; 12th District; Chelan) (Co-Sponsors Stokesbary – R; Leavitt & Lekanoff – Ds)
Current status – Had a hearing in the House Committee on the Capital Budget February 2nd. Still in committee by cutoff.
Next step would be – Dead bill.
Legislative tracking page for the bill.
SB 5391 is a companion bill in the Senate.

Comments –
Compare HB1282 and its companion bill…

Summary –
The bill would create requirements for the modeling, measurement, and reporting of embodied carbon emission reductions from structural concrete, reinforcing and structural steel, and engineered wood in state-funded projects, including municipal projects and Department of Transportation contracts. (Buildings under 50,000 sq. ft. wouldn’t be included. )

Designers would have to do life-cycle assessments over 60 years of the embodied carbon in materials they decided were eligible for a project, after considering its requirements, including “project program, financial budget, construction schedule, product availability, and overall constructability.”

Beginning in 2025, the successful bidder for a project would have to submit environmental project declarations for at least 90% of the covered structural materials by weight or volume to the contractor at least a month before the substantial completion of the project. The contractor would be required to forward those to the authority that had awarded the contract and the Department of Commerce. After January 1st, 2027 the process would include submitting these to the contractor when the bid was submitted, and updating the information about the declarations and the actual quantities used before substantial completion.

The project designer or its life-cycle assessment consultant would be required to calculate a baseline estimate of the industry average for embodied carbon emissions in the project’s eligible products, using the emissions intensity factors in the most recently published environmental product declarations, and to include those in the construction specifications used for bidding those eligible products. (If there weren’t published regional or national industry-average environmental declarations for a product, they’d need to use verifiable data from a life-cycle analysis practitioner to estimate the baseline.) When the project was completed, they’d do an estimate of the embodied carbon in the actual products and quantities used in it, and then calculate and report an embodied carbon reduction percentage comparing the actual embodied carbon to what it would have been if industry average materials had been used. They’d also estimate and report the carbon intensity of the project, as a ratio of the kilograms of CO2 equivalents in the covered structural materials to the area of the project in square meters.

Commerce would have to create a new public database to inform project stakeholders of the achievable reductions in embodied carbon for specific markets, products and structural systems, and to inform future reduction targets and stretch goals. The database would include names and types of project, the awarding authority; project dates and zip codes, the type of eligible products in the project; the primary eligible products and primary types of structural systems actually used; a summary of the life-cycle assessment of the structural systems with the range of possible outcomes disclosed; the gross project area, excluding the site outside a building’s footprint; the project’s embodied carbon emissions as calculated with estimated quantities prior to bidding, and the estimate of those with with actual quantities at substantial completion; its estimated embodied carbon intensity prior to bidding; its as-built embodied carbon emissions, embodied carbon reduction percentage; and embodied carbon intensity; and a few other details.

The bill would also require the Department of Commerce to reimburse Washington manufacturers for half the costs of producing environmental product declarations, with limits of $15,000 per manufacturing location or batch plant and $45,000 for each manufacturer and associated companies. (They’d have to be product-specific, third-party reviewed, and completed by the end of 2025 to qualify.)

HB1283

HB1283 –Requiring some ESG reporting and increased ESG investment options in the State’s retirement system.
Prime Sponsor – Representative Duerr (D; 11th District; Bothell) (Co-Sponsor Berry, Ramel, Macri, Doglio, Reed, and Pollet- Ds)
Current status – Referred to the House Appropriations Committee in 2023. Died in committee; reintroduced there in 2024.
Next step would be – Scheduling a hearing.
Legislative tracking page for the bill.

Summary –
The bill would require the State’s Investment Board to report on the climate-related financial risk, the social responsibility, and the establishment and use of proxy voting and corporate governance policies in its private and public portfolios by January 1st 2024, and every three years after that. By 2024, it would have to provide at least three investment options consistent with its environmental, social, and governance policies for individuals participating in self-directed funds. (The options would reflect a range of policy preferences and investment objectives consistent with those ESG concerns to the extent that was consistent with the Board’s fiduciary responsibilities.)

SB5345

SB5345 – Exempting school districts from the Clean Buildings Act’s energy performance standards. (Dead.)
Prime Sponsor – Senator Schoesler (R; 9th District; SE Washington) (Co-Sponsors Padden, Dozier, Fortunato, Short, Braun, Wagoner, Warnick, Torres, and Lynda Wilson – Rs)
Current status – Referred to the Senate Committee on Environment, Energy & Technology. Still in committee by cutoff.
Next step would be – Dead bill.
Legislative tracking page for the bill.

Summary –
The bill would exempt public school buildings from the energy performance requirements of the State’s Clean Buildings Act if:
1) They were in a district in which half or more of enrolled children had qualified for free or reduced-price lunch in any of the previous five years, or,
2) The district had a state funding assistance percentage of 50 percent or more in any of the previous five years, or,
3) The district “uses or purchases electricity generated from renewable resources or nonemitting electric generation electricity.”

Since I think every district in the state uses or purchases at least some electricity generated by hydropower or other nonemitting resources, the current bill would apparently exempt all public school buildings from the requirements.

SB5325

SB5325 – Improving access to renewable hydrogen for public transportation. (Dead.)
Prime Sponsor – Senator Shewmake (D; 42nd District; Bellingham) (Co-Sponsors Boehnke – R: Keiser, Lovelett, Randall, & Claire Wilson – Ds)
Current status – Had a hearing in the Senate Committee on Environment, Energy & Technology January 18th. Still in committee by cutoff.
Next step would be – Dead bill.
Legislative tracking page for the bill.
HB1236 is a companion bill in the House..

Summary –
The bill would authorize public transportation benefit areas to produce, distribute and sell green electrolytic hydrogen and renewable hydrogen wholesale or directly to a user in addition to using it for their own operations. If it were for use as a transportation fuel, they’d be allowed to sell it through facilities that distributed, compressed, stored, liquified, or dispensed it. They’d be authorized to own and operate pipelines to deliver it for use as a transportation fuel if those were in an area in which they were authorized to provide public transportation, a county in which they were authorized to do that and in which they were service connected or providing it through partners. (I’m not sure if the bill’s language intends to limit all their authority to hydrogen for transportation, but I don’t think it’s supposed to authorize them to produce and sell it for other uses through some other organization that distributes it.) They wouldn’t be allowed to deliver it by pipeline to customers of a gas company.

SB5322

SB5322 – Requiring environmental and labor reporting on materials for public building construction and renovation.
Prime Sponsor – Senator Wellman (D; 41st District; Mercer Island) (Co-Sponsors Hasegawa, Keiser, Valdez, Claire Wilson – Ds)
(By request of the Department of Commerce.)
Current status – Had a hearing in the Senate Committee on State Government & Elections January 27th, and passed out of committee that day. Had a hearing in the Senate Committee on Environment, Energy & Technology January 31st. Replaced by a substitute making some minor changes and passed out of committee February 10th. Referred to Ways & Means, and had a hearing there on February 22nd.
Next step would be – Action by the committee.
Legislative tracking page for the bill.
HB1282 is a companion bill in the House.

Comments –
This is a somewhat revised version of Senator Stanford’s SB5366, which was introduced in 2021 and then in 2022 as a companion bill to Representative Duerr’s bills in those sessions, but wasn’t heard.

Substitute –
There’s a staff summary of the minor changes in the substitute at the beginning of it.

Summary –
The bill would require public institutions of higher educations’ and state agencies’ contracts for construction and renovation projects to require reports of environmental information by cost of certain construction materials for buildings over 50,000 sq.ft., and additional information about labor standards in producing the materials for buildings over 100,000 sq ft. It would cover structural concrete, reinforcing and structural steel, and engineered wood products; they’d be due before substantial completion of a project. Firms that were selected for projects would have to provide data on quantities of covered products, current environmental product declarations for at least 90% of the value of those; any completed health product declarations; manufacturers’ names and locations; any supplier codes of conduct, and any certifications of firms by the Office of Minority and Women-Owned Business Enterprises. They’d have to ask their suppliers of each covered product in the larger projects for the names and locations of the actual production facilities and a specified report on working conditions for all employees at those, or the steps taken to reasonably obtain that data. (However, they wouldn’t be required to verify any information provided by suppliers, and they’d be exempted from requesting information about working conditions that would cause a significant delay in completion, a significant increase in overall project cost, or result in only one supplier being able to provide the product.)

By July 1, 2024, specifications for a project contract would only be allowed to include performance-based specifications for structural concrete unless that wasn’t practicable. The bill would continue the public database of provided data that was funded in the 2021-2023 budget, and publish the global warming potentials reported in the environmental product declarations. Commerce would have to further elaborate covered product definitions; develop measurement and reporting standards to ensure that data was consistent and comparable; as well as creating model language for specifications, bid documents, and contracts to support the implementation of the reporting requirements. The department would also produce an educational brief providing an overview of embodied carbon; describing the appropriate use of environmental product declarations, including the preconditions needed for them to be comparable; outlining reporting standards, including covered product definitions, standards for reporting quantities, and working conditions; describing the data collection and reporting required by the bill; providing instructions for the use of the database; and listing applicable product category rules for covered products.

If funds were appropriated for it, the Department of Commerce would be authorized to provide financial assistance to small businesses to help offset the costs of producing environmental product declarations and reducing embodied carbon in the built environment, while ensuring they weren’t put at a competitive disadvantage in state contracting as a result of the bill’s requirements.

It would require Commerce to convene a Buy Clean and Buy Fair workgroup with representatives from a specified list of stakeholders to identify opportunities for and barriers to growing the use and production of low carbon materials, promoting high labor standards in manufacturing, and preserving and expanding low carbon materials manufacturing in the state. The group would consider state and domestic supply of raw materials and other supply chain challenges, regulatory barriers, competitiveness of local and domestic manufacturers, costs, and data availability from local, state, national, and foreign product suppliers. It would identify opportunities to encourage the continued conversion to lower carbon cements. By September 2025, it would submit a report on policy recommendations to the Legislature and the Governor. The report would summarize data collected through the bill and other previous projects, make recommendations for improving environmental production declaration data quality and for ways of mitigating Scope 2 emissions through green power purchases, identify barriers and opportunities to the effective use of the database and collected data, and survey the regulatory landscape to identify areas of alignment and discrepancy between local, state, federal, and private policy on embodied carbon and identify opportunities to promote consistency across policies, rules, and regulations.

HB1282

HB1282 – Requiring environmental and labor reporting on materials for public building construction and renovation.
Prime Sponsor – Representative Duerr (D; 11th District; Bothell) (Co-Sponsor Hackney – D)
(By request of the Department of Commerce.)
Current status – Had a hearing in the Senate Committee on Environment, Energy & Technology March 15th, replaced by a striker and passed out of committee March 21st. Had a hearing in Ways and Means March 28th.
Next step would be – Action by the committee.
Legislative tracking page for the bill.
SB5322 is a companion bill in the Senate.

Comments –
This is a somewhat revised version of Representative Duerr’s HB1103, which was introduced in 2021, and then reintroduced in Appropriations in 2022.
See also HB1342 in this session.

Changes in the Senate –
The striker changed the number of labor representatives in the work group from one to three and made a number of other minor changes that are summarized by staff at the end of it.

In the House – Passed
Had a hearing in the House Committee on Capital Budget February 2nd; replaced by a  substitute making some small changes which are summarized by staff at the beginning of it, and passed out of committee February 16th. Referred to Rules; replaced by a striker on the floor that removed the requirement for reporting wood sourcing information and made some other small changes that are summarized by staff at the end of that; and passed by the House March 8th.

Summary –
The bill would require public institutions of higher educations’ and state agencies’ contracts for construction and renovation projects to require reports of environmental information by cost of certain construction materials for buildings over 50,000 sq.ft., and additional information about labor standards in producing the materials for buildings over 100,000 sq ft. It would cover structural concrete, reinforcing and structural steel, and engineered wood products; they’d be due before substantial completion of a project. Firms that were selected for projects would have to provide data on quantities of covered products, current environmental product declarations for at least 90% of the value of those; any completed health product declarations; manufacturers’ names and locations; any supplier codes of conduct, and any certifications of firms by the Office of Minority and Women-Owned Business Enterprises. They’d have to ask their suppliers of each covered product in the larger projects for the names and locations of the actual production facilities and a specified report on working conditions for all employees at those, or the steps taken to reasonably obtain that data. (However, they wouldn’t be required to verify any information provided by suppliers, and they’d be exempted from requesting information about working conditions that would cause a significant delay in completion, a significant increase in overall project cost, or result in only one supplier being able to provide the product.)

By July 1, 2024, specifications for a project contract would only be allowed to include performance-based specifications for structural concrete unless that wasn’t practicable. The bill would continue the public database of provided data that was funded in the 2021-2023 budget, and publish the global warming potentials reported in the environmental product declarations. Commerce would have to further elaborate covered product definitions; develop measurement and reporting standards to ensure that data was consistent and comparable; as well as creating model language for specifications, bid documents, and contracts to support the implementation of the reporting requirements. The department would also produce an educational brief providing an overview of embodied carbon; describing the appropriate use of environmental product declarations, including the preconditions needed for them to be comparable; outlining reporting standards, including covered product definitions, standards for reporting quantities, and working conditions; describing the data collection and reporting required by the bill; providing instructions for the use of the database; and listing applicable product category rules for covered products.

If funds were appropriated for it, the Department of Commerce would be authorized to provide financial assistance to small businesses to help offset the costs of producing environmental product declarations and reducing embodied carbon in the built environment, while ensuring they weren’t put at a competitive disadvantage in state contracting as a result of the bill’s requirements.

It would require Commerce to convene a Buy Clean and Buy Fair workgroup with representatives from a specified list of stakeholders to identify opportunities for and barriers to growing the use and production of low carbon materials, promoting high labor standards in manufacturing, and preserving and expanding low carbon materials manufacturing in the state. The group would consider state and domestic supply of raw materials and other supply chain challenges, regulatory barriers, competitiveness of local and domestic manufacturers, costs, and data availability from local, state, national, and foreign product suppliers. It would identify opportunities to encourage the continued conversion to lower carbon cements. By September 2025, it would submit a report on policy recommendations to the Legislature and the Governor. The report would summarize data collected through the bill and other previous projects, make recommendations for improving environmental production declaration data quality and for ways of mitigating Scope 2 emissions through green power purchases, identify barriers and opportunities to the effective use of the database and collected data, and survey the regulatory landscape to identify areas of alignment and discrepancy between local, state, federal, and private policy on embodied carbon and identify opportunities to promote consistency across policies, rules, and regulations.

SB5314

SB5314– Allowing E-bikes on certain trails and closed roads where other bicycles are allowed. (Dead.)
Prime Sponsor – Senator Jeff Wilson (R; 19th District; Longview) (Co-Sponsor Cleveland – D)
Current status – Had a hearing in the Senate Transportation Committee January 23rd. Still in committee by cutoff.
Next step would be – Dead bill.
Legislative tracking page for the bill.

Comments –
Senator Cleveland sponsored SB5452, a similar bill on this issue, in 2021; it was converted to a study and passed.

Summary –
The bill would require state agencies and local jurisdictions to allow all classes of electric-assisted bikes on trails that are designated as nonmotorized, have a surface made by clearing and grading the soil with no added materials, and are open to bicycles. It would now authorize closing the trail to all bicycles thorough a public process to protect wildlife or natural resources or to preserve public safety. An agency with jurisdiction over a road that’s closed to motorized vehicles but allows bicycles would have to allow E-bikes as well. E-bikes on these trails and roads. People riding an E-bike on these trails or closed roads would have to obey all speed limits, yield the right-of-way to pedestrians, and carry an electric-assisted bicycle pass.

These would cost $5 and be valid for a year. They’d be available from the Department of Licensing, or from vendors under contract with Fish and Wildlife, Natural Resources, or the Parks and Recreation Commission. There would be a $99 penalty for failing to have a valid license, though it would be reduced to $59 if someone provided proof of purchase of a pass to the court within 15 days after the imposition of the fine. 75% of the money from fines and from the sale of passes would go into a new electric-assisted bicycle account, and be divided equally among those agencies. It could only be spent on maintaining those roads and trails, on signs about speed limits and other rules for E-bikes on them, and
on educational materials about using E-bikes on them.

SB5312

SB5312 – Creates a residential property assessed clean energy and resiliency (R-PACER) program. (Dead.)
Prime Sponsor – Senator Lovelett (D; 40th District; Anacortes) (Co-Sponsor Jeff Wilson – R)
Current status – Had a hearing in the Senate Committee on Local Government, Land Use & Tribal Affairs January 31st. Still in committee by cutoff.
Next step would be – Dead bill.
Legislative tracking page for the bill.

Summary –
The bill would create a residential property assessed clean energy and resiliency program (an R-PACER program) that jurisdictions could choose to implement. These would allow loans for improvements to be repaid through a lien on the property assigned to a capital provider; the obligation to repay the debt would remain with the property if ownership was transferred. They’d be available to owners of single-family residences, and multifamily residential properties with four or fewer dwelling units, for improvements including energy efficiency, water conservation, clean and renewable energy, and resiliency projects. (The state has already established a C-PACER program for commercial property.)

Counties could choose to participate in a statewide program that the Department of Commerce would establish, or create their own programs. Programs might make any services the program may chose to offer to property owners, such as estimating energy savings, overseeing project development, or evaluating alternative equipment installations, priced separately and open to purchase by the property owner from qualified third-party providers; make properties participating available for offers of impartial terms from qualifying third-party capital providers; allow financial underwriting and evaluation to be performed by capital providers; and work in a collaborative process with capital providers and other stakeholders to develop the program.

Programs would be required to set uniform criteria for determining whether projects qualified for the loans, including determining if investments would reduce greenhouse gas emissions; reduce energy demand or replace nonrenewable energy with renewable energy; be appropriate to meet seismic risks; reduce stormwater or pollution to provide significant public benefit; or reduce the risk of wildfire, flooding, or other disasters. There are detailed requirements for creating guidebooks about programs. Loans could cover fees and interest as well as the costs of material and labor. Commerce would be authorized to provide grants to counties to assist in developing and implementing programs.

Applicants would have to demonstrate that a project would provide a public benefit in the form of energy or water resource conservation, reduced public health risk, or reduced public emergency response risk. If energy or water usage improvements were proposed for existing buildings, a licensed professional engineer, registered architect, or other professional would have to certify that the proposed improvements would result in more efficient use or conservation of energy or water, the reduction of greenhouse gas emissions, the addition of renewable sources of energy or water; or result in improved resilience. For new construction, a professional would have to certify that the proposed improvements would enable the project to exceed the energy efficiency, water efficiency, renewable energy or renewable water, or resilience requirements of the current building code. Programs could charge an application fee to cover the costs of establishing and conducting the application review process. Applicants would have to provide written verification, as defined in the guidebook, stating that projects were properly completed and operating as intended.

The bill includes procedures counties would follow in adopting a program and in recording liens, and detailed provisions about the legal status of the liens and provisions for enforcing them without the direct involvement of the counties, designed to avoid potential conflicts with the Washington Constitution’s provisions.

SB5309

SB5309 – Eliminates the public utility tax exemption for the instate portion of interstate oil shipments.
Prime Sponsor – Senator Lovelett (D; 40th District; Anacortes) (Co-Sponsor Rolfes – D)
Current status – Had a hearing in the House Committee on Finance March 14th.
Next step would be – Action by the committee.
Legislative tracking page for the bill.

In the Senate –
Had a hearing in Ways and Means on January 24th, and passed out of committee February 16th. Referred to Rules, replaced by a striker, and passed by the Senate March 2nd.

Senate Striker –
This specified that these shipments don’t qualify for certain public utility tax deductions, provided a method for calculating the proportion of a company’s gross income from shipments that would be subject to the tax, and added some definitions and technical clarifications.

Summary –
The law currently exempts the gross income from certain interstate shipments of petroleum products and crude oil from the state public utility tax. The bill would eliminate that exemption for the in-state portion of those shipments.

SB5233

SB5223 – Creates a state run financial insurance program for owners and operators of underground petroleum storage tanks.
Prime Sponsor – Senator Wellman (D; 41st District; Mercer Island) (Co-Sponsors MacEwen – R; Lovelett, Nguyen, Salomon, Shewmake – Ds) (By request of the Pollution Liability Insurance Agency.)
Current status – Cancelled hearing in the Senate Committee on Environment, Energy & Technology at 8:00 AM on Friday February 10th.
Next step would be – Action by the committee.
Legislative tracking page for the bill.
HB1175 is a companion bill in the House.

Summary –
The bill would shift from the current State reinsurance program for underground storage tanks, which assumes part of the risk of private insurance companies’ policies, to a program the State runs itself. The Department of Ecology would manage the program, which would cover owners and operators who registered tanks with the department and complied with its eligibility requirements. The program would provide up to $2 million per release for remedial action and for compensating third parties for bodily injury and property damage while the tank was registered, and up to $1 million for remedial action on releases before registration. Compensation would be limited to $3 million a year for releases from a single tank. Ecology would give preference to covering remedial costs, and could prioritize reimbursement based on the threats posed to human health and the environment; whether the people threatened might include a vulnerable population or an overburdened community; and other factors it chose. It would collect an annual fee for the costs of administering the program, which could not exceed $25,000 per participant.

The bill would return the tax on the wholesale value of petroleum products which funds claim payments through the Pollution Liability Insurance Program Trust Account to thirty one-hundredths of one percent from its reduction to half that in 2021. (The tax isn’t collected in a quarter if that account contains more than a set minimum or maximum; the bill doubles those amounts, to keep the account between $15 million and $30 million.) If there were not enough money in that account to pay claims, they’d be prioritized for future payment in the order they were filed, except that any creating an imminent threat to health or the environment would come first.

The bill includes allowing Ecology to assess tanks to determine program or cost eligibility, recover overpayments, and investigate or clean up a release with the owner or operator’s permission. It could deal with releases from tanks that weren’t in the program if they created risks to drinking water or were necessary to protect health and the environment in marginalized, overburdened, and underserved communities; and the owner consented and agreed to repaying the costs.

HB1236

HB1236  – Improving access to renewable hydrogen for public transportation.
Prime Sponsor – Representative Hackney (D; 11th District; Renton & Tukwila) (Co-Sponsors Abbarno – R;  Senn, Reed, Doglio, Ramel, and Lekanoff – Ds)
Current status – Had a hearing in the Senate Committee on Environment, Energy and Technology March 10th and passed out of committee March 24th. Referred to Rules, and passed by the Senate April 12th.
Next step would be – To the Governor.
Legislative tracking page for the bill.
SB5325 is a companion bill in the Senate.

In the House – Passed
Had a hearing in the House Committee on Environment and Energy January 30th. Replaced by a substitute and passed out of committee February 2nd. Referred to Rules, and passed by the House February 16th.

Substitute –
The substitute extends the bill’s provisions to include other types of public transit agencies.

Summary –
The bill would authorize public transportation benefit areas to produce, distribute and sell green electrolytic hydrogen and renewable hydrogen wholesale or directly to a user in addition to using it for their own operations. If it were for use as a transportation fuel, they’d be allowed to sell it through facilities that distributed, compressed, stored, liquified, or dispensed it. They’d be authorized to own and operate pipelines to deliver it for use as a transportation fuel if those were in an area in which they were authorized to provide public transportation, a county in which they were authorized to do that and in which they were service connected or providing it through partners. (I’m not sure if the bill’s language intends to limit all their authority to hydrogen for transportation, but I don’t think it’s supposed to authorize them to produce and sell it for other uses through some other organization that distributes it.) They wouldn’t be allowed to deliver it by pipeline to customers of a gas company.

HB1224

HB1224 – Prohibits greenhouse gas emissions covered under the cap and invest program from being regulated through SEPA or the Shoreline Management Act. (Dead.)
Prime Sponsor – Representative McEntire (R; 19th District; Southeast Washington) (Co-Sponsors Graham, Dye and Eslick – Rs)
Current status – Referred to the House Committee on Environment and Energy. Still in committee by cutoff.
Next step would be – Dead bill.
Legislative tracking page for the bill.

Summary –
The bill would prohibit greenhouse gas emissions that would be treated as covered emissions under the cap and invest program, “including the covered emissions associated with feedstocks or material inputs used by an entity or products produced by an entity,” from being subject to evaluation under the State Environmental Policy Act, and would prohibit them from being used as the basis for the imposition of SEPA mitigation requirements or the denial of a permit through SEPA. It would also specify that submitting compliance instruments to the Department of Ecology equivalent to the covered emissions in the event that a proposed action is permitted and implemented as proposed satisfies any potential consideration of the public interest in reducing greenhouse gas emissions from the action under the Shoreline Management Act.

HB1223

HB1223 –Prohibiting a state agency or political subdivision of the state from considering the state’s greenhouse gas limits in individual project decision making or other regulatory purposes. (Dead.)
Prime Sponsor – Representative McEntire (R; 19th District; Southeast Washington) (Co-Sponsors Dye and Eslick – Rs)
Current status – Referred to the House Committee on Environment and Energy. Still in committee by cutoff.
Next step would be – Dead bill.
Legislative tracking page for the bill.

Summary –
The findings say that the bill would explicitly forbid state agencies from using the aggregate state greenhouse gas emissions reduction targets in any consideration of individual permit applications. (In fact, as I read it, it’s actually drafted in a considerably more expansive way. It amends the section of the current law establishing the limits to say:

Nothing in this section creates authority for a state agency or political subdivision of the state to rely upon or consider the limits established in [the subsection setting the limits] for purposes of individual project permit decision making or other regulatory purposes.

SB5287

SB5287 – Requiring a study of the feasibility of recycling wind turbine blades installed in the state.
Prime Sponsor – Senator Jeff Wilson (R; 19th District; Longview) (Co-Sponsor – Nguyen – D)
Current status – Had a hearing in the House Committee on Energy and Environment March 14th. Amended to specify that the report should include options for reuse, repurposing, and recycling; passed out of committee March 21st. Referred to Rules, and passed by the House April 11th. Senate concurred in House amendments.
Next step would be – To the Governor.
Legislative tracking page for the bill.

In the Senate – Passed
Had a hearing in the Senate Committee on Environment, Energy & Technology  January 20th; passed out of committee January 27th. Referred to Rules, and passed by the Senate February 27th.

Summary –
Subject to appropriations for this particular project, the bill would require the WSE Energy Program to conduct a study on the feasibility of recycling wind turbine blades installed in the state. It would include information and recommendations on:
(1) The cost, feasibility, and environmental impact of various disposal methods;
(2) The availability of recycling and processing facilities for them in Washington and other states;
(3) Potential incentives for the creation of blade recycling facilities in the state;
(4) Mechanisms for establishing recycling requirements, or recycled content standards, for blades;
(5) Considerations and options for designing a product stewardship program for them, and
(6) The feasibility of including all the blades installed, now and in the future, in a recycling program.

A report to the appropriate committees of the Legislature would be due by December 1st, 2023.

SB5269

SB5269 – Assessing opportunities for Washington to capture new and emerging industries and strengthen its manufacturing base while responding to climate change.
Prime Sponsor –  Senator Shewmake (D; 42nd District; Bellingham)
Current status – Passed by both houses. Senate concurred in House’s amendments.
Next step would be – To the Governor.
Legislative tracking page for the bill.

In the House – Passed
Had a hearing in the House Committee on Innovation, Community, Economic Development, and Veterans March 17th and passed out of committee March 24th. Had a hearing in Appropriations April 1st. Amended to make some changes strengthening the role of the State Manufacturing Council in the development of the State’s industrial strategy which are summarized by staff at the end of the amendment. Referred to Rules, and passed by the House April 7th.

In the Senate – Passed
Had a hearing in the Senate Committee on Business, Financial Services, Gaming & Trade January 19th. Replaced by a substitute clarifying the implementation timeline and passed out of committee February 2nd. Referred to Ways and Means; had a hearing there on February 20th; amended to add a couple of additional topics to the study and passed out of committee February 23. Referred to Rules, and passed by the Senate March 8th.

Summary –
The bill would have the Department of Commerce commission an independent assessment of opportunities for Washington to capture new and emerging industries and strengthen its manufacturing base. It would be due by October 2024.

The study would assess how the transition to net-zero emissions by 2050 will impact the potential futures of manufacturing in Washington, including identifying specific opportunities for seeking investment in new and emerging industries, as well as transforming and strengthening the state’s manufacturing to meet the needs of a net-zero economy. It would assess the needs of existing manufacturers, including supply chain challenges and resources required to meet the state’s greenhouse gas emissions reductions targets. It would identify opportunities to build and maximize the environmental and economic benefits of a circular economy. It would identify what’s needed to attract new investment and strengthen manufacturing, considering transportation and port infrastructure; supply chains; workforce; and energy. It would identify opportunities to support minority and women-owned firms and small and medium-sized firms in capturing new and emerging industries.

The workforce assessment would examine how to maximize the use of the existing workforce’s transferable skills; address any remaining skills gaps and identify opportunities to build a workforce pipeline that ensures current and future Washingtonians have fair access to a manufacturing career by sector; and to ensure equitable and accessible pathways and advancement opportunities in manufacturing by sector. The energy assessment would include the quantity, price, and location of electricity needed to decarbonize and grow Washington’s existing manufacturing and capture new and emerging industries.

The bill would require Commerce to appoint an industrial policy advisor who would alert manufacturers to relevant funding opportunities and assist them in applying and in completing required reporting; work to ensure that the state’s pursuit of its goals for developing a strong manufacturing and research and development base in every area of the state and its greenhouse gs emissions goals are aligned and mutually reinforcing; foster interagency and intraagency coordination and collaboration on manufacturing-related policymaking and activities, including both climate and economic development policymaking; coordinate with the workforce innovation sector lead, particularly with respect to building the workforce pipeline; and provide quarterly reports to the Manufacturing Council.

The advisor might also form expert committees with industry representatives to develop sector-specific strategies for attracting new investment and transforming and strengthening existing manufacturing consistent with the bill’s industrial strategy; assist local governments with economic plans for moving toward those goals; support communities negatively impacted by the closure or relocation of manufacturing facilities through efforts to attract new investment consistent with that strategy; and facilitate the movement of existing skilled manufacturing workers into new industrial sectors.

SB5247

SB5247 – Creating a Washington Climate Corps and evaluating climate and energy transition workforce needs.
Prime Sponsor – Senator Nobles (D; 28th District; Fircrest) (Co-Sponsors Saldaña, Lovelett, Randall, Shewmake – Ds) (By request of the Governor.)
Current status – Passed out of the Senate Committee on State Government & Elections January 13th; had a hearing in the Senate Committee on Higher Education & Workforce Development January 18th; passed out February 1st. Referred to Senate Ways and Means.
Next step would be – Scheduling a hearing.
Legislative tracking page for the bill.
HB1176 is a companion bill in the House.

Summary –
The bill would establish a Washington Climate Corps to provide climate-related service opportunities for young adults and veterans, with the objective of building low-carbon and climate-resilient communities and ecosystems while providing education, workforce development, and career pathways to service members. It would be administered by Serve Washington, which also manages the Americorps program, with administrative support from OFM, and would prioritize service in  overburdened communities. It would develop new service opportunities, and establish common requirements for participating service programs. In coordination with a range of stakeholders, it would develop and run a program for Climate Corps members during their service to provide leadership training, foster environmental stewardship and civic engagement, and expose them to climate related professional and educational opportunities. It would administer grants to support equitable access to participation in the Corps, reduce the cost of hosting members for service programs in the network, and support the development of new programs in geographic and topical areas that lack them.

The bill would have the Washington State Workforce Training and Education Coordinating Board establish a clean energy technology advisory committee to evaluate clean energy technology workforce needs and make recommendations to the Governor and Legislature. It would review workforce and business issues in the energy sector and its supply chain, and the impacts of the transition to clean energy on dependent sectors. It would recommend strategies to prevent workforce displacement, support job creation in clean energy technology, and provide support in dealing with workforce changes to businesses and adversely impacted workers. (The bill isn’t explicit, but apparently the Board would select the committee members from all interested parties, but including business and worker representatives from sectors affected by the transition.)

Each biennium, the Board would evaluate the workforce impact of Washington’s climate policies in consultation with the the advisory committee, the Department of Commerce, and Employment Security. It would do a literature review, in addition to its own research, on labor market trends and workforce demand in traditional and clean energy professions; demographics of the sectors; restructuring of jobs and skill sets associated with climate change mitigation policies; the wages and benefits of jobs in clean energy and the skills needed in them, an analysis of how the skills and training of the existing workforce can fill those needs; additional workforce development needs; and challenges that could emerge under multiple future decarbonization scenarios.

It would also make recommendations each biennium for necessary steps to support workforce training for clean energy technology occupations, consulting with postsecondary training partners, and considering the occupational training and skills already covered in existing programs; new skills that could be integrated into those; occupations and skill sets that require developing new programs; and resources needed to deliver training programs and support workers in the transition to clean energy technology.

The board would conduct a study of the feasibility of a program to preserve income and benefits for workers close to retirement who face job loss or transition because of energy technology sector changes. It would report at least every two years to the Governor and committees of the Legislature with recommendations on how the state can support worker and employer needs in response to changing workforce requirements for clean energy technology, including the recommendations of the advisory committee and the Board’s own work.

(The bill would also repeal the legislation establishing several earlier programs about workforce development in green industries.)

HB1185

HB1185 – Updating and expanding the state’s producer stewardship program for lighting products.
Prime Sponsor – Representative Hackney (D; 11th District; Renton & Tukwila) (Co-Sponsors Duerr, Berry, Ramel, Fitzgibbon, Doglio, and Pollet – Ds)
Current status – Had a hearing in the House Committee on Environment and Energy  January 23rd. Replaced by a substitute and passed out of committee February 16th. Died in Rules 2023. Returned to the House Committee on Environment and Energy for the 2024 Session. Had a hearing January 18th. Replaced by a 2nd substitute and passed out of committee January 25th. Referred to Rules.
Next step would be – Action by the Rules Committee.
Legislative tracking page for the bill.

Substitute –
The substitute in 2023 prohibited disposing of lights in most solid waste and recycling containers, and made some other small changes that are summarized by staff at the beginning of it. In the folder with materials for the executive session, there’s a staff summary of the changes made by the substitute in 2024 at the beginning of it; they mostly dealt with lights containing mercury.

Summary –
The bill would prohibit the sale of lights containing mercury starting in 2026, with some exceptions for special purpose lights, and create penalties for violations. It would expand the current product stewardship program for lights containing mercury to include the end of life management of most lights by the same date.

The producers of lights for sale in the state would have to continue to manage and fund the current product stewardship program, expanded to cover collecting, transporting, reuse, recycling, processing and final disposition of all types of lights, including the special purpose ones containing mercury which could still be sold. The bill would eliminate the environmental handling charge which is currently added to the price of lamps containing mercury to fund the program; it would be directly funded by the producers. (However, they still wouldn’t be responsible for the costs of curbside or mail-back collection programs, except for transporting and processing the lights from those. They would still have to fund and manage free collection sites and pay for the transportation and processing of lights from those.

At least 90% of the state’s residents would have to have a permanent collection site within 15 miles, and an additional site would be required for every 30,000 residents in urban areas. The program would have to provide reasonable opportunities for people in rural areas farther from the required sites to drop off unwanted lights at collection events. The bill specifies additional requirements for outreach and consumer education about the expended program, including a survey about public awareness of it at least every five years. It adds specifications about the safe handling of lights containing mercury, and specifies that plans have to prioritize recycling of other materials to the extent that’s practicable. It would now require programs to include contingency plans to keep providing services if a stewardship organization stopped.

Stewardship programs would be required to design their charges to producers to encourage the use of recycled content and discourage the use of undesirable materials. They’d have to reimburse local governments for the costs when a local government facility or solid waste handling facility served as a collection location. The bill also adds provisions for Ecology’s review and approval of stewardship organization’ plans, and revises Ecology’s procedures for dealing with violations to adjust them to the expanded system. It drops the current law’s provisions for reporting on the availability and purchasing of energy efficient lights in the state.

HB1194

HB1194– Workforce development for clean and renewable energy.
Prime Sponsor – Representative Klicker (R; 16th District; Walla Walla)
Current status – Had a hearing in the House Committee on Postsecondary Education & Workforce  January 25th.
Next step would be – Action by the committee.
Legislative tracking page for the bill.

Summary –
The bill would create a joint clean and renewable energy workforce training center to educate and train workers for the energy transition. It would establish an adjacent state-of-the-art visitor center with educational exhibits open to the general public, intended to inspire interest in clean energy careers, and to provide citizens with knowledge about the clean energy transition to help them participate in the public policy process. It would require these to be sited in the Tri-Cities area.

They would be operated and administered jointly as an education, training, and research center by Washington State University Tri-Cities and a joint operating agency. There would be a Board of Directors with thirteen voting members representing stakeholders and a non-voting chair appointed by the Governor. The Board would work with industry to develop internships, on-the-job training, research, and other opportunities providing undergraduate and graduate students in programs about clean and renewable with direct experience and training applicable to the industry. It would promote faculty collaboration with industry and sponsor at least one annual symposium on clean and renewable energy research and deployment in the state. It would encourage research addressing industry needs. It would work with partners to market career opportunities in clean and renewable energy in Washington, and to diversify the workforce.

The bill would impose a statewide clean energy workforce investment tax of $1 per megawatt hour on the production of solar or wind projects generating five megawatts or more. It would also allow counties to impose a local tax of up to $1 per megawatt hour for up to 30 years on the production from such facilities in the county or “immediately offshore”, if the tax were approved by a majority of the people voting in a special or general election. Revenue from the local tax could be used to support tourism and economic development; to mitigate any negative impacts to tourism from the siting of energy infrastructure; and for education, workforce, and skill center initiatives.

The bill doesn’t actually specify any uses for the statewide tax. It does repeal the current sales and use tax exemptions for the equipment, machinery and installation costs of clean energy facilities producing over 1 kilowatt. (Currently, these exempt between 25% and 100% of those expenses, depending on various conditions.) It specifies that the Legislature intends that an amount equal to the additional revenue from repealing those exemptions will be deposited into a new clean and renewable energy workforce capital account to be spent through appropriations. (Perhaps the revenue from the new statewide tax on production is intended to go into that account as well…)

HB1193

HB1183 – Prohibiting the Building Code Council from restricting the use of natural gas or natural gas appliances in residential construction. (Dead.)
Prime Sponsor – Representative Dye (R; 9th District; Southeast Washington) (Co-Sponsors Goehner & Corry – Rs)
Current status – Referred to the House Committee on Environment & Energy. Still in committee by cutoff.
Next step would be – Dead bill.
Legislative tracking page for the bill.

Summary –
The bill would prohibit the State Building Code Council from restricting the use of natural gas or natural gas appliances in residential construction unless the Legislature had explicitly authorized such a restriction. It would remove helping to “achieve the broader goal of building zero fossil-fuel greenhouse gas emission homes and buildings” from the list of the Legislature’s standards the Council “shall follow” in developing the Energy Code. It would specify that the current requirement that the Energy Code must achieve a 70 percent reduction in annual net energy consumption from the 2006 Code by 2031 does not authorize the Council to consider greenhouse gas emissions in any decisions adopting standards or requirements. It specifies that the legislation establishing the State’s limits for greenhouse gas reduction does not create any authority for the Council to rely on or consider those limits in developing the building code or the energy code. It prohibits the Council from adopting any rules to implement the provisions of the 2021 Code that limit the use of natural gas in buildings or that favor the use of electric appliances over natural gas appliances in buildings. (It actually would also no longer allow the Council to adopt minimum performance standards and requirements for construction and materials, consistent with accepted standards of engineering, fire and life safety; or for making buildings accessible to and usable by physically disabled persons.)

SB5154

SB5154– Improving solid waste management outcomes. (Dead.)
Prime Sponsor – Senator Rolfes (D; 23rd District; Bainbridge Island) (Co-Sponsor Nguyen)
Current status – Completed a continued hearing in the Senate Committee on Environment, Energy & Technology  January 18th. Replaced by a substitute, amended, and passed out of committee February 3rd. Referred to Ways and Means. Did not have a hearing by the fiscal cutoff.
Next step would be – Dead bill.
Legislative tracking page for the bill.
HB1131 is a companion bill in the House.

Comments – The bill is 143 pages long, so trying to summarize the details seems ill advised. I’ve tried to cover the important points.

Amended Substitute –
Staff summarized the changes made by the substitute in four pages at the beginning of it. The amendment struck and replaced all the sections about the optional beverage deposit return program. (I think all these changes replicated the ones made earlier in the House companion bill;  the staff summary of the changes in the House beverage deposit provisions is at the beginning of that..)

Summary –
The bill would create a system funded and managed by the producers for dealing with used packaging and paper products sold or supplied to consumers for personal use. It would create requirements for postconsumer recycled content. It would create a deposit program as an optional alternative for managing beverage containers.

Producer Product Responsibility Organizations –
Producers would have to join a producer responsibility organization, report annually to the Department of Ecology on the covered materials for which they were responsible, pay their shares of the cost of running the program including needed infrastructure investments, pay an annual fee to cover Ecology’s costs in administering and enforcing the program, and meet performance targets improving over time for reducing the production of plastic components, the reuse of collected materials, and their recycling (but not for simply collecting materials, I think.). Producers would also fund a statewide needs assessment of solid waste issues and the ongoing work of a new solid waste advisory council. Detailed plans for managing covered materials, meeting a long list of requirements, would be due by July 2027 (and be subject to approval by Ecology); reporting by organizations on their performance would begin in July 2028. (Products couldn’t be labeled as recyclable unless they were covered by a program.)

A consultant would do the needs assessment, covering a long list of issues such as current and future feasible infrastructure and services, costs, education and outreach, criteria for handling different products, labor and social justice concerns, litter and marine debris prevention, toxic substances in covered products, and any other items the Department added. The consultant would also recommend performance targets designed to be reachable statewide by 2032. (As far as I can see, organizations would establish their own targets in their plans.) The advisory council and stakeholders would have an opportunity to review and comment on scope for the study and on the draft, and Ecology would be authorized to update it at five year intervals.

Plans would have to be developed in consultation with stakeholders and the advisory council. Plans would include arrangements for continuing service if an organization stopped providing them. and consumer education and outreach activities to support the achievement of the performance rates. Plans would include ways to incentivize the redesign of covered products to be reusable, recyclable, or compostable; as well incentivizing preventing waste and reducing consumer packaging. They’d have to eco-modulate setting the fees for producers to encourage the use of packaging designs that reduce products’ environmental impacts. They’d have to be updated regularly.

Organizations would have to collaborate with and reimburse regulated private curbside collection programs as well as those existing government programs that chose to participate. They’d have to provide a variety of other convenient ways to recover used materials, including collection sites all around the state. Getting materials into the system would have to be free, easily accessible, and meet various other requirements. (Retailers could choose to host collection sites or events.) If organizations contracted with service providers to meet their obligations, those providers would have to meet various labor and reporting standards. Organizations would have to report to Ecology on their activities each year.

Programs would have to prioritize waste reduction, then recycling, before incinerating or landfilling materials. There are detailed requirements for collection and management of materials, and for reporting by producer organizations and processing facilities.

Requirements for Postconsumer Recycled Content –
The bill would replace current requirements for recycled content in various products; these would apply to household cleaning product containers; personal care product packages, most beverage containers; tubs; thermoform containers; single-use cups; and cannabis containers or packaging materials that were made of plastic. Minimum recycled content requirements for these different products would come into effect at different levels in different years between 2024 and 2036. The producer responsibility organizations representing the producers of these products would report to Ecology annually on their performance. The department could adjust the requirements depending on various factors, and assess penalties for failures to meet the requirements. The bill adds new recycled content requirements for collection bins, pots and trays, and pesticide containers made of plastic.

Beverage Container Deposit Program –

Producer responsibility organizations would be allowed to create a 10¢ deposit return system for glass, metal, and plastic bottles or cans as an alternative to managing beverage containers through the recycling requirements. (Cartons, foil pouches, drink boxes, metal container that need a tool to open, and containers for dairy milk or formula wouldn’t be included.) This system would be created if distributors of the majority of beverages in qualifying containers formed a distributor responsibility organization; in that case, all the distributors of those containers would have to join that organization, or meet the requirements for an organization themselves. Ecology would implement, administer, and enforce the program, and collect a fee covering those costs; the distributors would pay for operating the system, and for half the costs of the advisory council and the needs study. Organizations would have to submit detailed plans for deposit return programs for Ecology’s approval, meeting a variety of requirements. Plans would have to include education and outreach; stakeholder consultations; methods for paying the refund to consumers, governments, and processing facilities returning containers; an additional premium for containers returned by non-profits serving very low income individuals who rely on refunds; and at least 270 free convenient bulk drop-off locations for bagged containers around the state, convenient to places selling beverages in containers. Dealers wouldn’t be required to accept bags or provide drop-off sites, though. If organizations contract with service providers to meet their obligations, there are labor and social justice standards for those. Unclaimed refunds would have to be invested in operations and infrastructure supporting the reuse and recycling of qualifying beverage containers. By 2031, an organization would have to demonstrate that all the containers in its program were designed to be reusable or recyclable, and there would be specified gradually increasing requirements for the percentages of containers that were actually recycled or reused between 2028 and 2035. There would be detailed reporting requirements. Ecology would also collect funds from distributor organizations for a five year program to reimburse curbside collection programs for revenue losses resulting from reductions in the number of containers in those bins.

In addition –
By December 2025, Ecology would have to complete a study of options for improving the convenience of state product stewardship, takeback, and producer responsibility programs, including establishing centralized takeback centers for consumers; and make policy recommendations to the Legislature about improving the environmental end of life management of products covered by these. Ecology and the Department of Revenue would do a study of the bill’s effects on the litter rates of covered products and containers, and make recommendations on possible improvements to the structure of the tax.

The bill also amends details of some existing laws, including ones about solid waste in general, ones about the regulation of some solid waste companies by the UTC, and ones about cannabis packaging, to take account of the additional activities of producer responsibility organizations and beverage distributors that the bill envisions.

HB1131

HB1131– Improving solid waste management outcomes.
Prime Sponsor – Representative Berry (D; 36th District; Northeast Seattle) (Co-Sponsors Doglio & 16 other Ds)
Current status – Had a hearing in the House Committee on Environment & Energy January 17th; replaced by a substitute and amended by the prime sponsor February 2nd, then passed out of committee. Referred to Appropriations, and had a hearing there February 15th. Replaced by a second substitute, amended, and passed out of committee February 21st. Referred to Rules.
Next step would be – Action by the Rules Committee.
Legislative tracking page for the bill.
SB5154 is a companion bill in the Senate.

Comments – The bill is 143 pages long, so trying to summarize the details seems ill advised. I’ve tried to cover the important points.

Changes made in House Environment and Energy –
There’s a several page summary by staff of the changes in the substitute at the beginning of that. The amendment struck and replaced all the sections about the optional beverage deposit return program. There’s a three page staff summary of those changes at the end of the amendment.

Changes in Appropriations –
Staff summarized the additional changes in the 2nd substitute in several pages at the beginning of it. (The amendment exempted packaging for certain insecticides, fungicides, and rodenticides from the requirements.)

Summary –
The bill would create a system funded and managed by the producers for dealing with used packaging and paper products sold or supplied to consumers for personal use. It would create requirements for postconsumer recycled content. It would create a deposit program as an optional alternative for managing beverage containers.

Producer Product Responsibility Organizations –
Producers would have to join a producer responsibility organization, report annually to the Department of Ecology on the covered materials for which they were responsible, pay their shares of the cost of running the program including needed infrastructure investments, pay an annual fee to cover Ecology’s costs in administering and enforcing the program, and meet performance targets improving over time for reducing the production of plastic components, the reuse of collected materials, and their recycling (but not for simply collecting materials, I think.). Producers would also fund a statewide needs assessment of solid waste issues and the ongoing work of a new solid waste advisory council. Detailed plans for managing covered materials, meeting a long list of requirements, would be due by July 2027 (and be subject to approval by Ecology); reporting by organizations on their performance would begin in July 2028. (Products couldn’t be labeled as recyclable unless they were covered by a program.)

A consultant would do the needs assessment, covering a long list of issues such as current and future feasible infrastructure and services, costs, education and outreach, criteria for handling different products, labor and social justice concerns, litter and marine debris prevention, toxic substances in covered products, and any other items the Department added. The consultant would also recommend performance targets designed to be reachable statewide by 2032. (As far as I can see, organizations would establish their own targets in their plans.) The advisory council and stakeholders would have an opportunity to review and comment on scope for the study and on the draft, and Ecology would be authorized to update it at five year intervals.

Plans would have to be developed in consultation with stakeholders and the advisory council. Plans would include arrangements for continuing service if an organization stopped providing them. and consumer education and outreach activities to support the achievement of the performance rates. Plans would include ways to incentivize the redesign of covered products to be reusable, recyclable, or compostable; as well incentivizing preventing waste and reducing consumer packaging. They’d have to eco-modulate setting the fees for producers to encourage the use of packaging designs that reduce products’ environmental impacts. They’d have to be updated regularly.

Organizations would have to collaborate with and reimburse regulated private curbside collection programs as well as those existing government programs that chose to participate. They’d have to provide a variety of other convenient ways to recover used materials, including collection sites all around the state. Getting materials into the system would have to be free, easily accessible, and meet various other requirements. (Retailers could choose to host collection sites or events.) If organizations contracted with service providers to meet their obligations, those providers would have to meet various labor and reporting standards. Organizations would have to report to Ecology on their activities each year.

Programs would have to prioritize waste reduction, then recycling, before incinerating or landfilling materials. There are detailed requirements for collection and management of materials, and for reporting by producer organizations and processing facilities.

Requirements for Postconsumer Recycled Content –
The bill would replace current requirements for recycled content in various products; these would apply to household cleaning product containers; personal care product packages, most beverage containers; tubs; thermoform containers; single-use cups; and cannabis containers or packaging materials that were made of plastic. Minimum recycled content requirements for these different products would come into effect at different levels in different years between 2024 and 2036. The producer responsibility organizations representing the producers of these products would report to Ecology annually on their performance. The department could adjust the requirements depending on various factors, and assess penalties for failures to meet the requirements. The bill adds new recycled content requirements for collection bins, pots and trays, and pesticide containers made of plastic.

Beverage Container Deposit Program –

Producer responsibility organizations would be allowed to create a 10¢ deposit return system for glass, metal, and plastic bottles or cans as an alternative to managing beverage containers through the recycling requirements. (Cartons, foil pouches, drink boxes, metal container that need a tool to open, and containers for dairy milk or formula wouldn’t be included.) This system would be created if distributors of the majority of beverages in qualifying containers formed a distributor responsibility organization; in that case, all the distributors of those containers would have to join that organization, or meet the requirements for an organization themselves. Ecology would implement, administer, and enforce the program, and collect a fee covering those costs; the distributors would pay for operating the system, and for half the costs of the advisory council and the needs study. Organizations would have to submit detailed plans for deposit return programs for Ecology’s approval, meeting a variety of requirements. Plans would have to include education and outreach; stakeholder consultations; methods for paying the refund to consumers, governments, and processing facilities returning containers; an additional premium for containers returned by non-profits serving very low income individuals who rely on refunds; and at least 270 free convenient bulk drop-off locations for bagged containers around the state, convenient to places selling beverages in containers. Dealers wouldn’t be required to accept bags or provide drop-off sites, though. If organizations contract with service providers to meet their obligations, there are labor and social justice standards for those. Unclaimed refunds would have to be invested in operations and infrastructure supporting the reuse and recycling of qualifying beverage containers. By 2031, an organization would have to demonstrate that all the containers in its program were designed to be reusable or recyclable, and there would be specified gradually increasing requirements for the percentages of containers that were actually recycled or reused between 2028 and 2035. There would be detailed reporting requirements. Ecology would also collect funds from distributor organizations for a five year program to reimburse curbside collection programs for revenue losses resulting from reductions in the number of containers in those bins.

In addition –
By December 2025, Ecology would have to complete a study of options for improving the convenience of state product stewardship, takeback, and producer responsibility programs, including establishing centralized takeback centers for consumers; and make policy recommendations to the Legislature about improving the environmental end of life management of products covered by these. Ecology and the Department of Revenue would do a study of the bill’s effects on the litter rates of covered products and containers, and make recommendations on possible improvements to the structure of the tax.

The bill also amends details of some existing laws, including ones about solid waste in general, ones about the regulation of some solid waste companies by the UTC, and ones about cannabis packaging, to take account of the additional activities of producer responsibility organizations and beverage distributors that the bill envisions.

HB1190

HB1190 – Changing the uses of the revenue from the Climate Commitment Act. (Dead.)
Prime Sponsor – Representative Dye (R; 9th District; SE Washington)
Current status – Referred to the House Committee on Environment & Energy. Still in committee by cutoff.
Next step would be – Dead bill.
Legislative tracking page for the bill.

Summary –
The bill would dedicate the revenue from the Climate Commitment Act (aka the cap and invest bill) to a new Outdoor Recreation and Climate Adaptation Account, rather than to the Climate Commitment Account and the Natural Climate Solutions Account established in the Act. (It would eliminate those accounts.)

It would require $125 million each biennium from the new account to go to the Wildfire Response, Forest Restoration, and Community Resilience Account. (Those funds must currently be used for fire preparedness and prevention activities; at least 25% of them must go to “forest health activities” and at least 25% of them must go to “community resilience activities”.) In addition, this bill would declare the Legislature’s intent to have at least $10 million of that money each biennium spent on forest riparian easements. It would also authorize spending it on grants and loans to small forestland owners for activities that increase carbon sequestration; on the Family Forest Fish Passage Program; and on a new grant program investing in institutions and infrastructure that make timber and farming towns sustainable and vibrant, administered by the Community Economic Revitalization Board.

Additional funds from that account could be transferred to the state Drought Preparedness and Response Account and spent on drought resilience investments that contribute to climate change adaptation. Funds could be spent on flood risk mitigation investments that contribute to climate change adaptation, specifically projects to reduce flood damage and improve aquatic species’ habitat in the basins most at risk of flooding; fund established flood control authorities to improve floodplains and protection infrastructure; or fund water supply projects to secure the agricultural industry against climate risks. They could be spent on Puget Sound water quality investments, including assistance in updating required pollution controls. They could be spent on outdoor recreation enhancement and amenities, including state and local outdoor recreation programs, activities, and infrastructure. They could provide grants to support marinas in compliance with measures protecting aquatic environments or water quality permits, and on grants to replace or add buoys at locations that appropriately balance environmental protection and the needs of on-water recreation. They could fund grants to improve equitable access to local trails and trail connectivity. They could be spent on stormwater investments that are helpful to salmon survival. They could be spent to support efforts to mitigate and adapt to the effects of climate change affecting Indian tribes, and the bill would declare the Legislature’s intent to dedicate at least $50 million from the account each biennium for that, and at least $50 each biennium to decarbonization of medium and heavy duty vehicles in a technology-neutral way.

SB5146

SB5146 – Allowing power from new and recent hydropower infrastructure to be used to comply with the Clean Energy Act from 2030 through 2045. (Dead.)
Prime Sponsor – Senator Short (R; 7th District; Northeast Washington)
Current status – Referred to the Senate Committee on Environment, Energy & Technology. Still in committee by cutoff.
Next step would be – Dead bill.
Legislative tracking page for the bill.

Summary –
The bill would remove certain restrictions on the hydropower that can be used from 2030 through 2044 to comply with the greenhouse gas neutral requirements of the Clean Energy Act. That would be changed to allow power from new diversions, impoundments, bypass reaches, and expansions of existing reservoirs constructed after May 17, 2019.

The current law allows the use of power from new diversions, impoundments, and bypass reaches if they’re needed for the operations of a pumped storage facility that doesn’t conflict with existing state or federal fish recovery plans; and that complies with all local, state, and federal laws and regulations. (I think that the bill’s removal of this provision might imply that you could use power from these regardless of the effect on fish recovery and compliance with other laws and regulations, but there may be other laws that would prevent that.

HB1192

HB1192 – Improving electric power system transmission planning.
Prime Sponsor – Representative Duerr (D; 1st District; Bothell) (Co-Sponsor Doglio – D) (By request of the Governor.)
Current status – Had a hearing in the House Committee on Environment & Energy  January 19th. Replaced by a substitute matching the changes made in the Senate’s companion bill and passed out of committee February 13th. Referred to Rules.
Next step would be – Action by the Rules Committee.
Legislative tracking page for the bill.
SB5165 is a companion bill in the Senate.

Substitute –
The substitute specifies that projects with nominal ratings of at least 500,000 volts AC or 300,000 volts DC have to seek Energy Facility Site Evaluation Council certification, and that projects that aren’t subject to the Council’s jurisdiction still have the option to use local government permitting processes. It clarifies that transmission assessment in an IRP has to include opportunities to make more effective use of existing transmission capacity through improved operating practices and non-wires solutions, and that a clean energy action plan has to document a utility’s efforts to use existing capacity more effectively.

Summary –
The bill would require the assessment in each utility’s integrated resource plans of its future needs for regional generation and transmission capacity, and of the availability of those, to be based on forecasts over twenty years rather than ten. The assessments would have to take into account the state’s emissions reduction limits and the requirements of the Clean Energy Act; opportunities to make more effective use of existing transmission capacity through energy efficiency, demand response, grid modernization, and other programs; and the electrification of transportation and other end uses historically met using fossil fuels. The assessment would have to identify the utility’s expected need to develop new or expanded bulk transmission facilities.

The bill would expand the current requirement for developing 10 year Clean Energy Action Plans to include all utilities, not just investor owned ones. Those plans would now also have to document existing and planned efforts by the utility to secure the additional transmission capacity it anticipated needing in its IRP. They would have to give reasonable consideration to energy resources that would use conditional firm transmission services, where their reserved service might be curtailed under specific limited conditions. Utilities would be encouraged to do statewide, multiutility, and interstate transmission planning. They’d be required to seek the support of a variety of industry and public interest organizations in improving the planning and development of transmission capacity.

The bill would add the construction, reconstruction, or enlargement of new or existing electrical transmission facilities of at least 500,000 volts; located in more than one county; and located in the Washington service area of more than one retail electric utility to the facilities required to apply for siting through the Energy Facility Site Evaluation Council. The bill would have the Director of the Council coordinate state agency participation in environmental review under the National Environmental Policy Act of transmission projects proposed or sited by a Federal agency .

SB5165

SB5165 – Improving electric power system transmission planning.
Prime Sponsor – Senator Nguyen (D; 34th District; White Center) (Co-Sponsor Mullet – D) (By request of the Governor.)
Current status – Had a hearing in the House Committee on Environment and Energy March 13th. Replaced by a striker, amended, and passed out of committee March 21st. Referred to Rules, and passed by the House April 5th. Senate concurred in House’s amendments.
Next step would be – To the Governor.
Legislative tracking page for the bill.
HB1192 is a companion bill in the House.

Changes in the House –
The changes made by the committee striker in the House are summarized by staff at the end of it. The amendment would make the avoidance of burdens to vulnerable populations and overburdened communities as well as their reduction part of the analysis of cumulative impacts in utilities’ IRPs.

In the Senate – Passed
Had a hearing in the Senate Committee on Environment, Energy & Technology January 18th. Replaced by a substitute and passed out of committee February 7th. Referred to Ways and Means, and had a hearing there February 18th. Passed out of committee February 24th, referred to Rules, and passed by the Senate March 2nd.

Substitute –
The substitute specifies that projects with nominal ratings of at least 500,000 volts AC or 300,000 volts DC have to seek Energy Facility Site Evaluation Council certification, and that projects that aren’t subject to the Council’s jurisdiction still have the option to use local government permitting processes. It clarifies that transmission assessment in an IRP has to include opportunities to make more effective use of existing transmission capacity through improved operating practices and non-wires solutions, and that a clean energy action plan has to document a utility’s efforts to use existing capacity more effectively.

Summary –
The bill would require the assessment in each utility’s integrated resource plans of its future needs for regional generation and transmission capacity, and of the availability of those, to be based on forecasts over twenty years rather than ten. The assessments would have to take into account the state’s emissions reduction limits and the requirements of the Clean Energy Act; opportunities to make more effective use of existing transmission capacity through energy efficiency, demand response, grid modernization, and other programs; and the electrification of transportation and other end uses historically met using fossil fuels. The assessment would have to identify the utility’s expected need to develop new or expanded bulk transmission facilities.

The bill would expand the current requirement for developing 10 year Clean Energy Action Plans to include all utilities, not just investor owned ones. Those plans would now also have to document existing and planned efforts by the utility to secure the additional transmission capacity it anticipated needing in its IRP. They would have to give reasonable consideration to energy resources that would use conditional firm transmission services, where their reserved service might be curtailed under specific limited conditions. Utilities would be encouraged to do statewide, multiutility, and interstate transmission planning. They’d be required to seek the support of a variety of industry and public interest organizations in improving the planning and development of transmission capacity.

The bill would add the construction, reconstruction, or enlargement of new or existing electrical transmission facilities of at least 500,000 volts; located in more than one county; and located in the Washington service area of more than one retail electric utility to the facilities required to apply for siting through the Energy Facility Site Evaluation Council. The bill would have the Director of the Council coordinate state agency participation in environmental review under the National Environmental Policy Act of transmission projects proposed or sited by a Federal agency.

SB5167

SB5167 – Prohibits solar and wind projects on commercial agricultural lands from getting expedited review through the Energy Facility Site Evaluation Council. (Dead.)
Prime Sponsor – Senator Boehnke (R; 8th District; Kennewick)
Current status – Referred to the Senate Committee on Environment, Energy & Technology. Still in committee by cutoff.
Next step would be – Dead bill.
Legislative tracking page for the bill.

Summary –
The bill would prohibit solar and wind facilities sited on agricultural lands of long-term commercial significance from being eligible for expedited review before the Energy Facility Site Evaluation Council. (Currently, a project can get expedited processing if the Council finds its environmental impact is not significant or will be mitigated to a non-significant level, and finds it’s consistent and in compliance with city, county, or regional land use plans or zoning ordinances.) The bill’s findings maintain that process undermines opportunities for local review of solar and wind facilities

HB1032

HB1032 – Requires utility planning for wildfire risks and identification of best management practices.
Prime Sponsor – Representative Dent (R; 13th District; Kittitas County) (Co-Sponsors Graham – R;  Chapman, Ryu, Reed, and Ramel – Ds)
Current status – Had a hearing in the Senate Committee on Environment, Energy and Technology March 14th and passed out of committee March 21st. Had a hearing in Ways and Means March 31st, and passed out of committee April 3rd. Referred to Rules, and passed by the Senate unanimously April 8th.
Next step would be – To the Governor.
Legislative tracking page for the bill.
SB5039 is a companion bill in the Senate.

In the House – Passed
Had a hearing in the House Committee on Agriculture and Natural Resources January 13th. Replaced by a substitute and passed out of committee February 3rd. Referred to Appropriations, and had a hearing there February 15th. Replaced by a second substitute, and passed out of Appropriations February 21st. Referred to Rules, and passed by the House March 4th.

Substitutes –
There’s a staff summary of the changes made by the substitute at the beginning of it. The 2nd substitute would drop DNR’s role in reviewing private utilities’ plans, assigning that responsibility to the UTC, and authorizing private utilities to seek to recover the costs and investments of their plans in rate proceedings there.

Summary –
Requires each electric utility to create a wildfire management plan by October 31, 2024 and update it every three years. An independent consultant selected by the State Energy Office after consultation with stakeholders and the public would develop the format for the plans and a list of recommended actions to be included in them, including best practice guidance for those actions. Each utility’s plan would include a review of its specific circumstances and incorporate the appropriate identified actions from the list; abutting utilities could develop collaborative plans. Private utilities’ plans would be reviewed by the Utilities and Transportation Commission and public utilities’ would be reviewed by their governing boards, in consultation with various other agencies. Reviewers would provide feedback to the utilities, but as I read the bill, it doesn’t quite require their approval of the plans. (They’re to “confirm” whether it contains the appropriate recommended actions.)  The bill also disclaims any State responsibility for subsequent problems.)

The consultant’s list is to include actions related to:
(a) Vegetation management along transmission and distribution lines and near associated equipment;
(b) Infrastructure inspection and maintenance repair activities, schedules, and recordkeeping;
(c) Modifications or upgrades to facilities and construction of new facilities to incorporate cost-effective measures to minimize fire risk;
(d) Preventative programs, including adoption of new technologies to harden utility infrastructure;
(e) Operational procedures;
(f) Identification of appropriate widths for vegetation management and rights-of-way, including the consideration of fire-resistant vegetation alternatives;
(g) Protocols for disabling reclosers and deenergizing portions of the electric system along with associated communication plans for impacted parties and the public, including highly impacted communities, vulnerable populations, and persons reliant on electricity to maintain necessary life functions; and
(h) Public and interested parties’ engagement and communication plans addressing wildfire safety and risk mitigation.

Each electric utility’s protocols have to include plans for mitigating the public safety impacts of deenergizing portions of the system, considering the impacts on critical first responders, local and tribal governments, health and communication infrastructure, and those populations at increased risk. Decisions about whether or not to shut down parts of the system are reserved to the utilities.

SB5168

SB5168 – Eliminating the Energy Independence Act’s requirements for renewable power. (Dead.)
Prime Sponsor – Senator Boehnke (R; 8th District; Kennewick)
Current status – Had a hearing in the Senate Committee on Environment, Energy & Technology February 14th. Still in committee by cutoff.
Next step would be – Dead bill.
Legislative tracking page for the bill.

Summary –
The Energy Independence Act (passed by the voters in 2006 as I-937) requires utilities in the state with more than 25,000 customers to obtain fifteen percent of their electricity from new renewable resources such as solar and wind in each year after 2020 (or to purchase certain qualifying renewable energy credits covering that obligation.) The bill would eliminate these requirements.

Its findings maintain that “This will not create a gap in Washington’s energy laws because the requirements of the Clean Energy Transformation Act continue to set the policy direction for the state.” The Clean Energy Act’s actual requirements provide for the elimination of coal power by 2025; the limit on power from natural gas that’s offset through various options to 20% of portfolios by 2035, and the prohibition on power from other than renewable or non-emitting sources by 2045.

SB5203

SB5203 – Updating planning requirements to improve the State’s climate response.
Prime Sponsor – Senator Lovelett (D; 40th District; Anacortes) (Co-Sponsor Liias – D) (By request of the Governor.)
Current status – Had a hearing on a substitute in the Senate Committee on Local Government, January 17th. Replaced by a new substitute and passed out of committee February 9th; referred to Ways and Means.
Next step would be – Scheduling a hearing.
Legislative tracking page for the bill.
HB1181 is a companion bill in the House.

Substitute –
There’s a staff report on the substitute which was heard in committee.The changes in the substitute which was voted out of committee are summarized by staff in a couple of pages at the beginning of it.

Summary –

The bill would add a climate change and resiliency goal to the fourteen others that are to guide the development of comprehensive plans, and have that also apply to the countywide planning process and regional transportation planning. The new goal would have planning adapt to and mitigate the effects of a changing climate; support reductions in greenhouse gas emissions and per capita vehicle miles traveled; prepare for climate impact scenarios; foster resiliency to climate impacts and natural hazards; protect and enhance environmental, economic, and human health and safety; and advance environmental justice. The bill would add consideration of climate impacts to shoreline master planning. However, jurisdictions would not be obliged to comply with these amendments until the state had provided funding for that.

It would specify that the land use element of comprehensive plans must give special consideration to achieving environmental justice in its goals and policies, including efforts to avoid creating or worsening environmental health disparities; should consider using approaches that reduce per capita vehicle miles traveled; must reduce and mitigate the risk to lives and property posed by wildfires with measures like reducing residential development pressure in the wildland urban interface area, creating open space buffers between development and wildfire prone landscapes, and protecting existing development through community preparedness and fire adaptation.

It would expand the kinds of transit routes that should have level of service standards to help to achieve environmental justice goals, and expand transportation forecasts to include multimodal and rural demand. It expands language about bicycles and pedestrians to include other forms of active transportation. It would prohibit denying approval to a development that failed to meet traffic level of service standards if its transportation needs might be met through improvements for active transportation, enhanced public transportation, ride-sharing programs, demand management, or other strategies funded by the development.

It would require comprehensive plans to include a climate change and resiliency element designed to reduce overall greenhouse gas emissions, enhance resiliency, and avoid the adverse impacts of climate change. This would have to include efforts to reduce local emissions and avoid creating or worsening local climate impacts on vulnerable populations and overburdened communities. Countries with over 100,000 people or specified densities or growth rates and planning under the Growth Management Act would be required to include a greenhouse gas emissions reduction subelement, and other jurisdictions would be encouraged to. The resiliency subelement would be required for all jurisdictions planning under the GMA and encouraged for others. These required updates would have to be part of the 2024 planning cycle.

The Department of Commerce, in collaboration with various other agencies, would publish guidelines specifying a set of measures counties and cities could take through updates to their comprehensive plans and development regulations that have a demonstrated ability to increase housing capacity within urban growth areas, reduce emissions, or reduce per capita vehicle miles traveled, allowing for consideration of the emissions reductions achieved through the adoption of statewide programs, and prioritizing reductions in overburdened communities. The bill would exempt from SEPA appeals the adoption of ordinances, amendments to comprehensive plans or development regulations, and other nonproject actions taken to implement measures for reducing emissions or per capita miles traveled that were in the department’s guidelines.

The emissions reduction subelement and related development regulations would have to identify the actions the jurisdiction will take, in accordance with Commerce’s guidelines, to:
1) Reduce transportation and land use emissions within the jurisdiction without increasing them elsewhere in the state;
2) Reduce per capita vehicle miles traveled within the jurisdiction without increasing emissions elsewhere in the state; and,
3) Prioritize reductions in overburdened communities to maximize the combined benefits of reduced air pollution and environmental justice.
Actions that weren’t specifically identified in the guidelines could only be considered to be consistent with them if they were projected to achieve reductions in emissions or per capita vehicle miles traveled equivalent to what would be required under the guidelines, and if they were supported by scientifically credible projections. Jurisdictions would not be allowed to restrict population growth or limit population allocation to achieve the requirements. The guidelines could not include road usage charges, or regulations and taxes on transportation service providers, delivery vehicles, or passenger vehicles.

The resiliency subelement would be required to equitably enhance resiliency to climate change in human communities and ecological systems, and avoid or substantially reduce its adverse impacts through goals, policies, and programs consistent with the best available science and scientifically credible climate projections. It would have to prioritize actions in overburdened communities that will disproportionately suffer from environmental impacts and be most impacted by natural hazards due to climate change. Its goals, policies, and programs would have to include those designed to:
1) Identify, protect, and enhance natural areas and areas of vital habitat for safe passage and species migration to foster resiliency to climate impacts;
2) Identify, protect, and enhance community resiliency to impacts, including social, economic, and built factors that support adaptation consistent with environmental justice; and,
3) Address natural hazards created or aggravated by climate change, including sea level rise, landslides, flooding, drought, heat, smoke, wildfire, and other effects of changes to temperature and precipitation.
Jurisdictions might adopt an existing natural hazard mitigation plan by reference if it met the bill’s requirements, or modify one to do that, and might apply to the Department for an extension of the deadlines to do that. In collaboration with tribes and various agencies, the department would develop a model climate change and resiliency element that could be used by jurisdictions in developing the required plans and policies.

The bill includes provisions for public comment on these subelements, for review and approval of them by the department, and for appeals. The bill would add the presence of overburdened communities to the department’s priorities for providing planning assistance, and require it to establish funding levels for grants to community-based organizations to advance participation of vulnerable populations and overburdened communities in planning.

The bill would require the Department of Ecology to update its guidelines to require shoreline master programs to address the impact of sea level rise and increased storm severity on people, property, shoreline natural resources, and the environment. It would require flood control management plans to include consideration of climate change impacts, including the impacts of sea level rise and increased storm severity.

HB1183

HB1183 – Prohibiting Washington from adopting California vehicle emissions standards. (Dead.)
Prime Sponsor – Representative Dye (R; 9th District; Southeast Washington)
Current status – Referred to the House Committee on Environment & Energy. Still in committee by cutoff.
Next step would be – Dead bill.
Legislative tracking page for the bill.

Summary –
The bill would repeal the laws authorizing the Department of Ecology to adopt rules to implement California’s motor vehicle emission standards and to adopt rules for the disclosure of the greenhouse gas emissions of new vehicles. It would specify that the Department has no authority to adopt any California vehicle emissions standards.

HB1181

HB1181 – Updating planning requirements to improve the State’s climate response.
Prime Sponsor – Representative Duerr (D; 1st District; Bothell) (Co-Sponsors Fitzgibbon, Berry, Peterson, Ryu, and Alvarado – Ds) (By request of the Governor.)
Current status – Passed by both houses. House concurred in Senate’s amendments.
Next step would be – To the Governor.
Legislative tracking page for the bill.
SB5203 is a companion bill in the Senate.

In the Senate – Passed
Had a hearing in the Senate Committee on Local Government, Land Use & Tribal Affairs March 14th, and passed out of committee the 16th. Had a hearing in Ways and Means March 23rd, and passed out of committee April 3rd. Referred to Rules; replaced by a striker on the floor, amended and passed by the Senate April 7th. The floor striker expands the utilities element to include the general location, proposed location, and capacity of all existing and proposed utilities; specifies that a good faith effort to identify all of a public entity’s capital facilities and include the required information about them is enough to shield the plan from claims of noncompliance or invalidity under the GMA; and allows using Commerce’s intermediate guidelines to meet the requirements of the climate change and resiliency elements for periodic updates up to June 2025. The floor amendment adds adopting some existing wildfire risk reduction codes to other options the bill included as ways the land use element might address reducing those risks.

In the House – Passed
Replaced by the sponsor’s substitute and passed out of the House Committee on Local Government January 25th. Had a hearing in Appropriations February 6th. Replaced by a second substitute, changed by three minor amendments, and passed out of committee February 9th. Referred to Rules, replaced by another striker on the floor, amended, and passed by the House March 3rd.
There’s a summary by staff at the beginning of the substitute, listing the changes it made. The changes made by the second substitute in Appropriations are summarized at the beginning of that, and the amendments are included with summaries in the committee’s folder. The minor changes made by the striker are summarized by staff at the end of it.

Summary –
The bill would add a climate change and resiliency goal to the fourteen others that are to guide the development of comprehensive plans, and have that also apply to the countywide planning process and regional transportation planning. The new goal would have planning adapt to and mitigate the effects of a changing climate; support reductions in greenhouse gas emissions and per capita vehicle miles traveled; prepare for climate impact scenarios; foster resiliency to climate impacts and natural hazards; protect and enhance environmental, economic, and human health and safety; and advance environmental justice. The bill would add consideration of climate impacts to shoreline master planning. However, jurisdictions would not be obliged to comply with these amendments until the state had provided funding for that.

It would specify that the land use element of comprehensive plans must give special consideration to achieving environmental justice in its goals and policies, including efforts to avoid creating or worsening environmental health disparities; should consider using approaches that reduce per capita vehicle miles traveled; must reduce and mitigate the risk to lives and property posed by wildfires with measures like reducing residential development pressure in the wildland urban interface area, creating open space buffers between development and wildfire prone landscapes, and protecting existing development through community preparedness and fire adaptation.

It would expand the kinds of transit routes that should have level of service standards to help to achieve environmental justice goals, and expand transportation forecasts to include multimodal and rural demand. It expands language about bicycles and pedestrians to include other forms of active transportation. It would prohibit denying approval to a development that failed to meet traffic level of service standards if its transportation needs might be met through improvements for active transportation, enhanced public transportation, ride-sharing programs, demand management, or other strategies funded by the development.

It would require comprehensive plans to include a climate change and resiliency element designed to reduce overall greenhouse gas emissions, enhance resiliency, and avoid the adverse impacts of climate change. This would have to include efforts to reduce local emissions and avoid creating or worsening local climate impacts on vulnerable populations and overburdened communities. Countries with over 100,000 people or specified densities or growth rates and planning under the Growth Management Act would be required to include a greenhouse gas emissions reduction subelement, and other jurisdictions would be encouraged to. The resiliency subelement would be required for all jurisdictions planning under the GMA and encouraged for others. These required updates would have to be part of the 2024 planning cycle.

The Department of Commerce, in collaboration with various other agencies, would publish guidelines specifying a set of measures counties and cities could take through updates to their comprehensive plans and development regulations that have a demonstrated ability to increase housing capacity within urban growth areas, reduce emissions, or reduce per capita vehicle miles traveled, allowing for consideration of the emissions reductions achieved through the adoption of statewide programs, and prioritizing reductions in overburdened communities. The bill would exempt from SEPA appeals the adoption of ordinances, amendments to comprehensive plans or development regulations, and other nonproject actions taken to implement measures for reducing emissions or per capita miles traveled that were in the department’s guidelines.

The emissions reduction subelement and related development regulations would have to identify the actions the jurisdiction will take, in accordance with Commerce’s guidelines, to:
1) Reduce transportation and land use emissions within the jurisdiction without increasing them elsewhere in the state;
2) Reduce per capita vehicle miles traveled within the jurisdiction without increasing emissions elsewhere in the state; and,
3) Prioritize reductions in overburdened communities to maximize the combined benefits of reduced air pollution and environmental justice.
Actions that weren’t specifically identified in the guidelines could only be considered to be consistent with them if they were projected to achieve reductions in emissions or per capita vehicle miles traveled equivalent to what would be required under the guidelines, and if they were supported by scientifically credible projections. Jurisdictions would not be allowed to restrict population growth or limit population allocation to achieve the requirements. The guidelines could not include road usage charges, or regulations and taxes on transportation service providers, delivery vehicles, or passenger vehicles.

The resiliency subelement would be required to equitably enhance resiliency to climate change in human communities and ecological systems, and avoid or substantially reduce its adverse impacts through goals, policies, and programs consistent with the best available science and scientifically credible climate projections. It would have to prioritize actions in overburdened communities that will disproportionately suffer from environmental impacts and be most impacted by natural hazards due to climate change. Its goals, policies, and programs would have to include those designed to:
1) Identify, protect, and enhance natural areas and areas of vital habitat for safe passage and species migration to foster resiliency to climate impacts;
2) Identify, protect, and enhance community resiliency to impacts, including social, economic, and built factors that support adaptation consistent with environmental justice; and,
3) Address natural hazards created or aggravated by climate change, including sea level rise, landslides, flooding, drought, heat, smoke, wildfire, and other effects of changes to temperature and precipitation.
Jurisdictions might adopt an existing natural hazard mitigation plan by reference if it met the bill’s requirements, or modify one to do that, and might apply to the Department for an extension of the deadlines to do that. In collaboration with tribes and various agencies, the department would develop a model climate change and resiliency element that could be used by jurisdictions in developing the required plans and policies.

The bill includes provisions for public comment on these subelements, for review and approval of them by the department, and for appeals. The bill would add the presence of overburdened communities to the department’s priorities for providing planning assistance, and require it to establish funding levels for grants to community-based organizations to advance participation of vulnerable populations and overburdened communities in planning.

The bill would require the Department of Ecology to update its guidelines to require shoreline master programs to address the impact of sea level rise and increased storm severity on people, property, shoreline natural resources, and the environment. It would require flood control management plans to include consideration of climate change impacts, including the impacts of sea level rise and increased storm severity.

HB1176

HB1176 – Creating a Washington Climate Corps and evaluating climate and energy transition workforce needs.
Prime Sponsor – Representative Slatter (D; 48th District; Seattle) (Co-Sponsor Fitzgibbon – D) (By request of the Governor.)
Current status – Passed out of the Senate Committee on Higher Education and Workforce Development March 15th. Had a hearing in Ways and Means March 21st, and passed out of committee April 3rd. Referred to Rules, and passed by the Senate April12th.
Next step would be – To the Governor.
Legislative tracking page for the bill.
SB5247 is a companion bill in the Senate.

In the House – Passed
Amended and passed out of the House Committee on Post-Secondary Education and Workforce January 23rd.  Had a hearing in Appropriations February 13th. Replaced by a second substitute and passed out of committee February 21st; referred to Rules and passed by the House March 1st.

Amendments in the House Committee on Post-Secondary Education and Workforce –
There’s a staff summary of the minor changes in Post-Secondary Education at the end of the amendment. The amendment in Appropriations made the program subject to specific appropriations and stated the Legislature’s intent to have it begin in the 2023-25 biennium and expand in the future.

Summary –
The bill would establish a Washington Climate Corps to provide climate-related service opportunities for young adults and veterans, with the objective of building low-carbon and climate-resilient communities and ecosystems while providing education, workforce development, and career pathways to service members. It would be administered by Serve Washington, which also manages the Americorps program, with administrative support from OFM, and would prioritize service in  overburdened communities. It would develop new service opportunities, and establish common requirements for participating service programs. In coordination with a range of stakeholders, it would develop and run a program for Climate Corps members during their service to provide leadership training, foster environmental stewardship and civic engagement, and expose them to climate related professional and educational opportunities. It would administer grants to support equitable access to participation in the Corps, reduce the cost of hosting members for service programs in the network, and support the development of new programs in geographic and topical areas that lack them.

The bill would have the Washington State Workforce Training and Education Coordinating Board establish a clean energy technology advisory committee to evaluate clean energy technology workforce needs and make recommendations to the Governor and Legislature. It would review workforce and business issues in the energy sector and its supply chain, and the impacts of the transition to clean energy on dependent sectors. It would recommend strategies to prevent workforce displacement, support job creation in clean energy technology, and provide support in dealing with workforce changes to businesses and adversely impacted workers. (The bill isn’t explicit, but apparently the Board would select the committee members from all interested parties, but including business and worker representatives from sectors affected by the transition.)

Each biennium, the Board would evaluate the workforce impact of Washington’s climate policies in consultation with the the advisory committee, the Department of Commerce, and Employment Security. It would do a literature review, in addition to its own research, on labor market trends and workforce demand in traditional and clean energy professions; demographics of the sectors; restructuring of jobs and skill sets associated with climate change mitigation policies; the wages and benefits of jobs in clean energy and the skills needed in them, an analysis of how the skills and training of the existing workforce can fill those needs; additional workforce development needs; and challenges that could emerge under multiple future decarbonization scenarios.

It would also make recommendations each biennium for necessary steps to support workforce training for clean energy technology occupations, consulting with postsecondary training partners, and considering the occupational training and skills already covered in existing programs; new skills that could be integrated into those; occupations and skill sets that require developing new programs; and resources needed to deliver training programs and support workers in the transition to clean energy technology.

The board would conduct a study of the feasibility of a program to preserve income and benefits for workers close to retirement who face job loss or transition because of energy technology sector changes. It would report at least every two years to the Governor and committees of the Legislature with recommendations on how the state can support worker and employer needs in response to changing workforce requirements for clean energy technology, including the recommendations of the advisory committee and the Board’s own work.

(The bill would also repeal the legislation establishing several earlier programs about workforce development in green industries.)

HB1175

HB1175 – Creates a state run financial insurance program for owners and operators of underground petroleum storage tanks.
Prime Sponsor – Representative Doglio (D; 22nd District; Olympia) (Co-Sponsor Dye – R) (By request of the Pollution Liability Insurance Agency.)
Current status – Had a hearing in the Senate Committee on Environment, Energy & Technology March 22nd. Passed out of committee March 28th and referred to Ways and Means. Had a hearing there March 30th, and passed out of committee April 3rd. Referred to Rules, and passed by the Senate April 11th.
Next step would be –  To the Governor.
Legislative tracking page for the bill.
SB5233 is a companion bill in the Senate.
There’s a staff report on the bill.

In the House – Passed
Passed out of the House Committee on Environment & Energy January 23rd. Had a hearing in Appropriations on February 1st. Amended to delay the effective date of some provisions to October 2023 and passed out of committee February 8th. Referred to Rules. Amended on the floor to authorize the Pollution Liability Insurance Agency to use any applicable law in trying to recover the expenses of any remedial action covered by the bill, and passed by the House March 16th.

Summary –
The bill would shift from the current State reinsurance program for underground storage tanks, which assumes part of the risk of private insurance companies’ policies, to a program the State runs itself. The Department of Ecology would manage the program, which would cover owners and operators who registered tanks with the department and complied with its eligibility requirements. The program would provide up to $2 million per release for remedial action and for compensating third parties for bodily injury and property damage while the tank was registered, and up to $1 million for remedial action on releases before registration. Compensation would be limited to $3 million a year for releases from a single tank. Ecology would give preference to covering remedial costs, and could prioritize reimbursement based on the threats posed to human health and the environment; whether the people threatened might include a vulnerable population or an overburdened community; and other factors it chose. It would collect an annual fee for the costs of administering the program, which could not exceed $25,000 per participant.

The bill would return the tax on the wholesale value of petroleum products which funds claim payments through the Pollution Liability Insurance Program Trust Account to thirty one-hundredths of one percent from its reduction to half that in 2021. (The tax isn’t collected in a quarter if that account contains more than a set minimum or maximum; the bill doubles those amounts, to keep the account between $15 million and $30 million.) If there were not enough money in that account to pay claims, they’d be prioritized for future payment in the order they were filed, except that any creating an imminent threat to health or the environment would come first.

The bill includes allowing Ecology to assess tanks to determine program or cost eligibility, recover overpayments, and investigate or clean up a release with the owner or operator’s permission. It could deal with releases from tanks that weren’t in the program if they created risks to drinking water or were necessary to protect health and the environment in marginalized, overburdened, and underserved communities; and the owner consented and agreed to repaying the costs.

HB1173

HB1173 – Requires Ecology to create light mitigation standards for wind projects.
Prime Sponsor – Representative Connors (R; 8th District; Tri-Cities) (Co-Sponsor Klicker – R)
Current status – Had a hearing in the Senate Committee on Environment, Energy and Technology March 17th. Replaced by a striker and passed out of committee March 28th. Referred to Rules. Replaced by another striker on the floor, amended, and passed by the Senate April 7th. House concurred in Senate’s amendments.
Next step would be – To the Governor.
Legislative tracking page for the bill.

Changes in the Senate –
The extensive changes made by the striker are summarized by staff at the end of it. The changes made by the second striker on the floor are summarized by staff at the end of that. The floor amendment limits the requirements to projects with at least five turbines, no longer requires there to be more than one FAA approved technology for a county to adopt a wind energy ordinance, and removes practicability from the criteria for selecting light-mitigating technology.

In the House – Passed
Had a hearing in the House Committee on Environment & Energy January 16th. Replaced by a substitute and passed out of committee February 2nd. Referred to Rules. Replaced by a striker on the floor and passed by the House February 27th.

Substitute –
The substitute now simply requires utility scale wind projects or large turbines with obstruction lights to have aircraft detection lighting systems (or the best available light mitigation if the FAA doesn’t allow those systems). It has Ecology enforce that as a regulation rather than making it a condition of permitting. The striker delays the date for compliance by a year, requires the best “practicable” alternative technology rather than the best “available” technology when detection lighting systems aren’t allowed, and authorizes Ecology to delay enforcing the requirement in various situations.

Summary –
The bill would require Ecology to develop rules to reduce the light pollution from projects, in consultation with DOT and the Energy Facility Site Evaluation Council, and with input from counties and cities. The rules would apply to new and existing projects, and to any aviation obstructions associated with the facility, including meteorological towers of any height. They’d include service and maintenance requirements and safety standards; and they would require sensors to detect approaching aircraft and automatically activate the appropriate lights until they were no longer needed.

HB1166

HB1166 – Creates a water quality trading program to help Clean Water Act permittees meet maximum daily temperature discharge limits. (Dead.)
Prime Sponsor – Representative Dye (R; 9th District; Southeast Washington)
Current status – Had a hearing in the House Committee on Environment & Energy January 16th. Still in committee by cutoff.
Next step would be – Dead bill.
Legislative tracking page for the bill.

Comments –
See also HB1381.

Summary –
The bill would require the Department of Ecology to creates a “watershed-based water quality trading program” in which parties with total maximum daily temperature load limits on discharges contributing to raising the heat of water bodies would be allowed to continue to exceed their local limit by reducing heat contributions elsewhere in the watershed. The Department would be required to offer incentives whenever feasible for improvements made by or on behalf of the permittee in the built environment or that otherwise address the urban heat island effect on waters of the state. (There’s a summary of the permit rules about this issue in the staff report for HB1381.)

Though the bill refers to “urban heat island effects,” I think it’s probably reasonable to assume it’s also a response to the EPA’s 2021’s imposition of total maximum daily load limits for temperature in water discharges to the Columbia and the Snake, in Representative Dye’s part of the state.)

HB1164

HB1164 – Creates a producer responsibility program for appliance refrigerants and insulating foam.
Prime Sponsor – Representative Doglio (D; 22nd District; Olympia) (Co-Sponsor Fitzgibbon )
Current status – Had a hearing in the House Committee on Environment & Energy February 16th. Still there at cutoff.
Next step would be – Dead bill.
Legislative tracking page for the bill.

Summary –
The bill would make the parties categorized as producers responsible for creating and funding a stewardship system for dealing with the refrigerants and insulating foam in a wide range of used residential, commercial, and institutional appliances. (It excludes appliances over 1,000 pounds, those that are integral parts of structures, like ice rink refrigeration systems and commercial or multifamily central air conditioning systems, and the air conditioners in vehicles and other mobile applications.) Producers would have to participate in a stewardship organization with a plan to sell covered appliances in the state. The Department of Ecology would implement the program, approve plans, set fees to recover its administrative costs from producers, and enforce the bill’s requirements.

Plans would need to be submitted by 2027 and include methods for achieving the bill’s performance goals; education and outreach plans for retailers and consumers; mechanisms for collecting covered appliances and paying the plan’s financial incentives for turning them in; describe how the program will use consistent best environmental practices in managing pieces of collected appliances; identify brokers, transporters, processors, and facilities to be used by the program; and describe the methods for financing it, including modulating producers’ fees to encourage recycling, resource conservation, the use of low emission refrigerants, and other environmental goals. (The bill exempts an organization’s receipts from its charges for producer members from the B&O tax.) After five years Ecology could require programs that were not meeting performance goals to submit revised plans.

The bill’s performance requirements begin at different levels in 2027 and 2028, between 30% and 75% of the in-state sales for different categories of appliances in baseline years set by Ecology. They increase by 5% a year until they reach 70% to 90%, depending on the category.

Stewardship organizations would have to provide for the free collection of covered appliances directly or at sites, including at least one permanent site in each county. They’d need to provide payments to consumers (in addition to any energy efficiency or utility incentives) that Ecology agreed were sufficient to incentivize the use of the program and to discourage illegal dumping or venting of refrigerants or other pollutants. They’d be required to reimburse local governments for the costs of using a local facility or solid waste handling site as a collection location. Retailers would have to make information provided by organizations about the program available to customers, and could choose to provide collection sites.

There are various reporting requirements, and a provision for maintaining the confidentiality of submitted information. Ecology could take a variety of steps to deal with organizations that were not meeting their obligations, including impose fines of up to $1,000 per violation per day, after a warning, and up to $10,000 per violation per day for the second and each subsequent violation. Appeals would be handled by the Pollution Control Hearings Board.

HB1170

HB1170 – Updating the State’s climate resilience strategy.
Prime Sponsor – Representative Street (D; 37th District; Seattle) (Co-Sponsor Couture – R) (By request of the Department of Ecology)
Current status – Had a hearing in the Senate Committee on Environment, Energy and Technology March 10th and passed out of committee March 21st. Had a hearing in Ways and Means March 31st, and passed out of committee April 3rd. Referred to Rules. Amended on the floor to specify that nothing related to developing and updating the strategy creates any new or additional regulatory authority for any agency, and passed by the Senate April 8th. House concurred in Senate’s amendments.
Next step would be – To the Governor.
Legislative tracking page for the bill.
SB5093 is a companion bill in the Senate.

In the House – Passed
Concluded a hearing in the House Committee on Environment and Energy on January 16th; amended and passed out of committee January 26th. Had a hearing in Appropriations February 6th, amended to shift a deadline by one month and passed out of committee February 9th. Referred to Rules. Amended on the floor and passed by the House February 27th.

House Committee and Floor Amendments –
The committee amendments would require a workgroup on improving the coordination of funding for climate resilience;  require Ecology to estimate agency costs for implementing the updated strategy; report on those  to the Governor and Legislature by September 30, 2024; report every two years on appropriated funding for implementing the strategy. One specifies that agencies can only consider climate change impacts in their policies and programs to that extent that’s allowed under their statutory authority.

The House floor amendment added addressing and prioritizing specified risks and potential adaptive responses to the strategy, and would have the UW Climate Impacts group report on how to best evaluate resilience measures and their cost effectiveness.

Summary –
The bill would have the Department of Ecology update and modernize the 2012 Integrated Climate Response Plan with the assistance of other state agencies. It amends the legislation for creating that plan to include a number of additional agencies, tribal governments, and the UW climate impacts group in the process. (The plan would now be updated every four years, with biannual reporting.) The bill would no longer require Ecology to serve as a “central clearinghouse” for relevant scientific and technical information about the impacts of climate change on the state. It would add explicit requirements for collaboration and engagement with various parties on environmental justice issues. It adds consideration of various time scales to the planning scenarios, and strengthens the language requiring agencies to prioritize climate resilience and adaptation in their planning. The bill would have Ecology recommend a durable structure for coordinating and implementing the state’s climate resilience strategy, including a process for prioritizing and coordinating funding across agencies, and work with OFM and other agencies on coordinating state responses to Federal funding opportunities for climate resilience.

The bill would rewrite and expand the requirements for the plan, dropping several topics, and now including:
(1) A summary of each agency’s current climate resilience priorities, plans, and actions;
(ii) Strategies and actions to address the highest climate vulnerabilities and risks to Washington’s communities and ecosystems;
(iii) A lead agency or group of agencies assigned to implement actions; and
(iv) Key gaps to advancing climate resilience actions, including in state laws, policies, regulations, rules, procedures, and agency technical capacity.

The expanded strategy is supposed to:
(i) Prioritize actions that both reduce greenhouse gas emissions and build climate preparedness;
(ii) Protect the state’s most overburdened communities and vulnerable populations and provide more equitable outcomes;
(iii) Prioritize actions that deploy natural solutions, restore habitat, or reduce stressors that exacerbate climate impacts;
(iv) Prioritize actions that promote and protect human health; and
(v) Consider flexible and adaptive approaches for preparing for uncertain climate impacts.

Ecology would work with other agencies on identifying best practices and processes for prioritizing resilience actions and assessing the effectiveness of potential actions; developing a process for measuring progress and success towards statewide resilience goals; analyzing opportunities and gaps in current agency resilience efforts; and identifying other issues involved in developing policies and actions for the climate resilience strategy.

SB5144

SB5144 – Requires battery producers to participate in and fund a stewardship program providing for responsible environmental management of used batteries.
Prime Sponsor – Senator Stanford (D; 1st District; Bothell) (Co-Sponsor Nguyen – D)
Current status – Passed by both houses. Senate concurred in House’s amendments.
Next step would be – To the Governor.
Legislative tracking page for the bill.
There’s a staff report on the bill.
HB1553 is a companion bill in the House.

In the House – Passed

Had a hearing in the House Committee on Environment and Energy March 14th. Replaced by a striker and passed out of committee March 21st. Had a hearing in Appropriations March 30th. Replaced by another striker, amended, and passed out of committee March 31st. Referred to Rules, amended on the floor, and passed by the House April 7th.
The changes made by the striker are summarized by staff in a couple of pages at the end of it. The changes made by the second striker are summarized by staff at the end of that. The amendment removed Ecology’s authority to adopt rules by 2030 establishing a stewardship program for several other kinds of batteries, including large format ones. The floor amendment dropped various references to fees and civil actions about those batteries.

In the Senate – Passed
Had a hearing in the Senate Committee on Environment, Energy & Technology January 24th. Replaced by a substitute and passed out of committee February 7th. Referred to Ways and Means, and had a hearing there February 18th. Replaced by a second substitute; passed out of committee and referred to Rules. Amended on the floor and passed by the Senate March 7th.

Changes in the Senate –
The changes made by the substitute are summarized by staff at the beginning of it. An amendment exempted the improper disposal of covered batteries in a noncommercial or residential setting from the penalties. The second substitute made some minor changes in the definitions and the treatment of producers.  The changes made by the amendment on the Senate floor are summarized by staff at the beginning of that.

Comments –
A similar bill, HB2496, was introduced in the 2020 session and had a hearing in the House, but did not advance beyond that. A slightly revised version, HB1896, was introduced in 2022, eventually amended to create a study of the program rather than implementing it, and died in Rules. There are roughly 25 pages of details in the bill, and I haven’t tried to get all of them into the summary. (I’ve noted some of the changes from the 2022 bill in passing.)

Changes in the Senate –

Summary –
The bill would make producers responsible for creating and funding a product stewardship system for dealing with all used batteries under twenty-five pounds (with a few exceptions, including batteries in devices covered by the State’s electronics recycling program, ones that aren’t intended to be removed from products, and lead acid vehicle batteries). The bill would have people drop them off at “free, continuous, convenient, visible, and accessible” collection sites, and prohibit putting them in containers for landfills, incinerators, or waste-to-energy plants. (It would now allow them in mixed recycling.) The system would include education and outreach to encourage participation, but would now make retailers’ use of the materials producer organizations would have to make available voluntary. Batteries from producers who weren’t participating couldn’t be legally sold in the state.

Producers could set up one or more battery stewardship management organizations. An organization would have to have a plan approved by the Department of Ecology. Plans would have to include collection goals for their first three years “based on” the past three years of battery sales in the state by  the producers participating in the plan, and a target to recycle at least 60% of the weight of collected rechargeable batteries and 70% of others. (These are ten percent reductions from the previous bill.) Plans have to include a system to collect charges from participating producers to cover the costs of the system, and structure the charges to encourage designs that reduce the environmental impacts of products. (They’d no longer be required to adjust the financial obligations of producers in proportion to their use of recycled content in batteries.) They’d have to indicate how facilities for dealing with the batteries would be managed with health and environmental justice standards broadly equivalent to those in the US.

There’d have to be collection sites for batteries under 11 pounds within fifteen miles for at least 95% of residents and at least one additional site in areas with over 30,000 people, as well as locations in all counties and tribal lands, and in special locations like parks and on islands. Collection sites have to operate on a free, continuous, convenient, visible, and accessible basis for any person, business, government agency, or nonprofit organization. Programs have to use the collection sites of any retailer, wholesaler, municipality, solid waste management facility, or other entity that meet the requirements for sites and request it, but retailers don’t have to provide collection. Programs have to reimburse local governments for the costs of any facilities of theirs used as battery collection sites for the program.

Plans have to include safety training procedures for collection sites about reducing risks of spills or fires, and protocols for responding to those, for managing damaged batteries, and for collecting them at specified sites or events in each county . There have to be at least twenty-five collection sites in the state for rechargeable batteries between eleven and twenty-five pounds and other batteries between 4.4 and twenty-five pounds, with reasonable geographic dispersion, including one in each county with more than 200,000 people. (They have to be certified to handle and ship hazardous materials. )

Plans have to manage batteries by prioritizing prevention and waste reduction first, then reuse when that’s appropriate, and then recycling. They can only deal with batteries in other ways, like landfilling them, after demonstrating to Ecology that these other higher priority options aren’t technologically feasible or economically practical.

Plans have to include various education and outreach activities for consumers, retailers, and the operators of collection sites, and management organizations have to survey the public about their awareness of the requirements at the beginning of the program in 2027, and every five years after that, sharing the results with Ecology. They have to submit an annual report to Ecology, including an independent financial audit, data about battery collections and recovered materials, and a variety of other information about the program, including steps for reducing the amount they haven’t recycled if that’s relevant.

After issuing a warning, Ecology can impose fines of up to $1,000 a day for violations of the law and of up to $10,000 a day for intentional, knowing, or negligent violations. In addition, management organizations can sue producers that fail to join a stewardship organization or other battery stewardship organizations that fail to meet their obligations under the act to recover the costs of dealing with those additional batteries.

Details –
The bill requires batteries to have labels disclosing their chemistry and producer; products containing batteries would have to certify they were labeled.

Plans have to be reviewed and approved by the Department of Ecology, which is to collect a fee from producers to cover the cost of administering the program. It’s to maintain a public list of producers and brands that can be legally sold because they’re in the program.

The bill allows manufacturers to request that submitted information be exempted from public records requests, and has the Director of the Department do that if it isn’t detrimental to the public interest and is consistent with the public records law. It authorizes the Pollution Control Hearings Board to deal with appeals.

HB1138

HB1138 – Increasing preparations and funding for drought emergencies.
Prime Sponsor – Representative Chapman (D; 24th District; Port Angeles) (Co-Sponsor Dent – R)
Current status – Had a hearing in the Senate Committee on Agriculture, Water, Natural Resources & Parks March 16th. Replaced by a striker restoring the transfer to the emergency drought response account of enough money from the general fund to raise its balance to $3 million when a drought emergency is declared and passed out of committee March 23rd. Had a hearing in Ways and Means March 31st. Passed out of committee April 3rd and referred to Rules. House concurred in Senate amendments.
Next step would be – To the Governor.
Legislative tracking page for the bill.

In the House – Passed
Had a hearing in the House Committee on Agriculture and Natural Resources January 13th; passed out of committee on the 17th. Had a hearing in Appropriations January 6th. Amended to remove both specified transfers of funds and require Ecology to report on expenditures from the drought response account after each emergency; passed out of committee February 9th. Referred to Rules, and passed by the House February 28th.

Summary –
The bill would require transferring $2.5 million from the general fund to the drought preparedness account at the beginning of each biennium, and would allow using the money to plan for droughts as well as to prepare for them. It would allow the Department of Ecology’s grants to public entities to reduce current or future hardship caused by drought conditions to be used for projects even if they were not going to be completed while a drought emergency order was in effect. It would require transferring enough money from the general fund to raise the balance in a new emergency drought response account to $3 million when a drought emergency was declared; the account could only be used to provide relief for the immediate hardship caused by water unavailability. This process would be limited to one transfer in any fiscal year. (The funds could only be spent after appropriation, so I’m not sure when that appropriation for spending in an emergency would be expected to take place.)

The bill would have the chair convene the Joint Legislative Committee on Water Supply During Drought from time to time when a drought advisory was in effect, in addition to when a drought emergency order was, or when the chair determined, in consultation with Ecology, that it was likely such an emergency order would be issued within the next year.

HB1135

HB1135– Authorizing using impact fees for bicycle and pedestrian facilities.
Prime Sponsor – Representative Slatter (D; 48th District; Bellevue) (Co-Sponsor Walen – D)
Current status – Passed out of the House Committee on Local Government January 20th. Referred to Rules.
Next step would be – Action by the Rules Commitee.
Legislative tracking page for the bill.
SB5452 is a companion bill in the Senate.

Summary –
The bill would expand the current definition of the public facilities on which impact fees may be spent to include bicycle and pedestrian facilities.

HB1123

HB1123– Authorizing tribes or counties to prohibit local siting of a solar or wind project by passing a resolution saying they would prefer a nuclear plant. (Dead.)
Prime Sponsor – Representative Dye (R; 9th District; Southeast Washington) (Co-Sponsor Klicker – R)
Current status – Still in the House Committee on Environment & Energy at cutoff.
Next step would be – Dead bill.
Legislative tracking page for the bill.

Summary –
The bill would prohibit the Energy Facility Site Evaluation Council from recommending the siting of a wind or solar project in a county or “affected tribal area” if the county commissioners or tribal council passed a resolution saying the community or the tribe would prefer the local siting of a nuclear energy facility. (It would also prohibit the Governor from approving an application for certification of a wind or solar energy facility if such a resolution had been passed.)