Category Archives: House

HB2206

HB2206 – Allows extension of sewers and other urban government services outside the urban growth area.
Prime Sponsor – Representative MacEwen (R; 35th District; Mason County)
Current status – Scheduled for a hearing in the House Committee on Environment & Energy February 4th at 3:30 PM
Next step would be – Action by the committee.
Legislative tracking page for the bill.

Comments –
The proposed amendments would leave the Growth Management Act in a rather contradictory state, since they would only remove some of the language saying that the patterns of land use for rural elements in counties’ comprehensive plans are supposed to “reduce the inappropriate conversion of undeveloped land into sprawling, low-density development” while adding that counties can, in fact, choose to build sewer lines and provide other urban services to support that sort of development…

Summary –
The bill explicitly adds the construction of sewer lines to the definition of “rural government services.” It also removes various language prohibiting counties from providing services that permit low-density sprawl, or restricting their ability to expand “urban government services” into the designated rural areas of their comprehensive plans.

HB1984

HB1984 – Exempts any location processing, handling, or preparing food or beverages for sale or service to the public from any law intending to limit greenhouse gas emissions.
Prime Sponsor – Representative Maycumber (R; 7th District; Northeast counties)
Current status – Had a hearing in the House Committee on Environment & Energy February 18th. Still in committee by 2019 cutoff; reintroduced and retained in present status for 2020 session.
Next step would be – Action by the committee.
Legislative tracking page for the bill.

Comments –
“Food processing plants” include any places where food or beverages are prepared, handled or processed for sale, or for service to the public without charge, in any way (other than merely washing, trimming and packaging vegetables and fruit for sale). It includes lunch counters, night clubs, vending machines, the Salvation Army, retail meat markets, school cafeterias, and so on, as well as canneries and processing plants.

I’m not sure how far the bill’s language about exemptions from measures “otherwise intended to support the achievement” of the State’s targets for emissions reductions goes. For example, if the state wanted to require grid-enabled water heaters in new restaurants, would those businesses be exempt? If the intent statement of a new energy efficiency bill included carbon reduction as one of the goals of the bill, would these businesses be exempt from that?

Summary –
The bill exempts all “food processing plants” from requirements to reduce greenhouse gas emissions and any measures “otherwise intended to support the achievement” of the state’s targets for reducing those.

HB1985

HB1985 – Relief from greenhouse gas regulations for agricultural commodities and food products with lower embedded emissions than imported equivalents.
Prime Sponsor – Representative Maycumber (R; 7th District; Northeast counties)
Current status – Had a hearing in the House Committee on Environment & Energy February 18th. Still in committee by cutoff; reintroduced and retained in present status for 2020 session.
Next step would be – Action by the committee.
Legislative tracking page for the bill.

Comments –
“Food products” include animal feed, chewing gum, bottled water, and “articles used for components of any such article.” (I’m not sure if that includes the plastic bottle and the gum wrapper or not…)

If 95% of the imported apples being sold in Washington had lower emissions than your apples, you apparently could pick one of the producers of the 5% that didn’t as your competitor for the comparison.

I don’t see what the B&O taxes that may be included in the comparisons have to do with emissions, or how you’re supposed to estimate the emissions of “labor”. (Are you supposed to compare the energy use of 17 farmworkers with the emissions associated with manufacturing and operating a mechanical harvester that will do the same work?) There’s also no further specification of how to define or limit the scope of these life-cycle analyses, so there’s lots of room to get the comparisons to come out however you’d like them to by including or omitting thing like land use changes.) Doing these for food is notoriously complicated; in particular, it’s been estimated that transportation from the farm to the supermarket is only about 4% of its carbon footprint; lots comes from how much fertilizer and machinery you use.

Summary –
The bill requires the Department of Commerce to consult with Ecology and stakeholders and develop a model that allows producers of products and goods to estimate the greenhouse gas emissions associated with the production and transportation of products and goods imported from out of state.

If any rule is created limiting the greenhouse gas emissions of agricultural commodities or food products a business can have Ecology compare the emissions associated with a specified competitors’ import with the same type of item from Washington. (A business can also provide the department with a comparison of its own from “a reputable greenhouse gas emissions expert.”)

If the comparison estimates that an imported product has higher associated emissions than the Washington one, Ecology is to provide regulatory relief for the producer of the agricultural commodity or food product to assure they remain competitive in the global market. This includes providing an exemption from any rules addressing greenhouse gas emissions, including those that limit or price emissions, require purchasing credits, or add additional costs to production.

Details
The calculations are to “include the gross estimated carbon emissions” of the items, including transportation, and may include “labor, business and occupation taxes, energy use of vehicles involved in production or transport, and clean air credit purchasing.”

HB2095

HB2095 – Creates grant program for sustainable farms and fields.
Prime Sponsor – Representative Walsh (R; 19th District; Southwest Washington)
Current status – Referred to the House Committee on Rural Development, Agriculture, & Natural Resources. Still in committee by 2019 cutoff ; reintroduced and retained in present status for 2020 session.
Next step would be – Scheduling a hearing.
Legislative tracking page for the bill.
SB5947 is an identical companion bill in the Senate.

Comments – The bill makes the grants dependent on the provision of available funding for a dedicated account it establishes, but it currently seems to require the Department to develop the program whether or not there’s any funding provided for it.

Summary –
Requires the Department of Agriculture to develop a sustainable farms and fields program to make grants supporting agroforestry; increasing the carbon content of soils; and reducing agricultural uses of water, energy, and of fertilizers and pesticides produced from fossil fuels. There’s no provision in the bill for funding the program, other than providing for an account in the treasury for the program.

Details –

Roughly sixty percent of the funding is to be divided evenly among grants for agroforestry; for carbon sequestration; and for reducing the use of water, energy, and fertilizers and pesticides. Grants can be used for down payments on equipment. The rest of the money is to go to what the Department judges will be the most effective of the remaining projects.

(However, there may not be money for further grants. The Department can also spend up to 20% of the funds on watershed protection projects, research programs or to support the development of new businesses in the state, even if those expenditures would not qualify for program funding otherwise. It can also spend up to 10% of the money on administrative assistance to applicants, up to 5% of it on educational campaigns to publicize the program, and up to 5% of it on administrative costs. During the first five years of the program, up to 5% of the funding can be used in developing methods for prioritizing projects.)

Activities on commercial working forest land, aquaculture and blue carbon projects, and activities other than agroforestry on land that’s in a land retirement program are not eligible for these grants.

The Department’s to consult with other agencies to develop methods for estimating, measuring, and verifying outcomes; and to prioritize awards to try to maximize the reduction in atmospheric greenhouse gases per dollar awarded by leveraging other funding. It’s to estimate these reductions by counting the storage of a ton of carbon dioxide equivalents in soil or standing trees for 100 years as the equivalent of avoiding putting a ton of them into the atmosphere, and by treating storage for lesser periods of time proportionally.

The Department can require applicants to enter into contracts committing them to carry on activities for various periods of time, including in perpetuity, as a condition for receiving funding for a project. They can receive an annual payment for storage during the previous year, or a payment based on expected future storage, with a provision for recovering funding if that doesn’t materialize because they’re negligent.

The Department’s to report to the Legislature on the program every two years.

HB2082

HB2082 – Pilot project for riparian agroforestry and carbon sequestration with payments to landowners.
Prime Sponsor – Representative Walsh (R; 19th District; Southwest Washington)
Current status – Referred to College & Workforce Development Committee. Still in committee by cutoff 2019. Reintroduced and retained in present status for 2020 session.
Next step would be –  Scheduling a hearing.
Legislative tracking page for the bill.

Comments –
The current bill lacks the sort of details about how to manage payments for sequestration that SB5947 proposes methods for. It isn’t clear how the sequestration landowners get paid for is supposed to be measured or verified. In particular, it isn’t clear how long you have to keep a ton of carbon sequestered in order to get paid $10 for it, or what happens if you get the fee and then cut the trees. (Since a ton of carbon is roughly the equivalent of 3.7 tons of CO2, the scale of the payment would be something like $2.70/ton of avoided emissions.)

Summary –
Creates an pilot program for funding tree planting along streams on fallow and underutilised agricultural land to cool water for salmon and sequester carbon. The program is to be developed by several departments at the UW, WSU’s cooperative extension program, and the Department of Commerce. Participating landowners are to be paid ten dollars for each verified ton of carbon sequestered.

Details –
The pilot’s to show the capacity of tree plantings around streams on unforested land to reduce temperatures and increase salmon survival; to establish the carbon sequestration benefits of agroforestry on fallow or underutilized lands; and to establish a model revenue stream for landowners. The pilot’s to run through 2039, and the bill declares the Legislature’s intention to fund it for that period.

It can include surveying available, unused, or underused agricultural land in Western Washington that could be used for riparian-oriented agroforestry production; locating private landowners who wish to participate in the initiative; and selecting, planting, tending, and monitoring various species in different locations to develop useful data about effects on stream health, salmon survival, and carbon sequestration.

They’re to produce a periodically updated study of changes in stream health, including the effects on temperature, suspended sediments and turbidity, water quality, habitat, and nutrient availability; the impact of different site characteristics including soil types, elevation, aspect, and precipitation on tree growth and carbon sequestration rates; and the amount of carbon sequestered per site, per acre, and per year, across different soil types and tree species, and at different growth stages. Commerce is to report to the Legislature on the project and any available results every two years, starting in October 2020.

Projects are exempt from the Forest Practices Act’s rules.

HB2047

HB2047 – Researches carbon sequestration and supports participation in existing forest carbon markets and incentive programs.
Prime Sponsor – Representative Ramos (D, 5th District, Issaquah) (By request of the Department of Natural Resources)
Current status – Had a hearing in the House Committee on Rural Development, Agriculture, & Natural Resources, February 20th at 8:00 AM. Passed out of committee with an amendment February 22nd; referred to Appropriations. Second substitute passed out of Appropriations February 28th. Referred to Rules. Placed on 2nd Reading March 11th 2019. Reintroduced and retained in present status for 2020 session. Now in the House Rules “X” file.
Next step would be – Action by the Rules Committee.
Legislative tracking page for the bill.

Comments –
The amendment added aquatic lands to the bill.

Summary –
Subject to specific appropriations, would expand DNR’s current research on establishing baseline inventories for carbon stocks, flux, trends, emissions, and sequestration in forests across the state. Requires a report to the Legislature on results, needs for further research, ways to improve the methods, and a suggested schedule for updates by December 1st, 2020.

Subject to specific appropriations, would require DNR to help interested owners of forest land connect with existing carbon markets and other incentive-based carbon emission reduction and sequestration programs. This may include:

  • Identifying carbon market opportunities and incentive programs;
  • Matching interested and willing landowners with appropriate programs;
  • Studying the overlaps and interactions among different programs and identifying roadblocks to expanding them;
  • Assisting landowners with access to feasibility analyses, market applications, stand inventories, pilot project support, and other services;
  • Supporting policies that increase access to these programs;
  • Developing and, when possible, implementing incentives for participation in them, and;
  • Sharing best practices for expanding carbon storage and access to incentive programs.

DNR is to provide interim reports about this work to the Legislature and a final report by December 1, 2023.

Subject to specific appropriations, the Governor and DNR must form a carbon sequestration advisory group to report to the Legislature by December 1st 2019 and every two years after that on ways to effectively advance and accelerate carbon sequestration throughout the state, considering the need to maintain existing long-lived carbon stocks and the need to make carbon sequestration easier; focusing on market efficiency and reducing transaction costs; on avoiding unintended consequences; and on maintaining a viable forest products and sawmill industry.

Details:

HB2009

HB2009 – Revises Senate environmental justice bill.
Prime Sponsor – Representative Reeves (D, 30th District, Federal Way)
Current status – Had a hearing in the House Committee on State Government and Tribal Relations on February 15th. Passed out of committee February 20th, and referred to Appropriations. Pulled directly from Appropriations to the floor, replaced by a striker, and passed just before cutoff April 17th 2019. Returned by the Senate to House Rules Committee for third reading. Reintroduced and retained in present status for 2020 session. Now in the House Rules “X” file.
Next step would be – Action by the House Rules Committee.
Legislative tracking page for the bill.
This bill rewrites and revises SB5489.

Comments –
SB5489’s Republican opponents in the Senate proposed 30 amendments to the bill when it came to the floor on the last day on which a bill from the opposite house could be passed before cutoff, effectively preventing a final vote there. In response, the House pulled this version directly from committee and passed it. It now will need concurrence by the Senate.

The striker’s provisions are summarized on its last two pages. (There’s one weird thing about its drafting; it now says that the foundation of the bill, the cumulative impact analysis that agencies are supposed to rely on, means an “analysis tool…” rather than the analysis done with that tool.)

Compared to the version that passed the Senate, it expands the task force by adding four legislators, the owner of a minority owned small business in an impacted area and a member from a mid-sized economic development organization representing business interests appointed by the Governor, and someone representing statewide agricultural interests appointed by the Commissioner of Public Lands. It specifies that the task force may consider tribal exposure scenarios, Federal SuperFund sites, and State Toxics Control sites in determining impacted communities. It adds two items to the task force’s work load – a report on best practices for evaluating potential displacements of residents and increases in environmental burdens during local governments’ comprehensive planning, and recommendations for addressing the equity implications of the effects of the historical application of Federal and State environmental and land use regulations on rural communities. It drops the recommendations for including analysis of the distribution of environmental burdens across population groups in SEPA evaluations and the methods for incorporating the precautionary principle in decision making from the work to be done if time allowed. It adds a preliminary report on uncompleted tasks and additional resources needed, and requires agencies to report on the adoption of any “rules, policies, or guidelines related to the cumulative impact analysis” to appropriate legislative committees rather than just to the Interagency Council on Health Disparities.

It drops the phrase that said agencies shall adopt the cumulative impact analysis “with any needed modifications,” and flatly says that their rules, policies, and guidelines must be consistent with the task force’s guideline unless they provide a compelling reason to deviate from them, which they must report to the Council and appropriate committees. It says the bill’s null and void if specific funding for it isn’t appropriated this session.

Summary –

The bill keeps SB5489’s intent section, and revises a lot of its prose, while keeping many of its actual provisions.

However, it makes significant changes in the composition of the powerful task force that both versions set up to create rules for state agencies about defining and implementing environmental justice. It now has the Governor appoint the representative of a statewide environmental justice organization to co-chair the task force, rather than having that person be “a representative of statewide environmental justice interests.” (That organization is presumably Front & Centered, the bill’s creator.) It replaces four representatives living in communities with high levels of pollution with three members from some currently unspecified “organization” appointed by the co-chairs with diversity in mind. It reduces the task force’s size, dropping a tribal leader; the representatives of labor, of business, and of statewide environmental interests; and the potential representatives from each of any other agencies the Governor might add. (Since there are still representatives from eight agencies on the task force, the Governor’s appointees would have a clear majority in this revised group.)

It also changes the central definition of “environmental justice” from “fair treatment and [a] right … to have access to a safe, healthy environment” to the “fair treatment and meaningful involvement of all people … with respect to the development, implementation, and enforcement of environmental laws, regulations, and policies.” (That is, it’s now about due process, not outcomes.)

Details –
It allows the task force to consider factors in addition to the UW’s specified analyses in its guidance to agencies on designating “highly impacted communities,” and adds recommendations for how to integrate the distribution of environmental burdens across population groups into evaluations under the State’s Environmental Policy Act to the task force’s work.

This bill narrows the agencies required to use “all practicable means and measures to promote environmental justice and fair treatment” from all agencies to those on the task force. It continues to require agencies to conduct cumulative impact analyses, but now says they “may” rather than “shall” “issue policies… and adopt rules …to identify highly impacted communities, create target environmental health standards, and prioritize highly impacted communities … in the development, adoption, implementation, and enforcement of environmental laws, regulations, policies, and funding decisions.” It eliminates requiring agencies to review their programs, plans and policies every five years to ensure they’re promoting the reduction of disproportionate environmental burdens and the attainment of the health targets.

The bill also makes specific provisions for staffing and funding, which aren’t in the Senate bill.

HB1999

HB1999 – Allows the Department of Ecology to adopt Zero Emission Vehicle standards.
Prime Sponsor – Representative Kloba (D, 1st District,  Kirkland)
Current status – Had a hearing in the House Committee on Environment and Energy February 19th. Still in committee by 2019 cutoff; reintroduced and retained in present status for 2020 session.
Next step would be –  Action by the committee.
Legislative tracking page for the bill.
SB5811 is an identical companion bill in the Senate.

Comments –
SB5336 would also do this, but it includes a lot of other measures to reduce transportation emissions.

Summary –

The bill removes the prohibition on adopting the California Zero Emission Vehicle standards from the current law authorizing Ecology to adopt the rest of California’s emissions standards.

(It may also extend the range of vehicles that Ecology’s authorized to regulate some by changing its authority over the emissions from “medium duty passenger vehicles” to authority over “medium duty vehicles”.)

HB1986

HB1986 – Tax exemptions for electric bicycles.
Prime Sponsor – Representative Shewmake (D; 42nd District; Whatcom County)
Current status – Had a hearing in the House Committee on Finance, February 21st. Still in committee by 2019 cutoff; reintroduced and retained in present status for 2020 session.
Next step would be – Action by the committee.
Legislative tracking page for the bill.

Summary –
The bill creates a sales and use tax exemption for buyers of electric bicycles and related cycling equipment.

Details:
The exemption also applies to up to $200 of other cycling equipment, like a helmet or a bike lock. It expires on May 1st, 2025 or when $500,000 in sales have been exempted. (The bill declares the intention to extend the expiration date if the exemptions have produced at least a 25% increase in the number of electric bikes by the time it’s reviewed, which I think would be in ten years or less.)

HB1226

HB1226 – Revising the Energy Independence Act (I-937)
Prime Sponsor – Representative DeBolt (R, 20th District, Chehalis)
Current status – Had a hearing before the House Environment & Energy Committee on January 21st. Amended and passed out of committee February 5th. Had a hearing in the House Committee on Finance February 14th. Reintroduced and retained in present status for 2020 session.
Next step would be – Action by the committee.
Legislative tracking page for the bill.
House Bill Analysis

Comments –
One amendment by the Environment and Energy Committee removed the sections that would basically have repealed the Energy Independence Act (I-937) if the State put a price of any sort on the carbon content of fuels or electricity. Another removed the provisions allowing utilities to meet their renewable energy requirements under the Act by using “clean energy resources” as well as the renewables the Act allows, and  making carbon reduction investments for at least as much as complying with the Act’s requirement would cost. The amended bill also added a tax break with an annual cap of $83 million for investments in forest fire risk reduction, allowing a lot of companies to get a credit for those on their B&O taxes, and allowing utilities to get a credit for them them on their public utility taxes.

Summary –
At this point, beginning in January 2020, utilities with over 25,000 customers will be required by Initiative 937 (the Energy Independence Act) to provide at least 15% of their retail sales from “eligible renewable resources,” which do not include nuclear power or power from the existing dams on the Columbia and other rivers (except for some new power from increased efficiency at those).

The bill expands the area in which renewable resources, and additional power produced by increases in efficiency at dams that utilities own, can be used to meet the requirement – from the Pacific Northwest to roughly the part of the country west of the Great Plains. In the same way, it expands the area in which the percentage of energy coming from biomass in a plant co-fired by that and fossil fuel can be used to meet the requirement.

Expanded eligible resources would now also include a utility’s share of any additional power produced from efficiency improvements at the old BPA dams and (for private utilities) the renewable energy credits associated with whatever hydroelectric power they get from BPA.

It goes on to create a new definition of “clean energy resources”, which includes any renewables, as well as any other resources that don’t emit CO2, like nuclear plants. Starting in 2020, a utility would meet the requirement if it got 100% of its load from these “clean energy resources”, and it made “carbon reduction investments in a dollar amount that is at least equal to the incremental cost of complying with the annual target.” (I think this means they only have to make the investments if they fall short of the target, which I don’t think will ever happen to the public utilities now that their old hydro allotments count under these new rules, but it might conceivably mean they have to spend enough money to meet the target, and then spend that much again on other investments that reduce carbon.) These investments could range from EV chargers, demand management, or storage, to forest health projects. (Removed by amendment in the House Environment and Energy Committee.)

Starting in 2029, utilities would also have to meet any new energy or capacity needs with “clean energy resources”. (This would not allow any new gas plants to provide occasional backup for variable renewables.) This includes procurements through new contracts; those would also have to specify the sources of the power. However, the governing bodies of utilities could waive these requirements if it was necessary for system reliability or if meeting them was going to raise power costs more than 5% above the “lowest reasonable cost resource”.)

In any case, they can continue to use, for as long as they want to or can:

  • Power purchased from the BPA;
  • Short-term spot market purchases;
  • Electricity from renewing or extending contracts in effect as of January 1, 2020, if that doesn’t lead to any expansion of the power or capacity provided;
  • Coal power from the Transalta plant;
  • Currently-owned generation resources and increased generation from those;
  • Power from increased efficiency from a utility-scale renewable resource or distributed energy resource (such as a combined heat and power plant), and,
  • Power required to maintain reliable service and comply with applicable standard of the North American Electric Reliability Corporation (NERC). They are explicitly authorized to procure one or more gas plants if that’s needed to avoid “potential conflicts with or compromises to” their ability to meet NERC’s reliability standards.

The bill creates a number of tax exemptions, deductions and credits for industries, pipelines, and utilities.

The requirements of I-937 and the bill’s requirements for clean energy and capacity are all repealed if the Legislature puts a tax, fee, or other price (at any level) on the carbon content of fuels and electricity. [Removed by amendment in the House Environment and Energy Committee.]

Details –

Tax Breaks

The bill creates sales and use tax exemptions, to expire in 2029, for expenditures to reduce or offset the emissions at an energy intensive, trade-exposed facility; and for ones to reduce emissions from natural gas pipelines. It provides up to $50 million to provide public utility tax credits to refund the businesses that pay that (including railroads, transportation companies, water companies, gas distribution companies and others as well as gas and electric utilities) for the entire costs of projects to reduce their greenhouse gas emissions, and a deduction from those taxes for the “cost of production of power from” any new renewable facilities built or installed between 2019 and 2028. (I think this probably means the a deduction for the additional lifetime levelized cost of power from the facility, rather than an annual deduction for the extra cost in each of those eight years, but I’m not sure.)

HB1796

HB1796 – Authorizes jurisdictions to establish commercial property assessed clean energy financing programs.
Prime Sponsor – Representative Doglio (D; 22nd District; Olympia)
Current status – Scheduled for a hearing in the House Committee on Local Government, February 12th at 10:00 AM. A substitute bill passed out of committee February 20th. Referred to Rules; placed on 2nd Reading March 11th. Referred to Rules 2 Consideration March 21st 2019. Still in Rules by the 2019 cutoff; reintroduced and retained in present status for 2020 session. Referred to the House Committee on Local Government.
Next step would be – Scheduling a hearing.
Legislative tracking page for the bill.
SB 5730 is an identical companion bill in the Senate.
The various legal adjustments in the substitute are summarized on p. 6 of the House Bill Report.

Comments –
Property assessed clean energy financing programs make the repayment of a loan for an energy efficiency upgrade a lien on the property, which is repaid through the property tax billing process, and which stays as an obligation of the new owners if the building changes hands. Thirty states have established these programs. However, it isn’t clear that they’re legal in Washington, because our Constitution prohibits any gift of public funds to private parties.

ShiftZero, a coalition of green building organizations, has been promoting this idea, and has obtained a serious legal opinion which says that they would be if they were structured the way they are in Texas, because that relies entirely on private financing, rather than lending any state funds. (However, it isn’t clear whether the State using its property tax mechanism to implement a private loan and other details in this bill are constitutional here. Presumably, a court will settle those questions if the bill passes.) ShiftZero has a flyer about the bill.

Summary –
The bill authorizes municipalities to set up programs like this for energy efficiency, water conservation, renewable energy, and resiliency projects in agricultural, commercial, and industrial properties; and in multifamily properties with five or more units.

A municipality can impose fees on property owners who want to participate in order to pay for the reasonable costs of administering the program, provided the fees don’t exceed the municipality’s actual costs. It can contract with another municipality or entity to administer loans, or administer them in cooperation with other municipalities.

The Department of Commerce is also to set up or contract for the administration of a program to administer these loans, and a municipality could contract with Commerce to participate in that program. However, the municipality itself would remain responsible for collecting payments on a loan, and for foreclosing on the property if that became necessary.

If Commerce contracted with a third party to administer the statewide program, it would have to be done efficiently and transparently, including:

  • Making any services offered 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;
  • Making information about any properties joining the program available to all interested and qualifying third-party capital providers so the owners could receive impartial terms from them;
  • Disclosing any financial interest the administrator had in any of the services provided to property owners to the public;
  • Allowing financial underwriting and evaluation to be performed by capital providers, and;
  • Working in a collaborative process with capital providers and other stakeholders to develop a program guidebook and documents or forms.

If funding were appropriated, Commerce could set up a loan loss reserve or credit enhancement program to support financing of qualified projects.

HB1862

HB1862 – Raises the cap on net metering
Prime Sponsor – Representative Mead (D; 44th District; Snohomish)
Current status – Referred to House Committee on Environment and Energy. Still in committee by 2019 cutoff. Reintroduced and retained in present status for 2020 session.
Next step would be – Scheduling a hearing.
Legislative tracking page for the bill.
SSB5223 was originally an identical companion bill in the Senate, but it’s been amended in minor ways.

Comments –

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

The changes made to the original SB5223 by amendments in the Senate Committee on Environment, Energy & Technology Committee are summarized on p. 3 of the Senate Bill Report.

Summary –

The bill requires utilities to offer net metering to more customers, increasing the current cap from 0.5% of a utility’s peak demand during 1996 to 4%. (At least, I think that’s what it does; the change it makes seems pretty ungainly. It amends “On January 1, 2014, the cumulative generating capacity available to net metering systems will equal 0.5% percent …” to read 4% instead.) Representative Morris’s HB1129 also does this, more smoothly, but it would change the current system in several other ways.

Details –

The bill requires utilities to use the surplus credits that they get each year from any net-metering systems that have generated more power than customers used to help low-income residential customers pay their bills. (HB1129 only allows them to do this.)

Requires the State Building Code Council to do a study and make changes in the code to encourage more use of renewable energy systems.

Requires the Department of Commerce to create a stakeholder work group and report by December 1, 2020 to the appropriate legislative committees on its recommendations about specific circumstances in which changes in compensation for net metering systems would be warranted, and what the policy should be for customer-generators in the same rate class. The work group has to consider reductions in utility income from different levels of net metering and whether there are any cost shifts to ratepayers associated with it, and must provide an inventory of other states’ net metering laws.

Like HB1129, the bill would make large utilities include the total number of kilowatt hours consumed during the most recent twelve months on all customers’ bills.

HB1443

HB1443 – Extends lowered B&O tax rate to include mass timber products.
Prime Sponsor – Representative Chapman (D, 24th District, Clallam County)
Current status – Had a hearing in the House Committee on Rural Development, Agriculture, & Natural Resources February 6th. Passed out of that committee February 13th; referred to Finance. Reintroduced and retained in present status for 2020 session.
Next step would be – Scheduling a hearing in the Finance Committee.
Legislative tracking page for the bill.
SB5467 was an identical companion bill in the Senate; it’s now dead – in the Senate X file.

Summary –

Mass timber panels (which are also called cross-laminated timber) can replace a most of the steel and concrete in large buildings, avoiding the emissions from producing those and sequestering the carbon from the trees for years.

The bill extends the current lower business and occupation tax rate for timber and wood products to apply to mass timber. (It’s 0.2904 percent rather than 0.484 percent until 2024)

HB1832 – 2019

HB1832 – Electrifying public vehicle fleets.
Prime Sponsor – Representative Macri (D; 43rd District; Seattle)
Current status – Had a hearing in the House Committee on State Government & Tribal Relations, February 13th. A much weakened substitute bill passed out of committee February 22nd; referred to the House Committee on Transportation. Had a hearing there February 28th 2019. Reintroduced and retained in present status for 2020 session.
Next step would be – Action by the Transportation Committee.
Legislative tracking page for the bill.
The House Bill Analysis is available here.

Comments – The changes in the substitute bill are summarized on its first page. It removes all the requirements for electrifying fleets by particular dates, converts the plan for doing that to a study of the issues, and shifts the responsibility for doing that from the Department of Enterprise Services to the Joint Transportation Committee.

Summary –

Requires any 2023 model light duty vehicles or later ones that state agencies own or operate to be battery electrics or fuel cell vehicles. By 2026, a similar rule would apply to medium and heavy duty vehicles.

Requires any 2025 model light duty vehicles or later ones that local governments own or operate to be battery electrics or fuel cell vehicles. By 2027, a similar rule would apply to medium and heavy duty vehicles.

Prohibits the Department of Licensing from registering public vehicles that don’t meet the requirements. Would allow the Department of Enterprise Services to exempt emergency vehicles and any others if it determined there weren’t adequate vehicles on the market to meet their requirements.

Requires the Department of Enterprise Services to develop a plan for electrifying public vehicles and meeting these requirements by 2021, in consultation with a number of other stakeholders and with consideration of other vehicle fleet programs.

Details:

The plan must include:

  • Estimates for the number of publicly owned electric vehicles and internal combustion engine vehicles during the period between 2121 and 2030, broken down by a number of categories;
  • Estimates for the facilities needed to provide prompt, efficient, and cost-effective fueling for them during this transition, and an estimate of the yearly and total cost of building those;
  • An analysis of the electrical upgrades needed for those facilities and of the investment required to implement them;
  • Estimates of the differences between the purchase price of new electric and internal combustion vehicles during this transition;
  • Estimates of their respective lifetime costs of ownership during the period, including estimates of the yearly reductions in gasoline and diesel sales, the savings to taxpayers from those, and of the money that would have gone elsewhere retained in the state; and,
  • Identification of mechanisms that could be utilized to finance the transition of public fleets to electric vehicles.

It’s to include recommendations for rules to exempt vehicles from the requirements, and the Department’s also to evaluate the total potential costs and total potential economic and noneconomic benefits of the plan using the best available economic models, emission estimation techniques, and other scientific methods.

HB1664 -2019

HB1664 – Advancing electric transportation.
Prime Sponsor – Representative Slatter (D; 48th District; Bellevue, Redmond, Kirkland) (By request of the Governor.)
Current status – Referred to the House Committee on Transportation. Still in committee by 2019 cutoff. Reintroduced and retained in present status for 2020 session.
Next step would be – Scheduling a hearing.
Legislative tracking page for the bill.
SB5336 is an identical companion bill in the Senate.

Comments –
The bill only seems to provide specific provisions  for private utilities and municipal utilities, not the PUDs.

Summary –

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

HB1642

HB1642 – Expands on-bill repayment programs for renewable energy and conservation projects.
Prime Sponsor – Representative Doglio (D; 22nd District; Olympia)
Current status – Referred to Rules 2 Consideration in 2019. Reintroduced and retained in present status for 2020 session. Failed to pass out of the House by cutoff.
Next step would be – Dead bill.
Legislative tracking page for the bill.
There’s a House Bill Report on the substitute and a Fiscal Note.

2019 Legislative History
Had a hearing in the House Committee on Environment and Energy February 18th. Passed out of committee February 21st, weakened by an amendment. Referred to Rules; placed on 2nd Reading March 9th. Referred to Rules 2 Consideration March 21st. Reintroduced and retained in present status for 2020 session.

Comments –
The National Resources Defense Council did a detailed brief five years ago about the issues in designing these programs. (Often, they require that the expected savings are sufficient to cover the loan payments, so the project is  “bill-neutral”, though HB1642 doesn’t.) It can also be complicated to figure out how to handle one of these  loans when the borrower leaves a utility’s service area, or sells the property, but that’s an issue that the lender, not the utility, needs to take into account.

The amended bill makes offering of on-bill repayment program an option for all utilities, rather than requiring large utilities to offer one, and makes a number of other changes through an amendment by the prime sponsor which are summarized at the end of this page.

Summary –
In these programs, a utility facilitates a customer’s repayment of a loan from a third party for a renewable energy or energy conservation project by adding the payments to the utility bills. HB 1642 requires utilities with over 25,000 customers to offer these loans to their customers, unless their energy conservation plan includes an on-bill or off-bill repayment program for energy conservation loans that they administer and they or a third party capital provider make. The bill lets these utilities count the energy savings from projects financed through the programs toward their requirements for conservation under the Energy Independence Act (I-937), as long as the projects meet the Act’s standard for cost-effectiveness.

The bill defines the capital providers for these loans as “non-profit lenders, community banks, or credit unions.” It also allows smaller utilities and retail electric co-ops to choose to offer on-bill repayment programs.

Details:

Up to 25% of one of these loans may fund measures that aren’t included in a utility’s conservation portfolio.

Utilities have to provide borrowers in these programs with any conservation incentives they’re eligible for, and must have a marketing and outreach program to publicize them.

They can recover their reasonable and prudent costs for publicizing the programs and for upgrading their billing systems to handle the payments. They’re not responsible for recovering the loan; any payments go toward meeting the utility’s part of the bill first.

HB1549

HB1549 – Specifies requirements for lead agencies’ evaluations of greenhouse gas emissions.
Prime Sponsor – Representative Blake (D; 19th District; Wahkiakum and Pacific counties)
Current status – Had a hearing in the House Committee on Environment and Energy February 7th. Reintroduced and retained in present status for 2020 session.
Next step would be – Action by the committee.
Legislative tracking page for the bill.
SB5561 is an identical companion bill in the Senate.

Summary –

The bill requires the Department of Ecology, in consultation with a wide range of stakeholders, to develop a rule limiting agencies’ evaluations of greenhouse gas emissions.

Comments –
As I read the bill, a new source using new technology wouldn’t actually have to demonstrate it would have lower emissions than what it was replacing, or even that it probably would, in order for an agency to have to “accommodate and encourage” the technology in evaluating its emissions. It only has to “intend” to have lower emissions.

I’m not sure what the section that says you can’t require a project to mitigate emissions by more than a proportional share of the State’s greenhouse gas reduction targets is supposed to mean. (If the targets require a 50% reduction by 2050, and you’re building a project in 2037, do you need to reduce your initial proposal’s emissions by 50%?) Whatever the numbers, it seems as if it makes it easy to submit a proposal that doesn’t do much about controlling emissions, and then to cheerfully agree to reduce them by whatever proportion this is, requiring Ecology to approve your project.

Details:

  • The rule must establish a threshold below which an action’s direct and indirect emissions of greenhouse gases will not be judged to produce probable, significant adverse impacts;
  • It must establish a methodology for determining when the direct and indirect impacts of actions with emissions above that threshold will produce probable adverse impacts;
  • It must provide guidance for lead agencies about when it’s appropriate to issue a determination of nonsignificance or a mitigated determination of nonsignificance for an action;
  • It must require agencies to evaluate the significance of global life-cycle emissions in the context of global carbon emissions, and the significance of emissions within Washington state in the context of the total greenhouse gas emissions in the state;
  • It must acknowledge that significant cumulative impacts caused by other greenhouse gas emissions don’t constitute substantial evidence that a proposed action’s contributions to global emissions are cumulatively significant;
  • It must indicate how an agency should evaluate market substitution or displacement effects when assessing the life cycle impacts of an action;
  • It must provide guidance for addressing emissions from new sources which specifically accommodates and encourages new technology intended to substitute for or replace
    existing technologies and achieve the same production goals with fewer greenhouse gas emissions;
  • It must establish a framework for calculating the direct and indirect emissions it’s reasonable to attribute to an action. That must specify the scope and context for estimating the emissions, including whether to count the global emissions attributable to the action, or only those that will occur within the state. It must authorize agencies to “to incorporate prior environmental review and other inventories that quantify emissions for categories of activities and industries that have been prepared by the Department of Ecology, including those required by section 2 of this act, industry groups, or other lead agencies.” [I’m not sure what this is supposed to mean. Maybe it means they can only use assessments prepared by Ecology, but I think it’s probably supposed to mean they can use assessments by industry groups and other agencies if they choose to.] It must authorize them to rely on adopted policies and regulations of other agencies with regulatory jurisdiction over any direct or indirect emissions of an action to predict emissions and emission trends. [I don’t know if this includes agencies in other states and Federal agencies or not.]
  • It must establish a threshold of direct emissions attributable to an action below which agencies may not consider global life-cycle emissions associated with that action;
  • It must establish a methodology for agencies to use in identifying reasonable mitigation measures for identified environmental impacts. [Proposals can only be denied if the reasonable measures won’t be sufficient to mitigate the impacts.] This must recognize measures taken by the applicant or others to mitigate the impacts; it must let the agency rely on a range of mitigation measures including market offsets, new technology with lower emissions, alternate fuels, best available control technologies (BACT), potential efficiency measures, and, any other actions or measures required by other agencies with jurisdiction over greenhouse gas emissions that would result in a reduction of the emissions associated with the action. It has to identify acceptable sources for the purchase of offsets. The methodology may not require mitigation in excess of a proportional share of the state’s reduction targets or require mitigation to completely eliminate the impact of an action’s emissions in order to be considered sufficient for approving a proposal.
  • It must establish a methodology through which an agency can address impacts of climate change on a proposed action through resiliency and adaptation planning, including site design and other measures to address sea level rise and increased risks from storms and wildfire.

The Department must report to the appropriate legislative committees on the emissions for categories of industries and activities and anticipated trends, as well as how those inventories and trends may be used in environmental reviews.

HB1597

HB1597 – Including methane leakage from natural gas facilities in emissions estimates and regulatory activity.
Prime Sponsor – Representative Pollet (D; 46th District; Northeast Seattle)
Current status – Had a hearing in the House Committee on Environment and Energy, February 12th at 3:30. Reintroduced and retained in present status for 2020 session
Next step would be – Action by the committee.
Legislative tracking page for the bill.
The House Bill Analysis is available.

Summary –
Requires the Department of Ecology to develop a uniformly applicable estimate of methane emissions during the production, gathering, processing, transmission, storage, and distribution of natural gas in the state, and a rule to specify their global warming potential over a twenty year time frame. (The estimate is to be set at a level where there’s a 95% chance that actual emissions are not above it.)

The bill requires State agencies, cities, and local governments in general to use those estimates of upstream natural gas emissions in permitting, planning, and other regulatory processes, and specifically amends the laws about a number of State regulatory processes to require including them in emissions estimates.

Details:

Ecology must consult with the UTC, the Chair of the Energy Facility Site Evaluation Council, the Department of Natural Resources, and the Department of Commerce in developing this rule making process. It can require gas or electrical companies to submit information about the emissions for their existing or proposed gas facilities, but they can only be used in developing an estimate to apply uniformly to all gas emissions, not to particular companies’. Starting in 2024, Ecology must evaluate the accuracy of the estimate every three years; update it when needed; and report on it to the appropriate legislative committees, including recommendations for changing how widely it’s applied, if any.

The bill amends the Clean Air Act, the State’s targets for reductions in greenhouse gas emissions, reviews under the Environmental Policy Act of facilities or projects whose associated direct or indirect annual greenhouse gas emissions are reasonably expected to be over ten thousand tons a year, the provisions for carbon mitigation plans from power plants, environmental facilities site planning, the regulation of utilities by the UTC, and utilities’ integrated resource planning to require inclusion of upstream emissions from natural gas estimated in accordance with Ecology’s rule.

HB1496

HB1496 – Improving sustainability and climate science education.
Prime Sponsor – Representative Dolan (D; 22nd District; Olympia)
Current status – Referred to the House Committee on Education. Reintroduced and retained in present status for 2020 session.
Next step would be – Scheduling a hearing.
Legislative tracking page for the bill.

Summary –
The bill updates the label in the current list of topics that must be taught in public schools from “science with particular reference to the environment” to “science with special reference to the environmental and sustainability standards.” ((OSPI sets and revises these State standards for schools to describe what all students at different grade levels “should know and be able to do in the area of Environmental and Sustainability Education”.

If funding were made available, the bill would require OSPI to develop grants for community non-profits and educational service districts to develop plans for teacher education in next generation science standards, including climate science standards. Comprehensive and targeted comprehensive schools, and communities historically underserved by climate science education would get priority for these. In selecting applications and prioritizing grants, SPI could consider applicants’ previous success in developing teachers’ ability to help students understand climate science standards.

In this context, “climate science” means the ideas from various sciences, the integrating concepts, and the science and engineering practices in the standards that lead a student toward climate science literacy. “Climate science literacy” means understanding your influence on climate and its influence on individuals, society, and the environment. (A “climate-literate person” understands the essential principles of the climate system; knows how to assess scientifically credible information about climate; can communicate meaningfully about climate and climate change; and can make informed and responsible decisions about actions that might affect the climate.)

HB1397

HB1397 – Creates work group on electric and hybrid airplanes.
Prime Sponsor – Representative Slatter (D; 48th District; Bellevue, Redmond, Kirkland)
Current status – Returned to House Rules 3rd Reading by Senate at end of 2019 Session. Reintroduced and retained in present status for 2020 session. Now in the House Rules “X” file.
Next step would be – Action by the Rules Committee.
Legislative tracking page for the bill.

2019 History
In the House (Passed)
Had a hearing before the House Committee on Transportation on February 7th. Passed out of committee February 25th; referred to Rules. Placed on 2nd reading by the Rules Committee March 1st. Passed by the House March 5th.

In the Senate
Referred to the Senate Transportation Committee. Had a hearing March 18th. Passed out of committee with amendments to cover using fuel cells March 26th; referred to Rules. Returned to House Rules 3rd Reading by Senate at end of 2019 Session.

Summary –
The bill requires the Department of Transportation to convene a work group on hybrid and electric regional aircraft, including representatives from the electric aircraft industry, the aircraft manufacturing industry, electric utility districts, the battery industry, the Department of Commerce, the Department of Transportation Aviation Division, the Airline Pilots’ Association, a primary airport representing an airport association, and the airline industry.

They’re to study, at least:

  • Infrastructure requirements necessary to facilitate electric aircraft operations at airports;
  • Potential economic and public benefits including the direct and indirect impact on the state’s manufacturing and service jobs and wages;
  • Potential incentives for industry in the manufacturing and operation of electric aircraft for regional air travel;
  • Educational and workforce requirements for manufacturing and maintaining these planes;
  • Demand and forecast for their use, including an expected timeline for their entering the market given Federal certification requirements;
  • Identification of up to six airports in the state that might benefit from a pilot program once such an aircraft for commercial use is available; and,
  • Recommendations to further their adoption, including specific, measurable goals for the years 2030, 2040, and 2050 that reflect progressive and substantial increases in their use.

The work group must submit a report with recommendations to both transportation committees of the Legislature by November 15, 2020, as well as a progress report on any efforts to implement the recommendations by February 15, 2021, and every two years after that.

HB1332

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

HB1232

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

Summary –

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

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

HB1167

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

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

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

HB1128

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

.

HB1129

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

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

Summary –

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

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

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

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

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

HB1127

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

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

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

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

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

HB1113

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

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

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

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

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

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

HB1110

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

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

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

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

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

The floor amendments:

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

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

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

Comments –

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

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

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

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

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

Details :

Standards –

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

– Credits and trading

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

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

– Cost containment mechanisms

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

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

– Relations with other states

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

– Electric utility reinvestments

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

– Reporting

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

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

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

– Removes “poison pill” provisions

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

HB1029

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

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

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