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.