HB2002 – Changing administrative procedures to make it easier to permit clean energy projects.
Prime Sponsor – Representative Fitzgibbon (D; 34th District; Vashon Island & Southwest Seattle) (Co-Sponsors Berry, Duerr, Peterson, Ryu, Tharinger, Bateman, and Lekanoff – Ds)
Current status – Had a hearing in Environment and Energy January 27th. Still in committee at cutoff.
Next step would be – Dead bill.
Legislative tracking page for the bill.
SB5744 and its companion bill HB1988 would create a sales and use tax exemption for many of the same projects.

Summary –

The bill would cover proposals for electric transmission projects and projects to generate or store electricity from renewable resources. It would cover facilities to produce clean fuels or renewable or electrolytic hydrogen. Projects for the manufacturing of vehicles with no tailpipe emissions other than water, including motorcycles, and parts of both, would be qualified; so would projects manufacturing charging and fueling infrastructure for any of them, as well as equipment and facilities for generating renewable and electrolytic hydrogen (including preparing those for distribution); for producing clean fuel with associated greenhouse gas emissions not exceeding 80% of 2017 levels, and for generating electricity from alternative energy resources or equipment for energy storage.

The bill would require the official responsible for deciding whether a project proposal had to prepare a detailed environmental impact statement to notify an applicant for a project that was a clean energy project if that were likely to require an EIS, and to give those applicants a chance to revise their applications and mitigate the anticipated impacts before an actual final decision was made.

The bill would only allow the Shorelines Hearings Board to consider new issues or new evidence when reviewing agency decisions on the permitting of clean energy projects (or appeals about ones that had been structured as master programs) to the same extent that courts can when reviewing agency decisions. It would apply the same limits to the Pollution Hearings Board’s consideration of appeals of the decisions about solid waste permits for any projects listed in RCW 43.21B.110 (c) & (d) that were defined by the bill as clean infrastructure.

It would prohibit a local government from requiring an electric utility to demonstrate the necessity or utility of a proposed project during review of it beyond demonstrating it had performed assessments or obtained approvals required by the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission, the Utilities and Transportation Commission, or any other Federal or State agency with authority over the assessment of its infrastructure needs.

The bill would exempt information designated as critical electric infrastructure information by the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission or the Secretary of the Department of Energy under the Federal Power Act from public disclosure.