The Donald Trump “election fraud” conflicts across the nation will likely affect how Washington state will deal with climate change in its upcoming legislative session.

In November, the Biden administration convinced Washington’s moderate Republican Secretary of State Kim Wyman to join the federal Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency to improve election security.

After Wyman’s move, Democratic Gov. Jay Inslee appointed as her replacement state Sen. Steve Hobbs, a moderate Democrat, who had been chairman of the Senate Transportation Committee.

In the legislature’s last two sessions, the senate’s Democratic caucus split between its moderate and progressive wings on how much it would support Inslee’s agenda to combat climate change. Hobbs’s Transportation Committee served as a brake on some of Inslee’s proposals, as many global warming bills have a transportation component.

With Hobbs out of the picture, the Senate Democratic caucus picked Sen. Marko Liias (D) to chair the Transportation Committee. One of the chief stewards of Inslee’s climate change bills, House Environment and Energy Committee Chair Joe Fitzgibbon (D), told NetZero Insider that he thinks Hobbs’ absence removes an obstacle to keeping climate change bills intact.

More than a dozen climate change bills will try to make it through Washington’s legislature in a short 60-day session that begins Jan. 10. Consequently, any obstacles within the legislature’s two Democratic caucuses, which hold majorities in each chamber, could stop any global warming-oriented bill. Liias’ appointment as transportation chairman will likely smooth the path for any transportation-related climate bills.

‘Rapid Tornado’

The bulk of the legislation will be in Inslee’s new follow-up package of climate bills totaling $626 million in appropriations, which the governor contends will require no new revenue sources. This package follows the passage last spring of most of his 2021 proposals. Inslee’s biggest 2021 climate change victories were passages of a cap-and-trade bill on industrial emissions and a low-carbon fuel standard for vehicles. (See Wash. Becomes 2nd State to Adopt Cap-and-trade and LCFS Bill Passes Washington Legislature.)

“Climate change is a rapid tornado of damage going through Washington. … We’ve made progress, but we have not made enough progress,” Inslee said at a press conference.

The biggest planks of Inslee’s requested legislative package for the 2022 session include having all new construction in the state to be “net-zero ready” by 2034. Another plank is a $50 million allocation to tackle how Washington companies can compete with foreign competitors that don’t have to implement carbon emission measures.

One Inslee proposal that will inevitably end up in the Senate Transportation Committee will be tax rebates for Washingtonians buying electric vehicles. Also going through that committee will likely be requests for money to build two, 144-car hybrid-electric ferries and to convert another conventional ferry to a hybrid-electric model.

Independently of Inslee’s package, Democrats are eying a bill to install a fee on financial institutions providing money to fossil fuel projects. After being stalled last year, another bill will be revived to add climate change to local government land-use policies. Another bill has been introduced to tackle methane emissions from landfills.

A potentially bipartisan bill is in the works to speed up the state’s response to any droughts that are declared in 2022.

Republican Efforts

However, the biggest Republican climate change bill will likely go nowhere. Rep. Mary Dye (R) plans to introduce legislation to reroute funds from the state’s new cap-and-trade program.

The cap-and-trade law set up a task force to create a system to annually set total industrial carbon emissions in the state, a cap that slowly decreases through the years. Four times a year, large emitters would submit bids to the state in an auction for segments of that year’s overall limit and be allowed to emit that amount in greenhouse gases. Companies will be allowed to trade, buy and sell those allowances. The law anticipates the auctions would raise several hundred million dollars every budget biennium that the state can allocate to low-income neighborhoods and communities of color, plus other projects yet to be determined.

Dye’s proposed bill would reroute some of that money to improve forests in state parks, tackle wastewater polluting Puget Sound and mitigate flood and drought damages. “There’s a huge backlog in needed development in our state parks,” Dye told NetZero Insider.

However, Fitzgibbon said her bill won’t gain any traction in his committee.

Meanwhile, Sen. Judy Warnick (R), chair of the Washington Joint Legislative Committee on Water Supply During Drought, plans to introduce a bipartisan bill to deal with future droughts. Inslee declared a drought emergency for most of Washington last July after extremely dry conditions caught the state government and legislature off guard.

“We learned a hard lesson this year. … We need more flexibility in time of drought; we need more certainty,” Warnick said.

Her expected bill is intended to provide state grants to drought-stricken communities, better define what constitutes emergency funding and speed up the state’s responses to declared droughts. “I hope we get pragmatic and get something in,” Warnick said.

Inslee Wish List

Inslee’s package will dominate a large part of the 2022 session. In addition to the net-zero provision, Inslee’s construction bill will likely include language allowing the state to regulate the energy performance of buildings down to 20,000 square feet, compared with 50,000 square feet currently.

Another bill would require that gas utilities submit decarbonization plans to the Washington Utilities and Transportation Commission every four years. These plans would include emission reduction strategies and how to support renewable hydrogen and electrification efforts.

Fitzgibbon and the proposed bill’s sponsor, Rep Alex Ramel (D), expect significant pushback on the bill by gas utilities because it will cut back on their customer base in the long run. Ramel also said the proposed legislation would likely stress the use of “renewable natural gas,” which would come from methane produced by landfills, sewage plants and dairy ranch digesters. Renewable means that these sources would absorb carbon dioxide from the atmosphere in roughly the same amounts of carbon that they exude into the air. “We still have some kinks to work out,” Ramel said.

Other Inslee-backed bills include:

• • • A $50 million allocation to tackle how Washington companies can compete with foreign competitors that don’t have to implement carbon emissions measures. These industries include steel and aluminum production, pulp and paper mills and food processors. Meanwhile, Fitzgibbon has introduced a bill to provide no-cost allocations of emissions allowances to companies in that position, which will gradually phase out through 2050.
    • A request to have tribal consultants advise on climate change matters, including early notification of ventures that would impact their lands and treaty rights. Inslee faced political blowback after vetoing that provision in the cap-and-trade bill passed last spring.
    • The creation of tax rebates for residents buying EVs. To qualify for the rebate, a person would have to earn less than $250,000 as a single tax filer, or a couple less than $500,000 as a joint household filer. The proposed rebates are $7,500 for a new vehicle and $5,000 for a used one. An additional $5,000 rebate would go to an EV purchaser earning less than $61,000 annually, which is 60% of the state’s median income.

In a gesture to some politically conservative areas of the state, Inslee wants to provide appropriations to help revive a dormant smelter in Whatcom County to return lost jobs while giving off fewer carbon emissions and to create a solar panel manufacturing plant in Grant County.

The proposed restart of the smelter would require equipment that would trim carbon emissions below August 2020 levels, when Alcoa shut down the plant, leading to the loss of 700 jobs. Two unidentified companies have expressed interest in buying and reviving the plant.

A political wrinkle is that most of Whatcom County is in a district represented by two Democratic House members and Republican Sen. Doug Ericksen, a climate change skeptic who had been the legislature’s leading opponent of most of Inslee’s environmental measures. Ericksen’s position usually had been that environmental measures kill jobs. Also, an opponent of Inslee’s vigorous COVID-19 vaccine and masking measures, Ericksen last month died after contracting COVID-19 in El Salvador, although the virus has not yet been confirmed as the cause of death.

Independent Bills

Besides Inslee’s package, other independent climate change bills are in the pipeline.

Rep. Davina Duerr (D) has introduced a bill that would add municipal landfills and limited-purpose landfills to the other such facilities covered by a state law requiring monitoring and methane collection systems for landfills exceeding levels of heat and methane emissions.

Sen. Reuven Carlyle (D), chairman of the Senate Environment, Energy and Technology Committee, plans to introduce a bill to create a “climate resiliency fee” on global financial institutions in the state that fund fossil fuel projects. (See Wash. Senator Seeks Fee on Fossil Fuel Financers.)

Carlyle wants to add a surcharge to a financial institution’s business and occupation tax, the state’s tax on a firm’s gross income. He expects the surcharge to raise $80 million to $100 million annually for climate resilience measures, such as creating public cooling centers, relocating infrastructure at risk from floods and sea level rise and helping farmers and communities obtain critical water supplies during more frequent and severe droughts. The bill would reduce the surcharge as an affected institution decreases its investment in fossil fuels, eventually reaching zero when a bank’s investments in fossil fuel projects reach 5% or less of its 2022 level.

Duerr is also expected to revive a dormant bill to incorporate climate change in the state’s land-use planning law — the Growth Management Act.

House Bill 1099, sponsored by Duerr, stalled in Senate Transportation Committee — then chaired by Hobbs — last April after passing the Democratic-controlled House by a partisan 56-41 vote. (See Wash. Land Use Measure Nears Passage.)

The Growth Management Act, which is almost 30 years old, regulates long-range land use planning for Washington’s city and county governments. It requires counties and cities to review and, if needed, revise their comprehensive plans and development regulations every eight years. Duerr’s bill would have added climate change as a factor in the Growth Management Act and require comprehensive strategies, development regulations and regional plans to support state greenhouse gas emission targets and improve resilience to climate impacts and natural hazards.

Her bill would have required climate change to be considered in land-use and shoreline planning for the largest 10 of Washington’s 39 counties and in cities of 6,000 people or larger. Washington’s 10 largest counties cover Puget Sound, Spokane, the Yakima River Valley and the Washington-side suburbs of Portland, Ore. A legislative memo said 246 county and city governments would be affected, including 110 jurisdictions outside the 10 most populous counties.

The bill called for the state Department of Commerce to set guidelines by 2025 on how those areas can reduce greenhouse gas emissions and vehicle miles traveled. Because 40 to 45% of Washington’s greenhouse gases come from motor vehicles, traffic issues would become a major priority in those guidelines.

Finally, a bill introduced by Sen. Jeff Wilson (R) would require the Washington Department of Ecology to set up a program by 2024 covering how manufacturers of wind turbine blades would recover worn blades and recycle the materials.