OLYMPIA — Gov. Jay Inslee’s proposal for regulating greenhouse gas emissions has cleared its first of several hurdles in a 6-to-5 party-line vote Feb. 10 in the Democrat-controlled House Environment Committee.
House Bill 1314, the Carbon Pollution Accountability Act, would establish a statewide cap on carbon emissions, requiring Washington’s 130 largest polluters to buy credits in order to continue releasing carbon and other gasses into the atmosphere. With credits starting at $12 per-ton of emissions, the program is estimated to bring in $1 billion its first year.
The narrow vote on the bill was the first concrete action on the governor’s signature climate proposal this session.
“This is the only proposal on the table in this Legislature right now that actually attains the greenhouse-gas reductions that scientists say we need to have a safe climate going forward,” said House Environment Committee Chairman Joe Fitzgibbon, D-Burien, the bill’s prime sponsor.
House Republicans on the panel were united in opposition.
Ranking minority leader Rep. Matt Shea, R-Spokane Valley, urged the committee to vote down the proposal. He said Washington is already a leader in environmental policy “because we want to be good stewards, despite the fact that there’s been pretty significant scientific evidence that says there has not been warming” over the past two decades.
Shea attributed his claim to the Met Office Hadley Centre, one of the United Kingdom’s leading climate research groups.
However, its website says that in recent decades temperatures have continued to increase and that “compared with climate change patterns throughout Earth’s history, the rate of temperature rise since the Industrial Revolution is extremely high.” Shea has previously attributed the notion to the New American Press, a poetry and literature magazine.
Most of Tuesday’s committee session dealt with 31 proposed amendments to the original bill, although only eight were eventually ratified.
Most of the proposed amendments were drafted by Shea and Rep. Shelly Short, R-Addy, to provide polluting firms with free emissions credits or to exempt certain industries from the program entirely.
Short proposed giving free and permanent emissions credits to most industries at levels equivalent to their historical emission rates, which would allow them to continue polluting at their current levels without having to buy additional credits to do so. Shea wanted to exempt any firm that gets its electricity from out of state.
Democrats argued that adopting either idea would undermine the original purpose of the bill: to reduce greenhouse gas emissions. Many of Short’s and Shea’s proposals failed on a party-line vote. By the end of the committee session, only aviation-fuel emissions were ruled exempt from the program.
Fitzgibbon said he is open to any additions or changes to the bill that could help reduce emission levels.
“I think we’re going to have a lot more work on this bill,” he said. “A lot more eyes will see this as we move forward, and that’s a good thing.”
The bill now goes to either the House Appropriations Committee or the House Finance Committee. If it clears the next committee hurdle and can get 50 votes on the House floor, the bill would then move on to the Republican-controlled Senate, where Majority Leader Mark Schoesler, R-Ritzville, and Senate Energy, Environment and Telecommunications Committee Chairman Doug Ericksen, R-Ferndale, have expressed staunch opposition to the governor’s proposal.
A Senate companion bill to HB 1314, SB 5283 introduced by prime sponsor Sen. Kevin Ranker, D-Orcas Island, is assigned to that chamber’s Energy, Environment and Telecommunications Committee, but has no set hearing date.
Cooper Inveen is a reporter with the WNPA Olympia News Bureau.
