Washington Senate moves to adopt California emission rules

Associated Press

OLYMPIA — The state Senate has passed a bill that would adopt California’s emission rules for vehicles in Washington.

Lawmakers voted 26-22 in favor of the measure Monday, sending it to the state House.

Under the bill, the state would adopt a system where car manufacturers are assigned credits based on the kind and fuel efficiency of cars they bring into the state.

Those credits would then be used to set a quota for how many zero-emissions vehicles the company would be required to import into the state, and to have the quota automatically adjust based on whether the majority of the cars they imported were more-efficient small hybrids or larger, more gas-hungry vehicles.

The end goal would be roughly 2.5 percent of the cars imported into the state being the equivalent of zero-emission vehicles.