By The Herald Editorial Board
The slogan, “Vote yes, pay less” is catchy; we’ll give it that.
But the rhyme in the slogan that seeks a yes vote for Initiative 2117 hides the truth that would follow with its passage; in loosened restrictions on industrial pollution; backtracking on the state’s promise to reduce carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gas emissions that are contributing to the climate crisis; and lost revenue and busted budgets for a range of improvements for air quality monitoring, transportation projects, green energy transition and disadvantaged communities.
What would consumers get in exchange for dirtier air, more carbon emissions and the loss of billions of dollars in investments in coming years?
Perhaps — if the oil companies are feeling generous — a 10-cent to 20-cent break on a gallon of gas.
The costs of each end of I-2117: “It would allow the 100 largest polluters in our state to pollute for free,” said Rep. Joe Fitzgibbon, D-West Seattle, in a recent interview, “without any guarantee that it would lower gas prices for Washingtonians, but with a significant guarantee that it would harm our progress on transportation, on air quality, on salmon recovery, on traffic safety, on our transition to clean and renewable energy, improving our water quality and on a lot of other things.”
What I-2117 seeks is repeal of Washington state’s landmark Climate Commitment Act, passed in 2021, an innovative approach that is intended to reduce carbon emissions by capping emissions by state’s largest polluters and requiring them to purchase allowances for what they do release, with prices set at quarterly auctions.
That cap on emissions and the payments for allowances are meant as incentives for industry to curb those emissions, bringing the state near to net-zero emissions by 2050.
The “invest” portion of the CCA allocates the revenue raised by the auctions to fund solutions that produce the technology and infrastructure for clean energy, reduce pollution and greenhouse gases and begin to correct more than a century of harmful impacts from fossil fuels, in particular for disadvantaged communities.
What the CCA provides: Since starting last year, the auctions have raised $1.8 billion in 2023 and another $481 million in three auctions this year for those investments that have included the purchase of electric school buses for school districts, free public transit for youths, electric vehicle charging stations and air-quality monitors.
Much more already is planned and can easily be reviewed on an interactive map assembled by Clean and Prosperous Washington, which is advocating for rejection of the initiative.
In Snohomish County alone, as outlined in an earlier Herald story, the map shows millions of dollars of planned investments, including electrification at the Port of Everett, a pedestrian bridge over Broadway connecting Everett Community College and WSU-Everett campuses, a pedestrian and bike path in south Lake Stevens, air quality monitoring in the neighborhoods near Paine Field, fish barrier removal projects across the county to aid salmon passage, forest health projects, hybrid electric ferries for the Mukilteo-Clinton and Edmonds-Kingston routes, and far more.
For all, funding would be jeopardized if not killed by passage of the initiative.
State Sen. Marko Liias, D-Edmonds, who with Fitzgibbon was among those who helped draft the Climate Commitment Act, said its repeal would be especially damaging to planned transportation improvements, including those made two years ago in the Move Ahead Washington package.
“If you think about Move Ahead as a three-legged stool, it kicks the third leg of the stool out and destabilizes the package, which would force us to fundamentally renegotiate the whole package to try and salvage the pieces,” at a time when the region and the state have other transportation needs to address, said Liias, who is chair of the Senate’s transportation committee.
By 2037, the CCA’s carbon market is expected to raise $5.4 billion for those transportation investments in Move Ahead. Loss of that funding would be impossible to replace without a new source of revenue.
The cost in lost jobs: Passage of the initiative also would jeopardize well-paid union jobs supported by those transportation, infrastructure and environmental projects, warns Billy Wallace, political legislative director for the Washington and Northern Idaho District Council of Laborers.
“This is about a lot of jobs for our members going forward. This is about apprenticeships going forward,” Wallace said, adding that the union is investing $22 million in three trades training centers focused on clean energy technologies, such as solar, wind and a “green hydrogen” plant in the Tri-Cities, that will support jobs during construction and after.
“Our members work in natural gas, they work in the refineries, but we also understand we have to make that transition,” Wallace said.
A price on carbon, a price on gas: Some of the early criticism of the CCA and its carbon auctions focused on the high prices that were fetched for a ton of carbon in the market-driven sales. Initially, companies’ bids were bringing $50 to $60 per ton, which drove concern about what those costs would add to the price of gasoline, diesel and electricity generated by natural gas. And there were spikes in prices seen following those first auctions.
It’s not hard to imagine that the price on carbon is being passed on to consumers’ energy costs. Determining how much is harder to gauge.
In June of 2023, the Washington Policy Center, a right-leaning policy organization, estimated that the auctions were adding up to 45 cents a gallon to the price of gas. However, that was when those auctions were pricing carbon at $50 to $60 a ton.
Those prices have since moderated, down to $29.88 per ton in this month’s auction and below $30 for the earlier two auctions this year, likely in anticipation of plans to merge Washington’s market with similar carbon markets in California and Quebec.
Currently, the state’s average for a gallon of regular gas is $4.12, according to AAA, about a dollar cheaper than the price last October following the first of three auctions, but still lower than the state’s recent high in June of 2022 when the average price was $5.44 a gallon, six months before the auctions started.
“One of the real challenges here is that we don’t have a lot of visibility into how oil companies set their prices,” Fitzgibbon said.”I think not just lower but really stable and predictable prices are, if anything, as important or more important than the price itself.”
In the early months of the auctions, companies were uncertain about what compliance would cost them, he said. Over time, more predictability for energy producers should calm prices for consumers, too.
“The lower and predictable prices that we’ve seen over the last three auctions, I think, are a favorable omen for lower impact on fuel prices,” he said.
This May, following interviews with industry experts, E&E News, estimated the auctions were likely adding about a dime to each gallon of gas.
What’s saved; what’s lost: No doubt, there are families and individuals for whom an additional $1 to $2 added to the cost of a tank of gas is no small sum. But at the same time, repeal of the Climate Commitment Act holds far greater hidden costs for them and all state residents from less-breathable air and its ill effects on health, reduced choice and access to affordable public transportation, limited hopes to hold back the impacts of the climate crisis and a delayed transition to a greener, cleaner energy future.
Initiative 2117 offers only a false economic choice; there is little to be saved with a yes vote when weighed against what would be lost.
If you will then, in marking your Nov. 5 ballot: Vote no, and let’s go.
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