The program\u2019s early success has attracted attention \u2014 praise from climate advocates and pushback from anti-tax hawks. A hedge fund manager named Brian Heywood has funded a petition drive to repeal the Climate Commitment Act, over its effects on gas prices, along with other petitions to strike down the state\u2019s capital gains tax, give the police more leeway to pursue vehicles, and grant parents access to their kids\u2019 medical records at school. The repeal could be headed to voters as a ballot initiative this November. If voters approve it, Heywood\u2019s initiative wouldn\u2019t just cancel the climate law; it would block the state from creating any other cap-and-trade system<\/a> in the future.<\/p>\n\n\n\n \u201cThis is going to force us to do a better job communicating and defending our policies,\u201d said Joe Nguy\u1ec5n, a state senator representing White Center, an area just south of Seattle, who chairs the state\u2019s Environment, Energy, and Technology Committee.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Experts said that the law is already having tangible benefits. Businesses, hoping to avoid paying for costly pollution \u201callowances,\u201d are figuring out how to run their operations while emitting less carbon. Meanwhile, the revenue from the program is spurring clean energy efforts, including a large-scale solar project by the Yakama Nation, and attracting green industries like clean hydrogen. The funding will also help families install energy-efficient (and money-saving) heat pumps and provide incentives for garbage trucks, delivery vans, and buses to go electric.<\/p>\n\n\n\n The fate of the climate law could have ripple effects beyond Washington, the second state to adopt a cap on carbon after California. New York, for example, just unveiled plans<\/a> for a cap-and-invest program in December. Officials in New York are closely monitoring the backlash in Washington<\/a> state, and, in turn, other Northeastern states are watching New York to see what it decides. If Washington\u2019s law goes up in flames, states might decide against enshrining similar carbon-cutting laws. But if it survives the backlash, it could boost other politicians\u2019 confidence in putting a price on carbon pollution.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Grist spoke with experts in Washington about the lessons they\u2019ve learned, one year into the program. They suggested that advocates for any stringent carbon price should be ready to play defense right away \u2014 and should work to make its benefits tangible to people around the state.<\/p>\n\n\n\n \u201cThe success of the Climate Commitment Act will depend on whether real people in real neighborhoods are actually seeing better infrastructure and things like better transit, home weatherization and electrification, and reductions in emissions from industry,\u201d said Deric Gruen, co-executive director of the Front and Centered, an environmental justice coalition based in Seattle.<\/p>\n\n\n\n If the state\u2019s residents have heard anything about the law, it\u2019s most likely been about the bane of politics<\/a>: the price of gasoline. Washington\u2019s gas prices soared to $4.91<\/a> a gallon on average in June, the highest in the country. <\/p>\n\n\n\n Almost as soon as the first auction to sell pollution credits was held in March, raising $300 million<\/a>, opponents started drawing a connection between the climate law and \u201cpain at the pump.\u201d The price of emitting a ton of carbon dioxide clocked in at $49, nearly double the average price in California\u2019s cap-and-trade market at the time. Kelly Hall, the Washington director for the regional nonprofit Climate Solutions, attributes the higher prices to the stringency of Washington\u2019s program, which requires more ambitious carbon dioxide cuts than California\u2019s.<\/p>\n\n\n\n In a YouTube video promoting the repeal campaign, Heywood calls the law a \u201csneaky\u201d gas tax and characterizes it as a money-grab by the state government. \u201cWho knows where [the money] goes?\u201d he asks in the video<\/a>. He maintains that Inslee and state Democrats weren\u2019t upfront about its potential cost to drivers of gas-powered vehicles. Last year, Heywood hired signature gatherers<\/a> to go around the state, and in November, they turned in more than 400,000 signatures to repeal the climate law. If enough of those signatures pass the verification process, the repeal initiative will be headed to voters this November.<\/p>\n\n\n\n \u201cOnce those auctions were high, there were billboards and ad campaigns and everything blaming the price of gas on this,\u201d said David Mendoza, the director of government relations at The Nature Conservancy in Seattle. \u201cBeing ready for that pushback as soon as implementation actually gets started, I think is key.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n State officials have estimated that the program added somewhere around 26 cents<\/a> to the price of a gallon of gas, though some economists have put the number as high as 55 cents<\/a>. Confidentiality rules around which companies are participating in cap-and-trade auctions make the analysis difficult. Lawmakers like Nguy\u1ec5n are working on a \u201ctransparency bill,\u201d similar to one that went into effect in California last year<\/a>, that aims to open financial records from oil companies to see if they\u2019re price gouging.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Proponents of the Climate Commitment Act argue that Washington\u2019s gas prices have always been higher than the national average \u2014 they reached $5.50 in 2022<\/a>, before the climate law began \u2014 and that oil companies are choosing to pass the costs onto consumers. They also point out that drivers of electric vehicles in the state are paying the equivalent of less than $1.50 a gallon in electricity<\/a>. Last year, tens of thousands of Washingtonians<\/a> switched to electric vehicles. <\/p>\n\n\n\n \u201cIf we are concerned about the cost of transportation for Washington businesses and residents, we have to keep our focus away from the arm-waving of the variations of gas prices that we’ve suffered through for decades and really look to true solutions,\u201d said Michael Mann, the executive director for Clean & Prosperous Washington, a climate-friendly business coalition. \u201cAnd the true solution to lower our transportation costs is to get off of fossil fuels.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n Legislators are using the revenue from the auctions for dozens of programs<\/a> to tackle the state\u2019s two biggest sources of carbon emissions: transportation<\/a> and buildings<\/a>. They have set aside $400 million for public transit projects, including the free transit for youth program, and $120 million for electrifying garbage trucks, delivery vans, school buses, and other large vehicles. Another $115 million is earmarked for rebates<\/a> to help low-income households and small businesses install energy-efficient equipment like heat pumps, a key tool for lowering carbon emissions and energy bills.<\/p>\n\n\n\n The Climate Commitment Act requires that at least 35 percent of the investments go toward \u201coverburdened communities<\/a>,\u201d such as the $25 million that\u2019s for improving air quality in polluted neighborhoods. An additional 10 percent of investments are set aside for projects that directly benefit Native American tribes. The state budgeted $50 million to help tribes address climate change and adapt to its effects, for example, and $20 million<\/a> for the Yakama Nation\u2019s utility to build solar panels over irrigation canals<\/a>. <\/p>\n\n\n\n The rest of the proceeds<\/a> go to cleaning up transportation, accelerating the shift to clean energy, and helping communities and ecosystems withstand the effects of climate change, without specific percentages attached. <\/p>\n\n\n\n Front and Centered, which originally opposed the law based on concerns that cap-and-trade would fail to limit pollution<\/a>, is now focused on making sure that communities get their promised share<\/a> of the revenue. \u201cThe conversation is leaning into this thing about gas prices,\u201d said Gruen, the group\u2019s co-executive director, \u201cbut the attention really needs to be on effectiveness in reducing pollution and justice for frontline communities, and that seems to be getting lost in the conversation.\u201d He says that communities should get more of a say in the budgeting process, so they get to be part of climate solutions in their neighborhoods. <\/p>\n\n\n\n It\u2019s taking a while for some projects to get up and running, but that\u2019s sort of the nature of the work, Mendoza said. \u201cFrom my own engagement with government agencies, they’re trying to do things differently,\u201d he said. \u201cThey know that they need to invest in overburdened communities. They know they want to reach smaller organizations to get in a pipeline to receive these funds that invest directly in communities.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n Climate policies are often discussed in terms of \u201ccarrots\u201d (the rewards) and \u201csticks\u201d (the punishments for emissions). The \u201cstick\u201d in Washington\u2019s law prompts businesses to clean up their act so they don\u2019t have to pay for pollution credits. Some progress is already happening on that front, according to Mann of Clean and Prosperous. The oil giant BP, which supported the Climate Commitment Act, spent about $270 million<\/a> on efficiency upgrades at its refinery in Cherry Point near Bellingham, estimated to reduce the facility\u2019s emissions by 7 percent. Washington\u2019s law also gave the U.S. its first all-electric Amtrak bus line when the transportation company MTRWestern, which contracted with Amtrak, swapped its diesel-powered bus<\/a> between Seattle and Bellingham for one that charges on electricity.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Then there are the carrots. Every dollar invested by the state has yielded $5 in federal money through matching grant programs from the federal Inflation Reduction Act and bipartisan infrastructure law, according to Nguy\u1ec5n. Legislators in other states are jealous, he said, \u201cbecause we were able to take advantage of these things when they couldn’t, and it’s going to really accelerate the work that we’re doing.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n The global mining company Fortescue, for example, obtained $20 million from the state to build a multibillion-dollar \u201cclean hydrogen\u201d plant in Centralia, Washington, near an old coal-fired power plant that\u2019s set to retire in 2025<\/a>. (Hydrogen can replace fossil fuels in a range of tough-to-decarbonize industries, from aviation to steelmaking.) The project was recently awarded an additional $1 billion<\/a> in federal funds. Without the revenue from the Climate Commitment Act, Mann said, getting the grant money from the state that made the project eligible for federal funding \u201cwould have been next to impossible.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n Another example is Group14, a Seattle startup that\u2019s building the world\u2019s largest factory for advanced silicon battery materials<\/a>, which promises to make the lithium-ion batteries used in EVs more powerful and faster-charging. The factory, set to open in Moses Lake, Washington later this year, is expected to provide enough battery materials for 200,000 electric vehicles every year. It\u2019s bolstered by funds from Washington\u2019s program and the federal bipartisan infrastructure law.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Whatever happens next with Washington\u2019s cap-and-invest law, whether it gets overturned or continues to bring in billions for climate action, it\u2019s bound to influence how other states choose to tackle global warming. \u201cIt’s so funny when people see these things like this happen, and they say, \u2018Oh, well, this went wrong, and that went wrong, and that went wrong,\u2019\u201d Nguy\u1ec5n said. \u201cAnd it’s like, of course \u2014 that’s what leadership looks like. You know, nobody had a map of how this was supposed to happen.\u201d<\/p>\n This story was originally published by Grist<\/a> with the headline Washington’s cap on carbon is raising billions for climate action. Can it survive the backlash?<\/a> on Jan 8, 2024.<\/p>\nThe gas price debacle<\/h2>\n\n\n\n
![\"Photo](\"https:\/\/grist.org\/wp-content\/uploads\/2024\/01\/Jay-Inslee.jpg\")
Who\u2019s getting the money?<\/h2>\n\n\n\n
![\"A](\"https:\/\/grist.org\/wp-content\/uploads\/2024\/01\/wind-farm-fire-aftermath.jpg\")
How things are changing for businesses<\/h2>\n\n\n\n