February 5, 2024
Source: Washington Post
Photo Source: Unsplash,
SEATTLE — The jumbo ferry known as the Wenatchee can carry 200 cars, nearly 2,000 passengers and more than 115,000 gallons of climate-warming diesel fuel. Ship superintendent Tom Larson helped build this boat nearly three decades ago and is now presiding over its disembowelment.
With a view of Seattle’s skyline and the accompaniment of barking sea lions, Larson’s crew hoisted two 24-ton diesel engines out of the Wenatchee in the fall. They were driven to a scrapyard, attacked with torches and, by the next day, he recalled, there was nothing but “a pile of rubble.”
“It was bittersweet,” he said.
But the transformation heralds a cleaner future for the nation’s largest ferry system. The Wenatchee is the first boat to undergo the costly conversion from diesel to hybrid-electric, part of a broader plan to electrify the fleet. The ferry electrification effort is expected to receive more than $400 million over the years, generated by Washington state’s new program requiring the biggest emitters of climate-warming greenhouse gases to pay for their pollution.
The cap-and-trade program has been a bonanza for state coffers, bringing in nearly $2 billion in its first year. And yet opponents are mobilizing to try to snuff out a program still in its infancy. They are angry that the state’s new carbon market has driven up gas prices and are pushing to repeal the program — a question voters will probably decide in November.
The controversy shows the difficulties of cutting emissions even here amid the misty evergreens in one of the most climate-conscious states in the nation. And it’s threatening a signature environmental initiative of Gov. Jay Inslee (D) — a leader in the fight against climate change — as he enters the final year of his third and last term.
Washington has the second such cap-and-trade program in the country, after California, and the state aims to cut its carbon emissions by 45 percent over the next six years. The carbon market requires the biggest polluters — such as oil companies, power plants and food producers — to reduce their emissions or pay for allowances that grow scarcer over time.
Washington’s first year of auctions raised more than expected, generating a flood of revenue for projects to hasten the renewable energy transition and adapt to climate change. In addition to greening the ferries, the money is paying to build and install air-quality monitors in parts of the state hit hard by pollution and wildfire smoke; to replace gas furnaces and install more efficient heat-pumps; and to allow everyone 18 and younger to ride public buses and ferries free.
“The impacts are here, and people are experiencing pollution and fire and heat,” said Becky Kelley, Inslee’s senior policy adviser for climate. “It’s great to have a source of revenue to weather this hard time.”
Elements of the SensWA, an air quality sensor, built by environmental specialist Nate May, at the Ecology Department office in Lacey, Wash. (Annie Barker for The Washington Post)
But opponents of the program argue that it is raising the cost of living and creating a slush fund for Democrats. The repeal effort was launched by Brian Heywood, a Republican donor who lives in a Seattle suburb and manages a Japanese investment fund. He called the policy part of the “extreme left progressive overreach” in the state.
“They wrap themselves up in this virtue shroud that they are somehow the lords of the Earth, saving it from all the peasants. And they took $2 billion out of the pockets of people driving every day,” Heywood said. “There’s no one standing up and saying, ‘This is crazy.’”
Before the auctions began last year, Inslee had predicted the program would cost people “pennies” at the pump. And the state’s Ecology Department estimated an impact of 5 to 16 cents per gallon. But prices rose beyond that — a painful lurch in a state that has long endured some of the country’s highest gas prices. Washington state drivers get most of their gasoline from five refineries in the state, supplied from oil fields in Alaska, North Dakota and Canada.
Just how much the program has contributed to gas prices remains hotly debated. Ecology officials now put the impact at up to 25 cents a gallon. Others, including the Association of Washington Business, say the program costs drivers 45 cents per gallon. At the moment, gas prices in Washington are 32 cents per gallon higher on average than in neighboring Oregon, according to AAA.
Inslee, who has said oil companies may be “price gouging,” has proposed a bill to make them provide transparency about how prices are set — a plan oil industry representatives criticized during a recent hearing on the bill.
“Decisions around gas prices, those decisions are made in the black box,” Laura Watson, director of the state’s Ecology Department, said in an interview.
The focus on blaming oil companies for high prices, rather than trying to lower them, is typical of how Inslee’s administration has approached his cap-and-trade program, said Kevin Slagle, a spokesman for the Western States Petroleum Association.
Slagle said that higher costs, whether in the oil industry or elsewhere, get passed on to consumers. “That’s been the frustration that you’re seeing across business, industry and the public in Washington,” Slagle said. “Just admit there’s a problem and start fixing it.”
Slagle said the oil industry is not pushing to repeal the state’s carbon market.
“It can be fixed,” he said.
The controversy over gas prices deepened in the fall when an economist for the state Transportation Department alleged that he was forced out of the department after refusing to lie about the carbon market’s impact on prices. The former official, Scott Smith, was told his bosses would prefer that he not include those price impacts in his reports, said Jackson Maynard, executive director of the conservative nonprofit that has filed a claim against the state on Smith’s behalf.
Maynard, who is also Smith’s attorney, said Smith was unavailable for comment. He said the economist is a supporter of the cap-and-trade program “because it does increase the cost of gas” and discourages people from using their cars.
“For some reason in Washington state, the laws of economic gravity are suspended because the governor, for political purposes, doesn’t want to say, ‘Oh yeah, I doubled everybody’s gas tax,’” Maynard said. “[Smith] was supposed to follow that narrative, and he just wasn’t willing to do it.”
Inslee spokesman Mike Faulk said that an investigation into the matter is ongoing but that “nothing has been brought to us that would substantiate this guy’s allegations.”
As a political issue, however, gas prices are a powerful force — and even some Democrats want to scale back the carbon market to ease the impact on voters’ pocketbooks. State Sen.
Mark Mullet, who is running to succeed Inslee as governor, proposed a bill that would give polluters more time to cut emissions and add more allowances to the carbon auction — with the aim of lowering gas prices and saving the cap-and-trade program in the long run.
“I think there’s a very real risk it will get repealed,” Mullet said in an interview. “I think people care about the price of gas. And I think Democrats should care about the price of gas because it has a big impact on working families’ budgets.”
Washington voters often embrace environmental causes. The staunchly blue state has voted for Democrats in the past nine presidential elections. But it’s not been easy to put a price on carbon emissions. Before the cap-and-trade bill passed in 2021, voters had rejected prior attempts at a carbon tax.
Aseem Prakash, a political science professor at the University of Washington, sees simmering anger among voters who rejected carbon taxes in the past but now pay for it at the pump anyway. He said Inslee’s administration has done a poor job of preparing people for higher costs and justifying why they’re necessary.
“He should have said, ‘Yes, the price will rise, and the price should rise. Because we are in a climate emergency,’” said Prakash, who directs the university’s center for environmental politics.
Since he took office in 2013, Inslee has led the fight against climate change and championed the transition to a cleaner economy. He ran for president during the last election in part to raise the profile of climate issues. During his tenure, Washington has set some of the country’s most ambitious timelines to slash emissions and move away from fossil fuels.
Passing the Climate Commitment Act in 2021 — which created the state’s “cap-and-invest” program, as it is known here — was a major win for Inslee’s climate legacy. Supporters of the program say it has enough flexibility to prevent runaway prices and to reduce emissions in the most cost-effective way possible, and that the revenue boom from the program helps smooth the transition to renewable energy.
The funding is paying for road and bridge projects, salmon habitat restoration, electrification of ports, and projects on Native American tribal lands to help adapt to rising sea levels, among other things. Washington allocates more than a third of its revenue to communities overburdened by pollution, officials say, places where people are sicker and die younger on average.
“The environmental justice provisions of the act are really, really, really important,” said Watson, the director of the Ecology Department.
The state also plans to combine its carbon market with those already operating in California and Quebec. That would bring millions more allowances into the market, potentially encourage other states to join and lower costs for Washington residents, state officials say.
“You’re not going to see a 20-cent or 25-cent increase in gas prices as something that’s going to be set in stone,” Watson said.
On the deck of the Wenatchee, Larson, who works for the shipbuilder Vigor, is looking forward to cleaning up the fleet. With all the diesel ferries plying the Puget Sound, he said, “I’m amazed we’re not all gray-and-brown skies like in L.A.”
The conversion to hybrid-electric will initially save about 20 percent of the Wenatchee’s fuel use — then far more once charging infrastructure can be built at the docks. The goal is to cut state ferries’ carbon emissions from some 180,000 metric tons of CO2 equivalent per year to about 40,000 by 2040, when most of the ferries will be running on batteries, said Matt von Ruden, an administrator for the state’s electrification program.
Much of that transition will be paid for by the state’s carbon market — if it survives.
The money is “absolutely vital to keep the program going,” he said.
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