The Democratic governor on Friday vetoed a bill that Equinor lobbied vociferously for to allow the city of Long Beach to permit a transmission line for one of its state-contracted offshore wind projects through a park.
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or years, lawmakers in Olympia have considered whether Washington should implement its own cap-and-trade program on carbon emissions or require transportation fuels to be less polluting. This session, they decided the state should do both. The two major policies, the Clean Fuel Standard and a program putting a cap on greenhouse gas emissions and requiring clean energy investments called the Climate Commitment Act, will act in concert with one another. They ll reduce greenhouse gas emissions, reduce air pollution, and require investments in cleaner buildings, electric vehicle infrastructure, and more. Both bills need to be signed by Gov. Jay Inslee to become law. In the meantime, here are answers to some of the common questions about each.
Dive Brief:
Washington lawmakers last week passed legislation adopting a cap-and-invest system. Once it s signed into law, it would cover three-quarters of greenhouse gas emissions in the state, including those from the power sector.
The bill, which is headed to the desk of Gov. Jay Inslee, D, also enacts arguably the strongest environmental justice policy in the nation, obligating us to improve air quality for overburdened communities that have to live daily with air pollution from emissions, Inslee said in public remarks.
Electric utilities in Washington already are required to completely decarbonize their energy resources by 2045. What the cap-and-invest program does is help unlock even more ambition, even more reductions from the power sector by creating an incentive for further decarbonization, said Pam Kiely, associate vice president, U.S. climate, at the Environmental Defense Fund.