OLYMPIA — A bill setting tougher goals for carbon emission reductions in Washington cleared a House panel this week with little debate and a handful of additions pushed by Republicans.
Legislation approved by the House Environment Committee on Thursday calls for emission levels in 2050 to be 80 percent less than levels in 1990, a target nearly twice as stringent as existing law but in line with standards in California and several other states.
“I think our members feel more moved to do something about climate change than they have for a long time,” said Rep. Joe Fitzgibbon, D-Burien, the committee chairman and bill’s prime sponsor. “I think people see there must be progress at the national level and in Washington we need to do something, too.”
Rep. Strom Peterson, D-Edmonds, serves on the committee and voted to advance the bill.
“I think the science is clearer and clearer that the (existing) standard is not going to be adequate to make a difference when it comes to climate change,” he said.
House Bill 1144 now goes to the Rules Committee to decide if it will go to the floor for a vote by the full House.
As written, the bill would codify recommendations contained in a Department of Ecology report issued in December.
That study concluded the state’s targets enacted in 2008 should be updated to reflect greater scientific knowledge of the causes, effects and pace of climate change.
Those nearly decade-old goals say greenhouse gas emissions in 2020 should be at the same level as in 1990. Emissions should be reduced to 25 percent below 1990 levels by 2035; and to 50 percent below 1990 levels by 2050.
Fitzgibbon’s bill retains the standard for 2020. It calls for slashing emissions to 40 percent below 1990 levels by 2035 and by 80 percent below that benchmark in 2050.
Emissions in Washington stood at 88.4 million metric tons, or MMT, in 1990 and 93 MMT in 2013, the most recent year of available data from the Department of Ecology.
To achieve the targets in existing law, emissions must be reduced to 66.1 MMT in 2035 and 44.2 MMT in 2050. Under Fitzgibbon’s bill, those levels would need to be much lower, 53.2 MMT and 18.4 MMT respectively.
Democratic Gov. Jay Inslee has endorsed the agency recommendations but did not prepare any legislation to act on them. So Fitzgibbon did and he also put them into a bill to create a new tax on carbon emissions.
“We’ll have to step up our efforts as a state” to meet the targets, he acknowledged. “But we have all known that.”
Rep. David Taylor, R-Moxee, a committee member, said he doesn’t support the new standards but voted to advance the bill after the panel’s Democratic majority accepted four amendments offered by Republicans.
Those amendments require the Department of Ecology to determine how much state agencies and universities spend on emission reduction efforts and, in future reports, include total emissions of greenhouse gases from wildfires. Another amendment requires the agency to show how Washington compares to other states in terms of its overall level of greenhouse gas emissions.
Taylor said that information will help lawmakers better understand the scope of the challenge of meeting a tougher standard.
“Let’s get a full picture so we’re not singling out a single industry,” he said.
Jerry Cornfield: 360-352-8623; jcornfield@heraldnet.com. Twitter: @dospueblos
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