HB1577– Issuing up to $4.943 billion in bonds, backed by a tax on fossil fuels, to be used for clean transportation investments and reducing greenhouse gas emissions.
Prime Sponsor – Representative Hackney (D; 11th District; South Seattle, Renton, and Tukwila) (Co-sponsor Wicks – D)
Current status – Referred to the Committee on Environment and Energy
Next step would be – Scheduling a hearing.
Legislative tracking page for the bill.
Summary –
The bill retains the carbon tax and bond provisions of SB5373, but it would direct 60% of the revenue to transportation investments that reduce emissions, and the remaining 40% to a variety of projects focused on clean energy, efficiency, and emissions reductions. It makes some adjustments to 5373’s environmental justice provisions and its reporting requirements, specifies that Ecology has the authority to regulate indirect emissions, and requires the department to exercise specified powers under the Clean Air Act to ensure that the emissions it regulates will be reduced to the levels required by the State’s targets if it determines by October 30th 2025 that the bill’s provisions are not likely to be enough to do that.
Details about the changes from 5373 (In process…) –
Investments –
Revenue from the bill must be used by the Department of Commerce for projects and incentive programs in Washington that yield verifiable reductions in greenhouse gas emissions in excess of baseline practices, for community engagement to support decision making on priority investments, and with high priority placed on funding projects that directly benefit economically distressed areas.
At least 35% of total investments must provide “direct and meaningful benefits” to vulnerable populations within the boundaries of highly impacted communities designated by the Department of Health’s cumulative impact analysis. At least 25% of total investments must benefit projects in rural areas, “or” at least 10% of total investments must be used for programs, activities, or projects formally supported by a resolution of an Indian tribe, with priority given to otherwise qualifying projects directly administered or proposed by a tribe. (There’s a provision I don’t follow saying that projects meeting both of these last two requirements “may count toward the requisite minimum percentage for this subsection”.)
Sixty percent of the funds remaining after servicing bonds must go to miles ahead transportation investments in programs, activities, or projects that reduce greenhouse gas emissions or mitigate the impact of greenhouse gas emissions from the transportation sector, including:
1. Reducing vehicle miles traveled, including transportation demand management, non-motorized transportation, affordable transit-oriented housing, and high-speed rural broadband;
2. Increasing public transportation services, including public transit;
3. Deploying vehicle charging and refueling infrastructure with a strong emphasis on underserved communities and low to moderate-income members of the workforce not readily served by transit, or located in corridors with emissions that exceed federal or state standards. Supporting alternative fuel car sharing programs to provide opportunities to them;
4. Providing financing assistance to facilitate purchasing battery and fuel cell electric vehicles by lower income residents;
5. Providing grants to transit authorities for cost-effective capital projects reducing the carbon intensity of the system including electrification of fleets, modification or replacement of capital facilities to facilitate fleet electrification or renewable hydrogen refueling, upgrades to transmission and distribution systems, and construction of charging and fueling stations;
6. Supporting small trucking firms converting vehicles to cleaner alternative fuels, access to necessary fueling infrastructure, and assistance in mitigating the costs of the transition to cleaner fuel vehicles;
7. Electrifying and decarbonizing the state’s vehicle and passenger ferry fleet, and converting state, county, city, and public transit agency fleets to clean alternative fuels;
8. Reducing or mitigating the impacts of copollutant emissions in overburdened communities or vulnerable populations, including the expansion of monitoring networks for them;
9. Reducing emissions from vessels, onshore equipment and vehicles, including provision of shore power, reducing vehicle congestion and excessive idling, and installing clean fuel infrastructure;
10. Investing in rail and high-speed rail with the incremental installation of rail electrification integrated with local power generation; and
11. Supporting converting farm vehicles to cleaner alternative fuels, acquisition of and access to fueling infrastructure, and mitigating the costs of the transition to cleaner fuel vehicles.
The other forty percent of the money must be spent on projects and
programs including:
1. Activities to restore and improve forest health and reduce vulnerability to drought, insect infestation, disease, and other threats to healthy forests including silvicultural treatments, seedling development, thinning and prescribed fire and postfire recovery activities to stabilize and prevent unacceptable degradation to natural and cultural resources and minimize threats to life and property resulting from wildfire. (Priority must be given to programs, activities, or projects aligned with various current forest plans.)
2. Supplementing the growth management planning and environmental review fund for making grants or loans to local governments for the planning costs;
3. Deploying renewable energy resources, distributed generation, energy storage, demand side technologies and strategies, and other grid modernization projects;
4. Supporting programs, activities, or projects within the Department of Commerce’s clean energy fund;
5. Increase the energy efficiency or reducing the greenhouse gas emissions of industrial facilities including proposals to implement upgrading the energy efficiency of equipment, reducing process emissions, or switching to less emissions intensive fuels;
6. Achieving energy efficiency or emissions reductions in the agricultural sector including fertilizer management, soil management, bioenergy, and biofuels (including funding the sustainable farms and fields grant program); preserving or increasing carbon sequestration and storage benefits in soils, marine and freshwater areas; and through forest management, planting, and forest products.
7. Increasing energy in new and existing buildings, including weatherization and other retrofits, or promoting low-carbon architecture, including the use of low carbon building materials;
8. Funding programs, activities, or projects within the Department of Commerce’s weatherization plus health initiative;
9. Promoting the electrification and decarbonization of new and existing buildings;
10. Improving energy efficiency, including district energy, and investments in market transformation of energy efficiency products; and
11. Providing incentives and technical assistance to stationary sources to reduce greenhouse gas emissions and co-pollutants.
Increasing Ecology’s authority –
The bill specifies that the definitions of “emissions” that Ecology can regulate under the Clean Air Act include indirect emissions of greenhouse gases resulting the consumption, use, combustion, or oxidation of the petroleum products and natural gas. It specifies that the Department can require persons that produce or distribute products that emit greenhouse gases in the state to comply with air quality standards, emission standards, or emission limitations on greenhouse gases. It requires Ecology to decide by October 30th 2025 whether it’s likely that the tax will reduce the emissions it covers enough to obtain their share of the reductions needed to reach the State’s targets, and it requires Ecology to use its authority under the Clean Air Act to impose enough additional limitations on those emissions to reach the targets if it determines that the tax is not likely to do that.
Other changes –
The environmental justice and equity panel is now to provide “guidance” as well as recommendations about the development and implementation of the programs, projects, and activities funded by the bill. It has an additional member representing the agricultural community. The bill now says the Department of Commerce must “apply recommendations through iterative consultation with the environmental justice and economic equity panel” in the development of policies and procedures for the allocation of funding under this section, as well as the implementation plan, rather than saying it must “seek recommendations” on those from the panel.
The bill no longer allows fossil fuels that are subject to another jurisdiction’s carbon price to count that charge as a credit against their obligations under the bill. It adds several additional kinds of reporting. It rewrites Section 13, about managing taxable and non-taxable bond proceeds to comply with the IRS rules. It adds some details to the language about fair labor standards.