Climate pollution surges in Washington state after pandemic lull

Though up-to-date information is hard to come by, energy use and climate-altering pollution appear to be on the rise again in Washington state.

After sharply dropping 14% in 2020 with the reduced commuting and economic activity of the Covid-19 pandemic, the state’s carbon dioxide emissions have bounced back 7% since then, according to data from the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency.

If you want to keep tabs on the health of the state’s economy, you can track indicators like employment, home prices, and exports on a monthly basis. (Did you know that Washington exported $2.99 billion of manufactured commodities in September?)

But if you want to track the economy’s impacts on the planet’s health, you have to wait years.

Policymakers and advocates are essentially driving blind as they pursue the difficult goal of slashing fossil-fuel pollution fast enough to help stabilize the planet’s rapidly heating climate.

The Washington Department of Ecology plans to publish the state’s greenhouse gas emissions for 2020 and 2021 in December 2024.

The Seattle Office of Sustainability and Environment plans to publish an inventory of Seattle’s contribution to climate change for the year 2022 in December as well.

“It is a significant lag,” Washington Department of Ecology spokesperson Andrew Wineke said. “Everybody wants it to happen faster, and we are putting a team together to do that.”

The Environmental Protection Agency released state-level data for 2021 and 2022 in September 2024.

The newly available data shows that impacts of the pandemic enabled Washington state to comply with its 2008 law mandating carbon dioxide emissions drop to 1990 levels by 2020.

“Most of the reasons why emissions were down during the pandemic were bad,” Wineke said. “People had to stay home, and it did a lot of economic damage. It did a lot of human damage to our state.”

Emissions in 2021 and 2022, while increasing in both years, remained below 1990 levels.

“A lot of people, of course, after the pandemic, they're still working from home one or two days a week,” Wineke said.

Transportation has, consistently for the past three decades, remained the state’s largest source of climate-damaging pollution.

State law mandates further reductions in greenhouse gas emissions: They must drop 45% below 1990 levels by 2030, 70% by 2040, and 95% by 2050.

At the pace of emissions reported for 2021 and 2022, Washington state is not on track to meet its 45% reduction mandate for 2030.

“We're in a climate crisis, and our transportation sector is still the most polluting sector, and most of the money in our transportation budgets goes to cars,” climate activist Ben Jones with 350 Seattle said.

Todd Myers with the conservative Washington Policy Center noted that 2022 emissions were virtually identical to what they were when Jay Inslee became governor in 2013.

“During a decade we were told that we were a leader and making progress, we made no progress. That is failure,” Myers said by email. “Those who are most concerned about climate change should be most upset by this, but I don’t see any accountability for this failure.”

“Despite several good pieces of legislation going into effect on a federal and state level, we know that it takes time to implement these policies,” Jones said.

Gov. Inslee’s office declined to comment for this story, referring questions to the ecology department.

Washington’s emissions in 2022 were much lower than at their peak in 1999, as were per-capita emissions in a state that has grown rapidly over the past quarter century.

“Our economy in Washington is no longer as energy dependent as it once was,” Wineke said.

The federal data shows emissions from Washington power plants dropping in 2020 and continuing to drop in the following two years.

But the Environmental Protection Agency’s tally only includes pollution from electricity generated inside the state. Puget Sound Energy, the state’s largest utility, got nearly one-fourth of its electricity from coal power, mostly from Montana, in 2022.

Washington law requires utilities to stop buying coal power by the end of 2025.

The greenhouse gas inventory also fails to account for leaks of methane, a climate superpollutant, from the state’s imports of natural gas. In western Canada, where most of Washington state’s natural gas supply originates, enough unburned methane leaks from gas wells and pipes to make the fuel as harmful to the climate as coal.

RELATED: Energy foes spar with misleading claims over natural gas Initiative 2066

Washington voters’ approval in November of Initiative 2066 to roll back regulation of natural gas use in buildings is expected to worsen emissions, though opponents have announced their intention to block the initiative in the courts.

Nationally, the incoming Trump Administration is expected to slash regulations that limit greenhouse gas emissions.

Wineke said Washington state will soon have more timely information to base its climate policies on. In 2023, the state Legislature authorized funding for a greenhouse gas inventory team. Wineke said the Department of Ecology has been hiring that team, which will get started in early 2025.