Inslee touts carbon cap, heat pumps at United Nations

Gov. Jay Inslee touted Washington state’s actions on climate change at the United Nations in New York this week as world leaders gathered to call for more aggressive action to slash fossil fuel emissions and save the global climate.

“We have a cap-and-invest [program] that is the most aggressive and most environmentally just in the United States,” Inslee said Wednesday at a UN climate summit.

On Thursday, Inslee and 24 other governors who make up the U.S. Climate Alliance announced a plan to quadruple the number of heat pumps, which can both heat and cool indoor spaces, in U.S. homes by 2030.

Inslee said Washington has already dedicated $150 million of revenue from fees on carbon pollution to helping low-income households install the energy-saving devices. Federal funding will double the amount available to help Washington state residents convert to clean energy.

“We are both fighting climate change at its source, which is reducing the need for oil and gas, but we're also helping people to accommodate these warmer and hotter temperatures,” Inslee said.

Inslee’s conservative and oil-industry opponents in Washington have been pushing back against the upfront costs of fighting climate change, especially the state’s “cap-and-invest” program, in which industrial polluters bid against each other for a limited number of climate-pollution permits. Critics blame the program for increasing gas prices.

“Washington working families are paying $5, $5.30 for gas, and the governor is gallivanting to New York to audition for some kind of post-governor job,” said Washington state Rep. Jim Walsh (R-Aberdeen).

“We are urging the Legislature to fix this badly flawed program,” Affordable Fuel Washington spokesperson Dana Bieber said in an email. The political action committee calls itself “a grassroots coalition” but is financed by the Western States Petroleum Association, whose members include Chevron, Exxon, Phillips 66, and Shell.

“The state’s badly flawed cap-and-trade program is now on track to be at least 4 times more expensive than predicted,” Bieber said.

State fees on carbon pollution have raised $1.4 billion for clean-energy and other environmental projects since the first carbon permits were auctioned off in February.

“Fossil fuels are the enemy in this battle,” Inslee said in New York. “All those industries that intend to keep us shackled to fossil fuels are intending to shackle our next several generations and doom them to disaster on a climate basis.”

Rep. Walsh has helped organize a ballot initiative aimed at repealing the cap-and-invest system. Conservative activists are now gathering signatures to get it on the 2024 ballot.

“These tax schemes do not reduce carbon outputs. All they do is generate tax revenue,” Walsh said.

Though the permits that polluters compete for under the cap-and-invest program have imposed real costs on some businesses and their customers, the program does not levy any taxes.

On Friday, a Thurston County Superior Court judge rejected the conservative Citizen Action Defense Fund’s lawsuit to overturn the cap-and-invest program. The group had argued the 2021 legislation enacting the program violated the “single subject” requirement of the state constitution.

Citizen Action Defense Fund Executive Director Jackson Maynard said Friday the group is considering its options, including appealing to the Washington State Supreme Court.

The head of the U.N., Secretary-General Antonio Guterres, said Wednesday that time was running short for the climate.

"The move from fossil fuels to renewables is happening, but we are decades behind," Guterres said at the start of the climate summit. "We must make up time lost to foot-dragging, arm-twisting and the naked greed of entrenched interests raking in billions from fossil fuels."

Reuters reported that Guterres invited leaders of 34 nations to speak at the summit. Leaders of the two biggest polluters—China and the United States—were not invited, though U.S. Special Envoy on Climate Change John Kerry was in the audience.

Inslee was invited to speak there as a "first mover and doer" in reducing fossil fuel use.

According to the state’s latest inventory, greenhouse gas emissions continue to rise in Washington and were at their highest level in more than a decade in 2019.